Letter from the Rev. Professor Stanley to the Honorary Secretary

MY DEAR SIR,

You will, I hope, excuse me if in compliance with your kind solicitations I adopt this very curt and unceremonious mode of redeeming the pledge which I gave, before my severance from the county to which I had the honour to belong when your Society was first formed. The pressure of my present occupations forbids me to enlarge, as I should have wished, on the theme of the Antiquities of Kent. What I now write must therefore be considered rather as a general expression of parting goodwill than as a formal Preface to a volume which needs no such preliminaries.

It has always appeared to me that much light may be thrown upon the history of any considerable country by the minute investigation of the peculiarities of its separate provinces; and to this rule England is no exception, and Kent affords one of its most remarkable exemplifications.

The physical situation of Kent, if I may repeat here what I have before said elsewhere, at once marks it out as a field for such inquiry. The pyramid of English History rests, even in its outward form, on two cornerstones: its western base is Cornwall; its eastern base is Kent. As through Cornwall it first became known to the older world which preceded Greece and Rome, so through Kent it first became known to Rome, and through that connection first came into contact with the civilization of Europe. If a Cornishman may feel a strange sensation of delight at finding the very earliest appearance of Britain on the stage of history, in Herodotus's hesitating admission of the existence of the Islands of Tin in the Northern Sea, so the man of Kent may enjoy a still more legitimate satisfaction in the knowledge that Kent was the first portion of England that caught the eye of the great General who first brought us within view of the Roman Empire,—the only one whose peculiarities he has distinctly denoted, the only one which from that day to this has borne its original name unaltered through the vicissitudes of four conquests and eighteen centuries. Already, at that first dawn of our history, Kent is spoken of by Caesar as the most civilized part of Britain. Already his sagacious eye had noticed the cause in its maritime situation and its affinity to France,—"Ex his omnibus longe sunt humanissimi qui CANTIUM incolunt; quae regio est maritima omnis, neque multum a Gallica differunt consuetudine." This brief sentence is the text of the whole History and Archaeology of Kent.

Represent to us this antique fragment of our country in its earliest physical features; let us hear all that can be said of the connection of its white chalk cliffs with the peculiarities of poetry, of architecture, and of culture to which they have given birth. Give the etymologies of the names of each separate locality in the county, those simple but picturesque monuments which preserve the recollection of historical events and of natural features, often when their memory has perished everywhere else. Show that Kent is our corner; explain how the Stour is our Ister; tell us the true origin of Sevenoaks; unfold the peculiar fitness and grace of Chevening. Represent these ancient hills and valleys to us, further, in their earliest historical, their Celtic state, still traceable, though at remote intervals, by their deep British roads and their scattered cromlechs. Let us have the full advantage of our shores having received the first legions of Caesar, if our Sussex brethren will still allow us to think so: at any rate, of having sheltered his first permanent settlement, developed into the four Roman fortresses of Richborough, Reculver, Lymne, and Dover. Let us profit by that next invasion to which the easy access of Kent gave occasion, in the erection of the first Saxon kingdom; and if our severer criticism will not allow us to believe in the two brother chiefs, or in the successful resistance to William the Norman, we are still not the less bound to explain and to cherish the relics of Saxon customs and of Saxon antiquities which Kent undoubtedly inherited in no ordinary degree. Nor is it Canterbury alone, but the whole of Kent, which has profited by the ecclesiastical Primacy which its welcome to Augustine annexed to its ancient capital. Lanfranc, Anselm, Becket, Cranmer, furnish the natural links by which our local annals are connected with the chain not only of British, but of European history. Pilgrims' chapels, religious houses, archiepiscopal palaces, baronial castles, are sown broadcast over the county which then contained at once the Sublime Porte and the Mecca of England. Add to these the innumerable vestiges, discovered or undiscovered, of events which grew out of these various peculiarities. Such were our popular insurrections, from Wat Tyler downwards, the results of the ancient, independent, almost national spirit of the "unconquered" horse of Hengist. Such were the visits of our own or of foreign Princes, which were almost the necessary consequence of the neighbourhood of Kent to the Continent; out of the scanty impressions derived from their visits to England by Louis VII. and John of France, by Manuel of Constantinople, by Sigismund and Charles V. of Germany, Kent occupied a large proportion. The gates which Henry VIII. brought from Boulogne have long ago vanished from Upper Hardres; the walls which sheltered the plot of the Maid of Kent have all but ceased to mark the site of the nunnery of St. Sepulchre at Canterbury. But in family archives, in local traditions, in fragments of wood or stone, in names of places or persons, the traces of these and like antiquities doubtless still linger. There are many chinks still to be filled up in the fabric of our national history, many buttresses still to be strengthened, many pinnacles still to be restored. This is especially the work of antiquarian investigations, of local inquiry. Those only who are on the spot have the means or the will to detect the details or to descend to the foundations of special historical events. Let the Kent Archaeological Society do this, having in view both what has been done before and what has not been done, and it will render good service not only to the Archaeology but to the History of England.

With every wish for the success of the interesting labours on which you are about to enter,

Believe me to be,

My dear Sir,

Yours faithfully,

ARTHUR P. STANLEY.