“I am bid break all earthworks and walls. Through hill and dale bores the ball flung by me.” But it has been well put metrically, without departing to any degree from exactness: “O’er hill and dale I throw my ball; Breaker, my name, of mound and wall.” This beautiful work, enriched, together with its wheels, with elaborate ornament, was cast at Utrecht in 1544, and presented by the States-General of the Netherlands to Queen Elizabeth, defender of the reformed religion. It is fitting in the completest degree that Dover should have figured in the quarrel that sent the patriot Englishman Earl Godwin, into revolt and exile. The true story of Godwin and his stand for the rights and liberties of Englishmen is well known to history, but it has never been made sufficiently intimate, and the memory of that great man, blackened by lying Norman monks, suffers to this day. The fame of the weak and alien-loving King Edward the Confessor, has, on the other hand, been well cared for, and he has long been regarded as a saint. The trouble arose from a visit in 1051 of Eustace, Count of Boulogne, a brother-in-law of the King, one of the arrogant Normans who even thus early conceived themselves able to insult and ill-treat the people of that Saxon England they were destined to conquer in the succeeding reign. The outrage was deliberate. Halting his party within a mile of Dover, the Count of Boulogne left the saddle of his travelling palfrey, and, putting on his armour and his helmet adorned with the two long whalebone aigrettes that marked his authority along the seashores of Boulogne, he mounted his war-horse, and, with his followers armed in like manner, entered the town. Arrived there, they thrust themselves, uninvited and undesired guests, upon the chief burgesses. Such was the custom in feudal Normandy, but it was unknown in England, and as greatly resented as unknown. One indignant Englishman promptly thrust out one of these unwelcome guests who had taken veritable “French leave.” In return, the stranger drew his sword and wounded his “host,” but was promptly set upon and slain. When this incident became known Eustace and his party stormed the house, and the brave defender of the sanctity of his hearth was murdered. An armed foray through the town followed, in which the foreigners fared ill, for nineteen of them were slain by the infuriated townsfolk, and the departure of the remainder across sea was prevented. The King was at Gloucester, and to that city Eustace and those who remained of his retinue hastened, to seek revenge. Edward was enraged, and ordered Godwin to waste the town of Dover with fire and sword. That, you perceive, was the quality of the Confessor’s saintliness! Godwin, one of the greatest in the land, himself father-in-law of the King, who had married his daughter Edith, refused to punish without a hearing the men who had merely resented insolence. They should be tried lawfully, and punished only if guilty.