Printed and Published at the Dover Express Works. 1916.

TO BE FORMATTED

ANNALS OF DOVER.
SECTION SEVEN.
OFFICERS OF THE CORPORATION.
XI. SERGEANTS, PORTERS, CRYERS, & MESSENGERS.

The present day Town Sergeant is the representative
of a very old official, who is mentioned in the Dover Customal
of 1356, and at that time the office was an ancient one. The
first Sergeant appointed was called the Mayor's Sergeant, and
it was the custom for every Mayor, on taking office, to appoint
a Sergeant, either choosing a new one or re-appointing an
existing one. His duties were to attend the Mayor, serve
warrants, and make arrests. In the course of time there came
to be three Sergeants — the Mayor's Sergeant, having duties
as above mentioned; the Bailiff's Sergeant, who was called
the " Catchpole," because he had to serve processes and
make the arrests ordered by the Dover Hundred Court ; and
there was the Town Sergeant, who largely had to control
tlic Market, and was the custodian of the ancient horn, which
he had to sound in fourteen diverse places of the Town to
call the Burgesses to Common Assemblies. Each of these
three Sergeants, down to the Seventeenth Century, had a
mace to carry, but in the latter part of the Stuart Period
those three maces were sold, and in the year 1676 the present
mace was purchased by the Chamberlains for the Mayor's
Sergeant to carry before the Mayor. When the Bailiffs
ceased to be appointed, his sergeant was dispensed with ; but
the Mayor's Sergeant and the Town Sergeant continued to
work side by side until 1847, when the Town Council decided
to discontinue the appointment of a Mayor's Sergeant. The
Town Sergeant then took charge of the mace, which the
Mayor's Sergeant had previously shouldered, and the ancient
horn was taken in hand by the Town Cryer. The latter
was then an ancient c .Tirer, called the Bellman, because he
rang a bell to attract attention to public notices, which he
proclaimed. The Town Sergeant and the Town Cryer are
still appointed annually.

The Town Porters are also very ancient officers. There
were always four of them, their original duty ha\ang been to
act as executive officers, to assist lawful passengers by the
passage boats, to arrest undesirable aliens, and to prevent
all landings and embarkations when the Dover Passage,



OFFICERS OF tHE CORPORATION 361

which was the only route across the Straits, was closed by
the Sovereign's mandate. There is a tradition that the four
Town Porters were first appointed to bury the dead in the
time of the Plague. They had to perform that unpleasant
duty, but they existed long before history recorded any plague
at Dover, in connection with the Dover town lands and
tenements, they had to attend the Town Clerk and Sergeants
to drive stakes in front of sequestered property, and to
remove the stakes when the sequestration ended. When the
Mayor died during his year of office he was carried to his
grave by the four Porters, and when there were public
executions in Dover the Porters carried the bodies to burial.
In connection with the Passage, they, in later years, attended
the landing and embarkation of carriages and horses, for
which they had special fees, yielding good profits ; but the
introduction of railways and steamboat companies has greatly
changed the old order of things respecting the fellowship.

The Town Messenger is also an officer of long standing.
In the present day his duties are mainly confined to the town,
but in ancient times he had to make long journeys to the
distant Liberties of Folkestone, Faversham, Ringwould, and
Thanet. The ofiice appears to have been always more toil-
some than lucrative. The oldest Town Messenger that we
can remember used to com.plain of the loads he had to carry,
of the late hours that he had to deliver notices round the
town, and the small pay that he received ; but a glance at
the old records shows that his predecessors fared no better.
In the time of Edward III. the following are some of the
payments to the Dover Town Messenger: — " Carrying the
common chest and blowing the horn in fourteen diverse places
of the town at the Mayor's Election, 7d. For letters sent to
Margate, Kingsdown and Folkestone, i2d. For letters sent
to Faversham, i2d. For carrying letters to Folkestone, 46.
Carrying letters to Romney, 4.6.. Going to Kingsdown to
find Marmers, 2d. Bearing letters to Romney, 4d."
Hundreds of pages of such entries show that, for Town
Messengers, the former days were no better than these.

There are, of course, other Officers of the Corporation,
but they are not mentioned because, although they are import-
ant, they are not vested with historical interest.