Lymington did not escape from French marauders, but, fortunately for the town, on one occasion the wit and charm of a certain lady named Dore so enchanted the leader of the pirates, that he went away without doing damage. The story goes that upon the landing of the pirates their leader being very hungry, he decided to put off plundering the town until his appetite was satisfied, and the house of the said Madam Dore promising the best larder, “he (the pirate leader) entered therein and made his demand. The lady of the house set before him the very best her larder provided, keeping him company with such good humour, and plying him well with good wine; when he had finished he gallantly thanked her, made his bow, and embarked without doing the smallest injury.” The wit and resource of Lymington ladies in ancient times must indeed have been considerable, for another heroine, a Mrs Knapton, figures in a romantic story connected with the Monmouth rebellion. There was a considerable party in favour of the “Protestant Duke” in the town, and the conspirators, who sought to plan how they might best assist Monmouth, met at the house of a Mrs Knapton, and deliberated over pipes and ale. But unhappily, on the occasion of one of their meetings, intelligence reached them that a party of soldiers had entered the town with a view to arresting them. Mrs Knapton promptly hustled the conspirators out by the back windows of her house, removed the pipes and ale mugs; and in order to account for the smell of tobacco in the room muffled up her face in flannel, so that when the soldiers entered they discovered nothing but an old woman, to all appearances suffering from acute toothache, and puffing at a long “churchwarden,” evidently with a view to relieving her suffering. The ancient townlet, with its one business thoroughfare of any importance running down precipitously to within a few score yards of the harbour itself, has in the past seen stirring times; and when the Duke of Monmouth had actually landed at Lyme Regis, intent upon driving his weak and vacillating uncle from the throne, he was proclaimed in Lymington High Street, and upwards of a hundred men marched off towards the West Country to fight in “King Monmouth’s” cause. Several Lymington men paid the penalty of their Protestant zeal with their lives, when the “Bloody Assize” of the infamous Jeffreys held session at Winchester. In the past, too, Lymington folk were not less skilful “free traders” than the rest of the famous smugglers of the Hampshire coast, and in the waterside houses existed--and probably still exist--“tub holes” and pivoted hearthstones in and beneath which many a bale of tea and lace and keg of spirits found temporary resting places.