Dover customs house

The Crown office at Dover holding the warrant to examine, detain and charge goods; the only body in the port whose authority comes from outside it. It has nine officers who stay for life, a collector, a comptroller, tide-waiters and boatmen, and three interpreters between them covering four languages.

The Dover customs house, which detains unlicensed relics and suspect cargo but cannot judge them. Detained material waits in a shed behind it, which has a detention book but no inventory.

Named with it

• Officer Nicholas Aldington · seal notes
• Customs Officer Bartholomew Elham · seizure ledger
• Interpreter Jacob Alkham · interpreter, fourteen years
• Surveyor Edmund Stonar · keeps the long room board

Ties

• answers to Westminster and the Board
• sends detained material and unreadable papers to Cambridge
• shares its seal ranking with the river customs house
• has never been attended by the Black Lantern house
• answerable to the Board
• certification of detained articles comes from Cambridge
• shares quarantine powers with the Dover corporation

At the table

Keeps an unwritten ranking of which foreign seals may be believed, built from forty years of opened bales and shared only with the river house. Detained material it cannot judge goes to Cambridge and waits in a brick shed holding goods back to 4472, lit every night, never inventoried. Enters 'unshipped' material nobody consigned, including fourteen containers officers would not open. Four officers removed for bribery in sixty years, all caught by colleagues. Its long room board sorts every landing into three registers; its sufferance book is not public. Answers informally, in a house near the quay, to people who have been vouched for. Its nine officers keep a private, unwritten ranking of which southern seals can be believed and resist writing anything down, fearing 'the Board' will use it. Shares quarantine powers with the Dover corporation. The port-reeve's commission to inventory the shed is a key hook; its detention book has never been compared with the coroners' books.