“The King’s Highness, which never ceased to study and take pains both for the advancement of the commonwealth of this his realm of England, of the which he was the only supreme governor, and also for the defence of all the same, was lately informed by his trusty and faithful friends that the cankered and cruel serpent, the Bishop of Rome, by that arch-traitor Reignold Poole, enemy to God’s word and his natural country, had moved and stirred divers great princes and potentates of Christendom to invade the realm of England, and utterly to destroy the whole nation of the same. Wherefore His Majesty, in his own person, without any delay, took very laborious and painful journeys towards the sea-coasts.” The results of these journeys was the building in 1539 of what Lambarde describes as “castles, platfourmes, and blockhouses in all needfulle places of the Realme.” Some of these we may still see, here and at Walmer, Sandgate, Camber, and along the south coast, far away into Cornwall. These “bulwarks,” as they are styled in the records of the time, were designed by Van Hassenperg, a German military architect, and all bore outwardly much the same appearance, consisting of portly, but low, masonry towers clustered at intervals round a stout curtain-wall and pierced with lunettes for guns. Islanded within the centre of this enclosure was a keep and gun-platform, rising to a somewhat greater height than the outer works. Although of one general appearance, there were minor differences in the outer aspect of these coast defences, and the ground-plan of each was markedly individual. Deal Castle, long since become a private residence, still stands to the west of the town. It wears much the same exterior appearance, although its moat is planted with shrubs. The narrow alleys that lead on to the beach at Deal, and the ramshackly old houses and hovels from whose windows one might almost indulge in sea-fishing, seem almost like provocative impertinences to the waves, which appear always to be threatening them. But there they remain, the most whimsical of dwellings, with the spars and bowsprits of vessels almost poking in at the windows, greatly to the amusement of summer visitors. The visitor to Deal who does not partake of at least one Deal “hoffkin” is not considered to have done his duty by the place. There is, however, nothing especially delightful in one of these strangely named articles. A “hoffkin” may be purchased at any baker’s shop, at the price of one penny, and is nothing more than ordinary breadstuff (except that it appears to be a good deal harder, and not so palatable) baked in the shape of a teacake. It is about the size of a saucer, and has a hole in the middle. And why any baker makes such a thing, and how it came by its name, is an unrevealed mystery.