Rye, East Sussex

Map

The overlays that highlight 17th century London features are approximate and derived from Wenceslaus Hollar’s maps:

Open location in Google Maps: 50.952112, 0.725070

2 Annotations

Second Reading

Terry Foreman  •  Link

Rye is a small town in the non-metropolitan county of East Sussex, within the historic County of Sussex, England, which stands approximately two miles from the open sea and is at the confluence of three rivers: the Rother, the Tillingham and the Brede. In medieval times, however, as an important member of the Cinque Ports confederation, it was at the head of an embayment of the English Channel and almost entirely surrounded by the sea.
With the coming of bigger ships and larger deepwater ports, Rye's economy began to decline, and fishing and particularly smuggling (including owling, the smuggling of wool) became more important. Imposition of taxes on goods had encouraged smuggling since 1301, but by the end of the 17th century it became widespread throughout Kent and Sussex, with wool being the largest commodity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rye…

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References

Chart showing the number of references in each month of the diary’s entries.

1661