Minehead is a place with a history; its position on the Bristol Channel made it a port of considerable value, and throughout the Middle Ages it did a large trade with Ireland, and a foreign trade with France and Spain, only second to that of Bristol from the West of England. In the seventeenth century, like Bristol also, it had an extensive trade with Virginia and the West Indies, and it exported annually forty thousand barrels of herrings to the Mediterranean. But the herrings left these coasts, as I have already had occasion to state in speaking of Lynton, and an Act passed in the reign of Charles II, forbidding the import of Irish cattle, though passed with the intention of protecting the English farmers against Irish competition, had the usual result of such short-sighted policy, and, while it crippled the Irish trade and ruined the prosperity of such ports as Minehead, it ultimately benefited nobody. Any ship smuggling cattle, that was captured, was sold, and a part of the proceeds went to charity and a part to the Crown. The "Cow Charity" is a fund which is still administered in Minehead. Minehead was a "manor" in Domesday Book, and was given along with Dunster by the Conqueror to William de Mohun, who was one of the first of his nobles to support his English expedition, and who brought to the standard of Duke William fifty-seven knights in his retinue, with their esquires and their men-at-arms. The name Minehead is a corruption of the Norman lord's name with the Anglo-Saxon word _heved_, a head; it used to be written "Manheved." The Mohuns held it until the time of Henry IV, when, there being only daughters, it passed out of the direct line, and was sold by Lady Mohun to the Luttrells, who have held it until the present time. It was incorporated by Queen Elizabeth, and governed by a "port-reeve," and later by two constables. The place was then of a size to consist of a Lower, Middle and Upper Town; the Lower Town, now called Quay Town, is the oldest remaining part. It lies under the high hill of Culver Cliff, around the harbour, and has more of the look of a Devon or Cornwall fishing village--the steep, narrow streets, the whitewashed cottages with their large chimney-stacks and leaded windows--than the aspect of modern Minehead would lead one to expect. It was here, indeed, that the sea broke in the great gale of 1860, when the shipping in the harbour tore from its moorings, and was driven literally upon the houses of Quay Town, as the sea-wall gave way under the pounding of the waves, and the _Royal Charter_, getting clear from Culver Cliff, was driven on to the rocks off Anglesea, and lost with all hands.