The history of the Cinque Ports, a confederacy of towns linked together by mutual interests under charters of privileges, is a long one. The genesis of the Ports is much debated. What we do know is that by the twelfth century the original five head ports of Hastings, Romney, Hythe, Dover and Sandwich were joined by Winchelsea and Rye, both of which were given ‘ancient status.’ Expansion was rapid and by the fourteenth century approximately thirty towns across Sussex, Kent and Essex were affiliated with the Ports. Some contemporaries saw them as the most important ports in England and their status as a county, with each head port forming a borough, ensured the Ports played an important role in political matters.

The Crown did not grant the Ports’ charters unconditionally and when the king launched a military or naval campaign he could ask the Cinque Ports to provide fifty-seven ships, each manned by twenty-one men, for fifteen days free of charge. Obviously, the origin and evolution of this ‘ship-service’ has attracted the attention of scholars. More generally, however, naval historians are interested in the overall contribution the Cinque Ports made to Plantagenet and Lancastrian naval operations. In examining the Ports’ role in naval operations over the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, historians have not been kind. We are told that while they played a crucial role in Edward I's wars, by the time of Edward III's reign they ceased to be of importance. Such historiographical arguments can be traced back to the nineteenth century. In 1813 John Lyon asserted that by the 1370s the Ports were unable to contribute large numbers of ships to naval operations. A more measured analysis was offered in 1847 by Nicholas Harris Nicolas. Nicolas drew on a wealth of manuscript sources to argue that the Ports played an important part in the naval wars of the Plantagenet kings. Despite the work of Nicolas, the studies that followed continued the naval-decline narrative. In 1892 Montague Burrows traced the start of the decline to the reign of Edward II. In 1900 Ford Maddox Hueffer supported Burrows’ assertion. In 1907 and 1926 Michael Oppenheim argued that during Edward III's reign the Ports’ involvement in naval operations declined markedly.