Note 24 — PART II HISTORICAL STUDIES (continued 2)

To sum up, there are features about the Cinque Ports organization which can only be accounted for, it seems to me, by the hypothesis here advanced. If this novel solution be accepted,24 a question at once arises as to the date at which this communal confederacy was established. From what we know of the origin of the 'commune', we can scarcely believe in its adoption here till a generation, at least, after the Conquest. 'Only the least informed and most sceptical,' writes Professor Burrows, 'have placed the act of incorporation later than the date of the Conqueror',25 but a wider knowledge of municipal institutions would lead to the opposite conclusion. It is possible that the reign of Henry I may have witnessed the superimposing of a communal confederacy on the existing institutions of the several ports; it is impossible, at any rate, to trace it in Domesday, and difficult, indeed, to reconcile with its existence the evidence afforded by the Great Survey. It is conceivable that the position already attained, in the Conqueror's days, by Dover, may have served as a model for the other Ports, when they learnt the power of the principle that lay at the root of the commune—'L'union fait la force'.26