Indeed, to liken Rye to any other place is to do her wrong, for both in herself and in that landscape over which she broods, there is enough beauty and enough character to give her a life and a meaning altogether her own.  From afar off, from Winchelsea, for instance, in the sunlight, she seems like a town in a missal, crowned by that church which seems so much bigger than it is, gay and warm and yet with something of the greyness of the sea and the sea wind about her, a place that, as so few English places do, altogether makes a picture in the mind, and is at unity with itself.

And from within she seems not less complete, a thing wholly ancient, delightful, with a picturesque and yet homely beauty that is the child of ancientness.  Yet how much has Rye lost!  The walls of Coeur de Lion have fallen, and only one of the gates remains; but so long as the church and the beautiful strong tower of William de Ypres stand, and the narrow cobbled streets full of old and humble houses climb up and down the steep hill, the whole place is involved in their beauty and sanctity, our hearts are satisfied and our eyes engaged on behalf of a place at once so old and picturesque and yet so neat and tidy and always ready to receive a guest.

A place like Rye, naturally so strong, a steep island surrounded by sea or impassable marsh, must have been a stronghold from very early times; it is in fact obviously old when we first hear of it as a gift, with Winchelsea, of Edward the Confessor’s to the Benedictine Abbey of Fecamp just across the grey channel in Normandy.  Both Rye and Winchelsea remained within the keeping of the Abbey of Fecamp until, for reasons of State easy to be understood, Henry III. resumed the royal rights in the thirteenth century, compensating the monks of Fecamp with manors in Gloucestershire and Lincolnshire.  For before the end of the twelfth century it would seem Rye with Winchelsea had become of so much importance as a port as to have been added to the famous Cinque Ports, Sandwich, Dover, Hythe, Romney and Hastings.  From this time both play a considerable part in the trade and politics of the Channel and the Straits.

It was to enable her to hold herself secure in this business and especially against raids from the sea that the Ypres Tower was built in the time of King Stephen, by William of Ypres, Earl of Kent.  It was a watch tower and perhaps a stronghold, but it was never sufficient.  Even in 1194 Coeur de Lion permitted the town to wall itself.  Nevertheless Louis the Dauphin of France took Rye, and it may well have been this which determined Henry III. to take the town out of the hands of the monks of Fecamp and to hold it himself.