t stretched some three leagues
into the interior. Within this space, a considerable population was
located, not only much more numerous than in the present day, but
including a much greater number of trades-people dealing in articles
of luxury, as we infer from some records of Henry VIII.'s expenditure,
which include, for instance, dealings with five different jewellers.
There is still existing at Calais a curious chart, dated 1460,
containing a minute specification of the roads, farm-steads, mills,
quarries, and bulwarks, as they then existed. Here are 'English
Street,' 'Knight Street,' 'Evelyne's Waye,' 'Ye waye from Marck to St
Peter's,' and 'Ye new main Bank.' Many of the larger country
dwellings, which are rudely depicted, appear more like rustic
fortalices than farmhouses of our day. Numerous towers, marked as
'bulwarks,' seem to have commanded the boundary and other more exposed
parts of the Pale. The only road across the 'marishes' on the south
and south-west was commanded by Fort Nieulay--then called
Newlandbridge--a place of great importance, originally built in an
extensive morass, and furnished with sluice-gates to the sea, which
enabled its holders to flood the surrounding country at will. Not only
the fortifications then existing, but those which succeeded them in
later times, are now in ruin; but the curious traveller finds remains
enough to repay a stroll among the grass-covered bastions.

In the town, we find Castle Street, Duke Street, Hill Street, Shoe
Lane, and Love Lane--names which smack unmistakably of the island home
of John Gibbons, Hugh Giles, Richard Gilbert, and other colonial
householders, whose names appear on a still existing rent-roll.

Though the English monarch was instigated to the capture and
colonisation of Calais mainly with a view to dislodge the pirates, who
issued from its fastnesses and harassed our navigation, yet he very
soon learned to appreciate the possession of such a frontier port and
fortress as a depot for purposes of aggression, as well as a means of
maritime protection. Moreover, it was afterwards perceived, that
immense gain would accrue to the Exchequer from the maintenance of
this station as a port of _entree_ into the Netherlands for English
manufactures; and though at a day when knight-errantry was infinitely
more in vogue than commercial enterprise, these interests were
carefully studied, so that the conquest of a small piratical town was
turned to vastly bett