The men of the Cinque Ports seem to have carried on a certain amount of privateering at various times, but there have been times when their skill in seafaring and their undoubted courage have been employed in work of the utmost value in the defence of England. A celebrated occasion occurred in the year 1217, when Hubert de Burgh, having selected the best seamen of the Cinque Ports, set out with about sixteen large ships and twenty small ones to attack the approaching fleet of Louis the Dauphin of France, the numbers of which were no less than eighty large and many smaller vessels. Hubert de Burgh had grasped the important principle of naval strategy that in order to free his country from the danger of invasion, it was above all things necessary to attack and destroy the enemy's force at sea. Although opposed by such unequal numbers the Englishmen skilfully secured a windward position, bore down upon the enemy as they shaped their course for the English coast, threw quicklime in their eyes, poured into the enemy a volley of arrows from the long bows for which the English were famous, and scattered and destroyed the enemy's ships, so that only about seventeen escaped; fifty-five were captured, and the rest were sunk. The credit of this signal victory in an engagement at sea which may rank as almost the first in English history, certainly the first subsequently to the time of King Alfred, belongs to the men of the Cinque Ports. The strength of the Cinque Port forces in the fourteenth century may be gathered from the fact that at the Siege of Calais (1347), when the fleet was called out to assist in the blockade and to defend the Channel, the following ships and men were furnished by the Cinque Ports: Ships Men Hastings 5 96 Sandwich 22 504 Dover 16 336 Romney 4 65 Hythe 6 122 Winchelsea 21 596 Rye 9 156 Seaford 5 80 Faversham 2 25 Margate 15 160 Among the privileges of the Cinque Ports to which reference has been made there are one or two which point unmistakably to an early origin. One is the right of open-air assembling in portmote or parliament at Shepway Cross, and afterwards at Dover, where by-laws were made for the governance of the confederation, the regulation of the Yarmouth fisheries, and to give decisions in all cases of treason, sedition, illegal coining, and concealment of treasure-trove. The ordinary business was transacted in two courts, named respectively the Court of Brotherhood, and the Court of Brotherhood and Guestling. The formal installation of a newly appointed Lord Warden took place at the Breding-Stone at Dover, also in open-air assembly. It is an interesting fact that these moots or open-air assemblies were summoned by the sound of a horn.