As far back as the year 460, Hengist the Saxon conferred the office of Warden of the Cinque Ports upon his brother Horsa, and since the time of Godwin, Earl of Kent, who died in the year 1053, nearly one hundred and fifty persons have held that distinguished office. These include many whose names are illustrious in English history, amongst them being Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, Eustace, Earl of Boulogne, William Longchamps, Hubert de Burgh, Sir Stephen de Pencester, Edmund Plantagenet, King Henry V., Simon de Montfort, Richard III., Prince Henry, afterwards Henry VIII., James II., and Prince George of Denmark. William Pitt was Lord Warden in 1792, and from that date until the year 1896 the holders of the office have been the Earl of Liverpool, the Duke of Wellington, the Marquis of Dalhousie, Lord Palmerston, Earl Granville, Mr. W. H. Smith, the Marquis of Dufferin and the Marquis of Salisbury. The privileges and distinctions of the inhabitants of the ports in those days were of a very substantial character. Amongst other things "pains and penalties" were imposed on any one entering or quitting the kingdom from or for the Continent except by way of Dover. The Grand Court of Shepway, at which the Lord Warden takes the oath of office, in the presence of the "barons," was formerly held in the open air at Lympne, a Roman port, the remains of which are now several miles inland, in the neighbourhood of Hythe, but the site of the court was removed to Dover as a more convenient place in 1693. To Edward the Confessor may be attributed the incorporation of the Cinque Ports in the form of a Royal Navy bound to stated service. To attach them to the throne he granted them lands and franchises, in return for which they undertook, on a stated notice, to provide ships for fighting purposes for a specified time. The Domesday Book, for instance, records that "Dover, in the time of King Edward, rendered eighteen pounds, of which moneys King Edward had two parts, and Earl Godwin the third. The burgesses gave the king twenty ships once a year for fifteen days, and in each ship were twenty men. This they did in return for his having endowed them with sac and soc"--the right of independent jurisdiction and free courts. Soon after the Norman conquest, the Danes once more threatened invasion with a powerful fleet, and Dover, Sandwich, and Romney were called upon to provide, at their own expense, twenty vessels equipped for sea, each with a crew of twenty-one men and provisions for fifteen days. Rye and Winchelsea rendered similar assistance, and in return received privileges similar to those enjoyed by the older ports. The fleet thus provided was so fully maintained by William Rufus that England's maritime supremacy may be dated from that early period. But, for more than a century after the Conquest, English ships seldom ventured beyond the Bay of Biscay or the entrance to the Baltic.