The beautiful Cinque Port of Rye has drawn considerable attention from early modern historians on account of its extensive and well-preserved town records. Graham Mayhew's definitive account of Tudor Rye (1987) was followed by a series of articles by Stephen Hipkin on the seventeenth-century town. Annabel Gregory published a study of local witch cases in Past and Present (1991), after editing, with Michael Hunter, the fascinating astrological diary of a Rye merchant, Samuel Jeake the younger. Paul Halliday chose Rye as an example of partisan politics in his book on late Stuart urban politics, Dismembering the Body Politic (1998), and this reviewer examined a Rye murder case of 1743 in The Murder of Mr. Grebell (2003). Surprisingly, however, the history of the town during the medieval period, when it was at the height of its wealth and importance, has not received much scholarly notice. Gillian Draper has remedied this scandalous neglect with her well-written, convincingly argued and attractively designed new book. It will doubtless become a standard resource for historians of medieval towns, as well as providing a readable account for anyone who wants to know how this remarkable port developed in its heyday and after.

Like all ancient towns, Rye's history is punctuated by episodes that arouse considerable passion in its inhabitants, but are not always equally engaging to those who live elsewhere. Was it originally the manor of Rameslie? What happened to its church bells during the devastating French raid of 1377? Where exactly was the leper hospital located? To her credit, Gillian Draper deftly addresses these burning questions without ever losing sight of her overriding goal, that is, to put the socio-economic history of pre-modern Rye into a regional and national context. She shows how the town became free of its feudal overlord, the Abbey of Fécamp in Normandy, through the intervention of the crown, which sought to establish a line of southern defence against foreign invasion. She traces the origins of Rye's fragile prosperity to the iron industry of the Wealden hinterland and to the herring fishery. She provides terrific tales of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century piracy, proving that the illegal trade of Rye predated the brandy- and tea-smuggling era by at least five centuries. She presents a careful, well-researched analysis of the economic occupations of Rye's medieval inhabitants. Her discussion of town officials offers vital context to Mayhew's treatment of Tudor governance. The town's shifting economic fortunes are clearly delineated. In the wake of the Black Death, the decline of the fishery and the awful shock of the French raid, the wealth of Rye plummeted, but its leaders seem to have become more pious, giving their money generously to new religious foundations. Donations to the leper hospital languished nonetheless, because it was outside the town and therefore a less visible reflection of the beneficence of local merchants. Conditions improved in the 1500s, but previous levels of trade and population were never reached again. Throughout the book, Draper wears her considerable learning lightly and retains the reader's interest through lively prose. While she relates Rye's situation to recent scholarly studies of medieval urban life, she never loses sight of its peculiarities as a Cinque Port. Her account is copiously illustrated. For the many maps, figures and plates that grace this book, the publisher Phillimore deserves high praise. So too does the Romney Marsh Research Trust, which supported and managed the endeavour of publication. If the companion volume on the buildings of Rye is as well produced as this one, it will be a visual delight.

One might complain that Draper's account has relatively little to add concerning the already well-covered early modern period, other than to place it against a medieval backdrop. The decision to include the early modern is understandable: a local history that extends to 1660 is simply more marketable than one that ends in 1500. To cover the first half of the seventeenth century properly, however, would have required a re-examination of the voluminous writings of the town clerk, Samuel Jeake the elder, a reassessment of what Puritanism actually meant in Rye and a consideration of Steven Hipkin's evidence (presented in his unpublished 1985 doctoral dissertation) concerning poverty levels in the town. Few readers would have wanted to wade through such weighty addenda to the final sections of an otherwise balanced discussion of Rye in the middle ages. The somewhat sketchy treatment of the early modern, therefore, may be seen as necessary to the argument. On its own terms, this book fills a considerable gap in local history, and will be valuable to any scholar working on the Cinque Ports, the socio-economic development of the south-east or the towns of medieval England.