But not until the time of Edward the Confessor did the actual confederation of the Cinque Ports come into existence, and not until after the Conquest do we hear with any certainty of it. It is not clear, amid the mists of antiquity from which this history emerges, whether the ports concerned took the initiative or whether the duty of providing ships and men for the King’s use (or for national defence, as we might nowadays express it) was laid upon them against their will. But the privileges and exemptions granted to these associated ports in return for their supply of ships, men, and munitions amply recouped the cost of the service imposed upon them. The original Cinque Ports were Dover, Sandwich, Hastings, Hythe, and Romney. At a later period Rye and Winchelsea were added, under the special designation of the “Ancient Towns.” Each port had its subsidiary “members.” Thus the “members” attached to Dover were Margate, Folkestone, Faversham, and St. Peter’s, Broadstairs. Those belonging to Sandwich were Deal, Walmer, Stonar, Ramsgate, Sarre, Reculver, Fordwich, and Brightlingsea, away in Essex; to which Great Yarmouth in Norfolk and Dunwich in Suffolk may perhaps be added, although Dunwich was early swept away by encroachment of the sea, and Yarmouth, as a place of considerable size, fully conscious of its own dignity, always resented the authority assumed by Sandwich over its fishery, and eventually, in 1663, won its complete independence. Romney comprised Lydd, Dungeness, Eastweston, and Promwell; Hythe took in merely West Hythe, and to Hastings belonged the remote and completely inland village of Bekesbourne. The story of the Cinque Ports is, above all else, an object-lesson in the supreme, although generally unacknowledged, importance of the trading, or middle classes, without whose enterprising activities and courage and resource the nation long since would have ceased to exist. It has always been convenient to ignore the services to the community performed by traders, who on the one hand give employment and on the other pay the greater proportion of rates and taxes, and from whose enriched families the failing and impoverished aristocracy has throughout the centuries been recruited.