Cobbett here gives way to a fit of senseless vituperation; the more obviously senseless since this rabid tirade comes only two days later than his ride along the coast from New Romney to Hythe and Folkestone, where of course he encountered the martello towers; erected there for the purpose of guarding those levels against a threatened invasion. He raves at them equally as he raves at the works on the Western Heights, and, in short, behaves on the principle of the Irishman who acted on the policy of “whenever you see a head, hit it.” It is very fine fighting form, but it is the very negation of logic. CHAPTER XX THE CHANNEL PASSAGE--THE NATIONAL HARBOUR AND ITS STRATEGIC PURPOSE-- SWIMMING AND FLYING THE CHANNEL Dover has ever been a favourite port with travellers. The advantage of lying near to the opposite coast determined its fortunes from the earliest times, for sea-sickness has naturally always rendered the shortest passage the most popular. Little need, then, it might be thought for proclamations and Acts of Parliament insisting upon this being the port of arrival and departure. Yet we find enactments in the reign of Edward the Third not only regulating “the fares of the passage of Dover” (1330), but in 1335 a law passed that “no pilgrim shall pass out of the Realm, but at Dover.” This was supplemented in 1464–5 by an ordinance, “For compelling persons to take passage and land at Dover.” They well knew, those old travellers, the miseries of _mal-de-mer_; the rich and powerful among them no less than the poorer sort, and it was one of these--none other than the great Hubert de Burgh, Earl of Kent and Chief Justiciar of Kent, who, about 1208, founded the Maison Dieu, with its establishment of Master, brethren, and sisters, for the lodging, and entertainment of “poor strangers and pilgrims on their way beyond seas.” It may be supposed that pilgrims coming as well as going were guests of this charitable establishment. In fact, they did you so well at this place that several shabby-minded monarchs and their retinues, and others who were certainly not poor, did not scruple to quarter themselves here. King John, who was mean enough for anything, set this fashion. A somewhat older place of sojourn for travellers was in St. Martin’s Priory, where the Strangers’ Hall, of Late Norman architecture, is still to be seen. The manor of Archer’s Court, some three miles out of Dover, is associated with the sea, in a quaint tenure, by which the owner held it of the King on condition that “he should hold the King’s head when he passes to Calais, and by the working of the sea should be obliged to vomit.”