ITS SOCIAL, POLITICAL AND COMMERCIAL LIFE IN THE 18th CENTURY.
THE PIONEER OF MODERN HASTINGS.
JOHN COLLIER, ESQUIRE, Town Clerk and Mayor of Hastings, and Baron of the Cinque Ports.
I am enabled by the courtesy of Mr. Charles Lane Saver, the Editor of the Collier Letters compiled and printed in two volumes, embracing the correspondence of John Collier (for private use only), and his Family 1716-1780 to include in my "Hastings of Bygone Days," extracts from this "private collection," illustrating the social, political and commercial life of Hastings during the period covered by these interesting memoranda, and prior to the transition of this Old Cinque Port from a small fishing town of less than 3,000 inhabitants to the opening of its recognition as a health resort in the middle of the 18th Century. (Mr. Charles Lane Sayer, a brother of the late Rev. William Carlisle Sayer-Milward, of Hastings.)
Biographical Sketch.
Mr. John Collier was born at Eastbourne, in Sussex, in November, 1685, about 30 years after Oliver Cromwell became Protector, and the same year of the Accession of James II., and, therefore, would have been conversant with the history of those turbulent times, which included the period of that arch conspirator, Titus Oates, and the Popish plot, which created such a panic. Mr. Collier, who was trained and practised as a Solicitor, settled at Hastings early in life. He became Town Clerk, and afterwards Mayor (to which office he was elected first in 1719, and again in 1722, 1730, 1737 and 1741) ; A Baron of the Cinque Ports, and attended as such at the Coronation of George the Second ; one of the two joint Solicitors to the Cinque Ports, 1750 ; Surveyor General of the Riding Officers of the Customs for the County of Kent, 1756; Usher and Crier of the Court of King's Bench Judge ; Advocate and principal deputy of the Duke of Newcastle as Vice-Admiral of the coast of Sussex. In his private capacity, he was an attorney and solicitor, and steward of several manors, and also agent for the Sussex estates of Mr. Henry Pelham, Prime Minister to George II., and, according to tradition handed down by his family, also acted as banker to all the people round Hastings, there being then no bank in the town. The Town was one of the several boroughs in which the influence of the Duke of Newcastle,.
Henry Pelham's brother, was paramount, and Mr. Collier being the Duke's Agent, he would naturally be the channel through which such Government patronage as found its way to Hastings would flow. The Duke seems first to have established his interest here -
