Whitstable.

No account of the Whitstable oyster, and Whitstable. of the hardy fishermen of Kent, whose lives are spent in cultivating that luxury, would be complete without a slight sketch of the history of this small Kentish town of about 7,000 inhabitants, which lies on the southern side of the estuary of the Thames, eastward of the Isle of Sheppey, that little spot so quaintly remembranced in "Ingoldsby Legends," and near where the waters of the Medway and the Swale flow into the North Sea. It is situate at a distance of 59 miles from London by rail, and is within the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the diocese of Canterbury, "under the Great Church," the older inhabi­tants still say, and in the Deanery of Westbere. For marine purposes Whitstable is under the jurisdiction of the Port of Faversham, a somewhat obsolete arrangement.

Origin of Name.

We have the assurance of Mr. Sibert Saunders, who probably knows more of the history of Whitstable and its special industry than any man living, that the records of the parish are very scanty. In 1876 he gathered together those he was able to discover, and from them compiled a little book which be modestly entitled "Some Account of the Church of All Saints and Parish of Whitstable." He is probably correct in deriving the word Whitstable from the old Saxon words, witan, meaning an assembly of wise rulers, and staple, a market. It recently, however, occurred to an archaeological visitor to the town to suggest that the French word for oyster, huitre, combined with the word staple, might be the origin of the name, and he urged that presumption on the ground of early communication with the people of France, who must have known it as a place at which to buy good oysters. The suggestion is certainly an ingenious one.

Among some valuable notes attached to the evidence taken on oath in the Committee of the House of Lords in 1866, on certain hills promoted by the Herne Bay Fishery Company, I find the following observations:- “The Whitstable Company are a most ancient body of 'free fishers and dredgers,' who, from father to son, have carried on the business of an oyster fishery during, it is probable, a period of at least two thousand years. It was about A.D. 80 that Julius Agricola first exported oysters from the neighbourhood of the Reculvers to Rome, and for the ancestors of the Whitstable free dredgers Rome was, during about three centuries, their Billingsgate."

Reculvers.

It might he the neighbourhood above indi­cated was Whitstable, being only a few miles to the westward of Reculvers, which, it will be remembered, still shows distinct evidences of the Roman occupation. Regulbium the Romans called it, and Reculver it is still called by some people, or Reculvers, in the plural, which has been adopted in recent years, in reference apparently to the twin towers of the ruined church there, now preserved as an important landmark to vessels going up and down channel. We know, however, that formerly oysters were obtained in great plenty at Reculvers itself, the River Wantsume, no doubt, contributing that essential proportion of fresh water required to improve and fatten the oyster. The River Wantsume, the ancient boundary between the Isle of Thanet and this part of Kent, is now nearly dried up, though once an important water highway communicating with the River Stour by way of Richborough. The Roman Emperor, Severus Pertinax, built a castle at Reculvers, and there was a mint for the coinage of Roman money.

Romans and Oysters.

Speaking of the Romans, and their known partiality for oysters at the commencement of their epicurean banquets, a writer in the Table once remarked-alas, without giving his authority-that "it may not be generally known that the Roman Empresses, who were not always the most virtuous and devoted of wives, frequently employed the bivalve as an agreeable method of administering poison to their lords-to say nothing of their lovers." While not giving too much credit to this genial aspersion of the characters of a, neces­sarily, limited class of Roman matron, it may be quoted as a possible indication that, in those days, the oyster was occasionally employed to give the happy despatch, because it enjoved a reputation, among emperors, as far above suspicion as it should have with us in the present day, as we shall see presently when we come to the report of an eminent analyst, though its high qualities are no longer employed to disguise such a base purpose. That the Romans themselves cultivated oysters we know from Pliny, who tells us that in the days of Lucius Crassus they were transferred from natural beds at Brindisi and bred by Sergius Orata in the Lucrine Lake at Baiae, and in his letters Pliny makes frequent allusion to Oysters as an article of diet; and we learn elsewhere that cods-head and oyster sauce were also appreciated in those days.

When we remember what is known of the early state of Great Britain, we can scarcely be surprised that Sallust, who lived and wrote about fifty years before Christ, had a better opinion of our oysters than of our ancestors, for he said, "The poor Britons - there is some good in them after all - they produce an oyster." Whitstable may certainly claim some share in creating that good impression.