The arms of this town are, a ship in full course, with sails expansed, on the waves of the ocean. It is further privileged with a weekly market on Saturdays, and fairs annually, on Shrove Tuesday, May 1st, and September 10th. This town hath also added to its privileges some of the liberties and freedoms of the Cinque Ports, which other towns or harbours have not: what they are, the inhabitants there best know. Those privileges were first granted only to the ports of Hastings, Hythe, Dover, Romney, and Sandwich, in Kent, by Edward the Confessor; afterwards much increased in the days of the three Edwards, the First, Second, and Third: which in this place are too long for me to recite. Mr. Carew tells us, that in Edward the Third’s days sixty tall ships did belong to this harbour; and that the town of Foys did assist that King with forty-seven sail of men-of-war and transport-ships, anno Dom. 1347, in order to the siege of Calais; whereupon that King granted commissions to the chief commanders of those Foy ships to take French prizes, during his wars with those people, or French nation; so that in few years those Foy men were grown so rich and formidable, by taking French prizes, that by force and arms they would enter many ports of that kingdom, and carry with them all ships they could conquer, and what they could not, would use means to set them on fire in the places where they lay. In fine, when French prizes grew scarce, (I speak upon the authority of Mr. Carew,) they scrupled not to turn sea-robbers, or pirates, taking, plundering, and destroying all ships they could master, of what country soever, not sparing the sailors’ lives. By which means the townsmen grew unspeakably rich and proud and mischievous, which occasioned the Lord Pomier, and other Normans, to petition John, King of France, to grant them a private commission of marque and arms, to be revenged on the pirates and thieves of Foy town, which accordingly they obtained, and carried their design so secretly that a small squadron of ships, and many bands of marine soldiers, were prepared and shipped without the Foymen’s knowledge or notice, who accordingly put to sea out of the river Seine, in the month of July 1457, in 35th Henry VI. and with a fair wind sailed thence across the British Channel, and got sight of Foy harbour, where they lay off at sea till night, when they drew towards the shore and dropped anchor, and in the night landed their marine soldiers and seamen, and at midnight approached the south-west end of Foy-town, where they killed all persons they met with, set fire to the houses, and burned one half thereof to the ground, to the consumption of a great part of the inhabitants’ riches and treasures, a vast deal of which was gotten by their piratical practices; in which massacre and conflagration, the women, children, and weakest sort of people, forsook the place, and fled for safety into the hill country.