. . . . "And the Barons of the Cinque Ports affirmed their Right of sitting at the King's Table the same day, at the right hand of our Lord the King and so they sate . . . . . These are the services which the Barons of the Cinque Ports owe to our Lord the King."
"Of these affairs, one of the principal was to receive the report of the Bailiff sent to Yarmouth and Dunwich in Norfolk and Suffolk every year at the time of the great Herring Fair, during the forty days of which the Cinque Ports claimed to have a jurisdiction superseding the local authorities. This privilege, like many another, seems to have survived the time in which it was needed, and to have become a burden and source of strife. Jeake gives the following account of its origin: "Hither" (to Yarmouth) "resort the fishermen of the ports, and other sea towns, every year in the fishing season, for herrings, who, by a wonderful and rare Providence, having their constant course once a year round this island, about the Autumnal Equinox, begin to keep their quarters on these coasts. And, to repress and prevent disorders arising among the multitude upon the sale and delivery of the herrings brought ashore there, for want of a settled government in that town, or, as hereafter noted, for want of a town built, the Ports used to send thither yearly, certain men as their bailiffs, that, during the time of this Herring Fair, they might abide there, and govern all the fishing season."
When, however, the town of Yarmouth sprang up, and had a magistracy of its own, they naturally disliked any interference with their government, and hence arose constant collisions which issued on one occasion in the murder of one of the Ports' Bailiffs, by a bailiff of Yarmouth, for which the execution of the homicide, Yarmouth had to pay a yearly tribute of herrings, or its equivalent in money. In 1858 the late Alderman T. Ross extracted from the Records of Hastings and published an interesting tract on this subject from which is taken the following : "At what time bailiffs were first sent to Yarmouth from the Cinque Ports is not known. Manship the historian of Yarmouth, 1619, says 'it is in my opinion very clear, that from the landing of Cerdicus in anno 495, now 1124 years past, the sand by defluxion of tides by little and little lift his head above waters, and in so short time after sundry fishermen, as well as this kingdom, viz., the five ports (being then the principal fishermen of England) resorted thither, where they continued in tents made for the purpose, by the space of forty days.'
"Edward the Confessor granted in his Charter to the Cinque Ports the right of Strond and Denne (right to land and sell, and to dry their nets on the land called Dennes) at Yarmouth, which right appears to have been infringed by Robt. Leasinge, Bishop of Norwich, who, in 1101, built a small chapel in the Dean or Dozone of Yarmouth, then being sand. But the very next year after the same was finished, the barons of the five ports coming thither, as usually they did, to fish there, they being then (as hath been before declared) the principal fishermen of England, did bring their priest with them, -
