Page:EB1911 - Volume 24.djvu/157

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SANDWICH—SANDYS, SIR E.
143

seat in the House of Lords as a follower of the duke of Bedford. He was soon appointed one of the commissioners of the admiralty under Bedford and a colonel in the army. In 1746 he was sent as plenipotentiary to the congress at Breda, and he continued to take part in the negotiations for peace until the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle was concluded in 1748. In February 1748 he became first lord of the admiralty, retaining this post until he was dismissed by the king in June 1751. In August 17 S3 Sandwich became one of the principal secretaries of state, and while filling this office he took a leading part in the prosecution of John Wilkes. He had been associated with Wilkes in the notorious fraternity of Medmenham, and his attitude now in turning against the former companion of his pleasures made him very unpopular, and, from a line in the Beggar'.v Opera, he was known henceforward as “Jemmy Twitcher.” He was postmaster-general in 1768, secretary of state in 1770, and again first lord -of the admiralty from 1771 to 1782. For corruption and incapacity Sandwich's administration is unique in the history of the British navy. Oltices were bought, stores were stolen and, worst of all, ships, unseaworthy and inadequately equipped, were sent to fight the battles of their country. The first lord became very unpopular in this connexion also, and his retirement in March 1782 was hailed with joy. Sandwich married Dorothy, daughter of Charles, ISI Viscount Fane, by whom he had a son John (1743-1814), who became the 5th earl. He had also several children by the singer Margaret, or Martha, Ray, of whom Basil Montagu (1770-1851), writer, jurist and philanthropist, was one. The murder of Miss Ray by a rejected suitor in April 1779 increased the earl's unpopularity, which was already great, and the stigmas of the prosecution of Wilkes and the corrupt administration of the navy clung to him to the last. He died on the 30th of April 1792. The Sandwich Islands (see HAWAII) were named after him by Captain Cook. His Voyage round the Mediterranean in the Years 1738 and 1739 was published posthumously in 1799, with a very flattering memoir by the Rev. J. Cooke; the Life, Adventures, I ntrigues and Amours of the celebrated Jemmy Tw-itcher (1770), which is extremely rare, tells a very different tale. See also the various collections of letters, memoirs and papers of the time, including Horace Walpole's Letters and Memoirs and the Bedford Correspondence.


SANDWICH, a market town, municipal borough, and one of the Cinque Ports in the St Augustine's parliamentary division of Kent, England, 12 m. E. of Canterbury, on the South-Eastern & Chatham railway. Pop. (1901), 3170. It is situated 2 m. from the sea, on the river Stour, which is navigable up to the bridge for vessels of 200 tons. The old line of the walls on the land side is marked by a public walk. The Fisher Gate and a gateway called the Barbican are interesting; but the four principal gates were pulled down in the 18th century. St Clement's church has a fine Norman central tower, and St Peter's (restored), said to date from the reign of King John, has interesting medieval monuments. The curfew is still rung at St Peter's. A grammar school was founded by Sir Roger Manwood in 1 564, but the existing school buildings are modern. There are three ancient hospitals; St Bartholomew's has a fine Early English chapel of the 12th century. The establishment of the railway and of the St George's golf links (1886) rescued Sandwich from the decay into which it had fallen in the earlier part of the 19th century. The links are among the finest in England. Richborough Castle, ri m. N. of Sandwich, is one of the finest relics of Roman Britain. It was called Rntnpiae, and guarded one of the harbours for continental traffic in Roman times, and was in the 4th century a fort of the coast defence along the Saxon shore.

The situation of Sandwich on the Wantsum, once a navigable channel for ships bound for London, made it a famous port in the time of the Saxons, who probably settled here when the sea receded from the Roman port of Richborough. In 973 Edgar granted the harbour and town to the monastery of Christ Church, Canterbury, and at the time of the Domesdav Survey Sandwich supplied 40,000 herrings each year to the monks. As one of the Cinque Ports, Sandwich owed a service of five ships to the king, and shared the privileges granted to the Cinque Ports from the reign of Edward the Confessor onwards. At the end of the 13th century the monks granted the borough, with certain reservations, to Queen Eleanor; a further grant of their rights was made to Edward III. in 1364, the crown being thenceforward lord of the borough. A charter of Henry II. confirmed the customs and rights which Sandwich had previously enjoyed, and this charter was confirmed by John in 1205, by Edward II. in 1313 and by Edward III. in 1365. The town was a borough by prescription, and was governed in the 13th century by a mayor and jurats; a mayor was elected as early as 1226. The governing charter until 1835 was that granted by Charles II. in 1684. During the middle ages Sandwich was one of the chief ports for the continent, but as the sea gradually receded and the passage of the Wantsum became choked with sand the port began to decay, and by the time of Elizabeth the harbour was nearly useless. In her reign Walloons settled here and introduced the manufacture of woollen goods and the cultivation of vegetables; this saved the borough from sinking into unimportance. Three fairs to be held at Sandwich were granted to Queen Eleanor in 1290; Henry VII. granted two fairs on the 7th of February and the 5th of June, each to last for thirty days, and in the governing charter two fairs, on the 1st of April and the 1st of October, were granted; these all seem to have died out before the end of the 18th century. A corn market on Wednesday and a cattle market on every alternate Monday are now held. Representatives from the Cinque Ports were first summoned to parliament in 1265; the first returns for Sandwich, are for 1366, after which it returned two members until it was disfranchised in 1885. Sandwich is governed by a mayor, 4 aldermen and 12 councillors. Area, 707 acres.

See W. Boys, Collections for History of Sandwich (1792); E. Hasted, History of Kent (1778-1799); Victoria County History (Kent).


SANDYS, SIR EDWIN (1561-1629), British statesman and one of the founders of the colony of Virginia, was the second son of Edwin Sandys, archbishop of York, and his wife Cecily Wilford. He was born in Worcestershire on the 9th of December 1561. He was educated at Merchant Taylors' school, which he entered in 1571, and at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he was sent in 1577. He became B.A. in 1579 and B.C.L. in 1589. In 1582 his father gave him the prebend of Witwang in York Minster, but he never took orders. He was entered in the Middle Temple in 1589. At Oxford his tutor had been Hooker, author of the Ecclesiastical Polity, whose life-long friend and executor he was. Sandys is said to have had a large share in securing the Mastership of the Temple for Hooker. From 1593 till 1599 he travelled abroad. When in' Venice he became closely connected with Fra Paolo Sarpi, who helped him in the composition of the treatise on the religious state of Europe, known as the Europae speculum. In 1605 this treatise was printed from a stolen copy under the title, A Relation of the State of Religion in Europe. Sandys procured the suppression of this edition, but the book was reprinted at the Hague in 1629. In 1599 he resigned his prebend, and entered active political life. He had already been member for Andover in 1586 and for Plympton in 1589. After 1599, in view of the approaching death of Queen Elizabeth, he paid his court to King James VI., and on James's accession to the throne of England in 1603 Sandys was knighted. He sat in the king's first parliament as member for Stockbridge, and distinguished himself as one of the assailants of the great monopolies. He endeavoured to secure to all prisoners the right of employing counsel, a proposal which was resisted by some lawyers as subversive of the administration of the law. He had been connected with the East India Company before 1614, and took an active part in its affairs till 1629. His most memorable services were, however, rendered to the (London) Virginia Company, to which he became treasurer in 1619. He promoted and supported the policy which enabled the colony to survive the disasters of its early days, and he continued to be a leading influence in the Company till his death. Sir Edwin Sandys sat in the later parliaments of James I. as member for Sandwich in 1621, and for Kent in 1624. His