The newness of New Romney is now only a battered and outworn figure of speech, to be taken relatively and with reference to that Old Romney we have just left. What the streets of New Romney were like when it really was new--about the time of the Norman Conquest--we cannot conceive; how they looked when it had already grown to a respectable age, when the Late Norman church of St. Nicholas was built, we can form no idea. But it is certain that this was once a town of goodly size and great prosperity. At the time when the Cinque Ports were constituted, Romney was thought worthy to be of the company, and to be equal fellow with Hastings, Sandwich, Dover, and Hythe; but so early as 1351 it was so decayed by reason of its misfortunes at the hands of tempests and the contrary sea-currents that shoaled and silted-up its harbour, that the unfortunate port could not send out its quota of ships for the national defence, and was penalised accordingly, losing for a time many of its Cinque Port privileges. When Queen Elizabeth visited the town, and granted it the empty honour of a Mayor and Corporation, it was very much in the condition it occupies now. Of its five churches, only one--the one still standing--was left, the sea was two miles distant, and her "poor town of Romney" would have been sore put to it to do her honour, except for the liberality of certain substantial men whose purses were equal to the heavy calls such Royal visits made. But, it may be asked, if the town were in such sore case, whence came the wealth of those substantial burgesses? Ay, whence? Why, from that unchartered industry of smuggling of whose history we have already heard so much. The port and town might decay, but for centuries before Elizabeth's time and until the first half of the nineteenth century had almost gone, the "owling" trade in the exportation of wool, and the import smuggling of exciseable articles, enriched many a highly-respectable family and kept a whole army of longshore loafers in comfortable circumstances. Strangers with astonishment saw substantial mansions in these wilds, eloquent in their every appointment of a high degree of prosperity, and Ireland, writing on Kent at the beginning of the nineteenth century, could not comprehend the existence here, where there was no distinguishable commerce, of the "numbers of stout, hale-looking men" who were always loafing about, without any visible occupation. If Mr. Ireland had walked abroad o' nights, he would have discovered that those aimless persons were then very busily employed, and he would probably have received a crack over the head from one or other of them, if thought too curious. The smuggling fraternity did not welcome curious strangers.