“‘Forsooth, syr,’ quoth he, ‘I am an olde man: I thinke that Tenterton steeple is the cause of Goodwin Sandes. For I am an olde man, syr,’ quod he, ‘and I may remember the building of Tenterton steeple, and I may remember when there was no steeple at all there. And before that Tenterton steeple was in building, there was no manner of speaking of any flats or sands that stopped the haven; and therefore I thinke that Tenterton steeple is the cause of the destroying and decaying of Sandwich haven.’” The ancient man whose evidence seemed to Bishop Latimer so absurd a _non sequitur_ was not such a fool as he seemed to be, and did but echo the olden widespread belief in Kent that “the building of Tenterden steeple was the cause of Goodwin Sands.” That belief, when explained, is not so ridiculous as at first sight it appears, even though it be founded upon a legend that has no basis whatever. This legend declares that the Abbot of St. Augustine’s Abbey at Canterbury, to build the steeple of Tenterden church, employed a quantity of stone that had been set aside for repairing the sea-walls defending the Goodwins, then a portion of the mainland; and that the next storm, in consequence, drowned thousands of acres. Quite apart from the want of any foundation for this legend, the question was further confused by the old man of Latimer’s story associating the existing fine and stately Perpendicular tower of Tenterden church with the disaster. The old belief obviously went back to a remote period and referred to some ancient steeple at Tenterden that he never knew. This folk-tale does not by any means agree with the ancient and widespread legend that the Goodwins form the site of an island called Lomea, said to have been overwhelmed in the great storm of 1099, mentioned in the Saxon Chronicle. John Twyne, or Twine, who in 1590 published a work he called _De Rebus Albionicis_, appears to give the earliest mention of “Lomea.” He says it was “a low fertile island,” but it is not known whence came his authority for the existence of the isle, or the description of it. Lomea is said to have been given by Edward the Confessor to Earl Godwin, father of King Harold; but Godwin (from whose name the Goodwin Sands are said to take their title) died in 1053, and no mention is found of Lomea or any such place in charters of that time; nor does it appear in Domesday Book. But it is quite obvious that an island must at some time have existed where the fatal sands now stretch, for most legends contain some nucleus of fact; and it is to be noted that, to the eastward of the North Goodwin, the water is shoaled by a chalk ridge, often said to be the site of that vanished isle.