Excerpt from A History of the Weald of Kent, Vol. 1 of 2: With an Outline of the Early History of the County; Also, a Sketch of the Physical Features of the District

Lambarde, our earliest topographer, mentions only five places within it, although the number of parishes and places, either wholly or partially comprised therein, amounted to more than eighty; whilst One Of our modern writers, the late highly gifted anglo-saxon scholar, Mr. Kemble, instead of treating it, first as the common forest Of the kingdom of Kent, and afterwards of the shire, was impressed with the idea that it was originally a Mark district. His intimate friend, the late Rev. Lambert B. Larking (ever ready to communicate to others what he himself had acquired with so much labour and perseverance), had entrusted him with Sir Roger Twys den' 8 Journal; and here Mr. Kemble imagined he had dis covered a striking example Of the Mark jurisdiction, to which he devoted many pages in his valuable work on The Saxons in England, in the case of the denes belonging to the manor of Aldington. He speaks of the Mark Court, and court Of Dens, without the slightest authority, as it appears to me, for doing so. -i, who have been Steward of the Manor for nearly forty years, certainly never before heard of Such a Court. The Mark Court, he says, gradually became a Lord's Court, uhen the head markman succeeded in r'aismg himself at the expense of his fellows, a court Of little marks, marches, or pastures, in Kent, long after the meaning of such marks, marches, or pastures had been forgotten. All this is merely an Ingenious Speculation. The simple facts are, that Sir Roger Twysden (supposed to be then a tenant of the Manor) was summoned to the Court, and attended it on several occasions be: tween 1655 and 1664, and, according to custom, was appointed the Reeve, or Collector Of the Lord's rents, in theithirty-two dens; but Sir Roger very naturally declined either to serve the ofiice, or to pay the quit-rent, because the Steward could not identify the land to his satisfaction.

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