Sandwich is a little town. For all its ancient importance--the Liverpool of olden times--it was never large, and the ancient, grassy ramparts that almost encircle it were at no time a hindrance to expansion. Mediæval Canterbury, in common with another walled city and town, threw out suburbs, which may be seen to this day outside the walls, looking almost the age of the original place; but Sandwich, however crowded it may have grown within the walls, had never any suburbs. A seaport at once so wealthy and prosperous, and so exposed to raids from over-sea as was this in the olden days of fire and sword, could not afford to give such hostages to fortune as unprotected suburbs would be. The history of Sandwich, a tale of repeated burnings and pillagings, sufficiently shows that even behind its defences it could not withstand the many furious attacks made from time to time. Apart from the many such disasters of early times, of which history speaks but vaguely, we hear of the town being laid waste in 1046 by vikings; of damage done in 1052 by the rebel Earl Godwin, and of constant forays in mediæval times, including the burning by the French in 1216. It again suffered severely at the hands of the French in 1400, 1438, and 1457; and in 1470, in an attack by the rebel Earl of Warwick; and only when the power and prosperity of the port had decayed did the town know peace. “He who is low need fear no foe,” truly says the jingling proverb. To-day the size and shape of the town are what they always were. The ramparts still look out upon the open, level meadows, and not only are there no suburban developments, but there is even room within the ancient ceinture for expansion. It is a strange fall from ancient eminence. We hear nothing of Sandwich before A.D. 665, when Wilfrid, Bishop of Northumbria, is recorded to have landed in the haven that then had apparently begun to make the fortune of the place. He came ashore “happily and pleasantly.” Richborough was already dead as a port, and the twin ports of Stonar and Sandwich were thriving upon its decay. Very rare and fragmentary are these early notices of Sandwich, and it is not until A.D. 851 that we again hear of it, in a severe defeat of invading Danes, administered by Athelstan. That date marks the beginning of an era of troubles caused by those fierce piratical Northerners, ending for a time only in 1016, when the Danes under Canute made themselves masters of the country. In all that century and a half the viking ships, with the dreaded device of the Black Raven, became, as we are told by a recent writer, “a familiar but always unwelcome sight.” Unwelcome! Yes, indeed. A thought too mild, perhaps, that word; because we know those Danish pirates to have been so peculiarly unwelcome that when they were caught, their captors expressed their hatred by skinning them alive and nailing their hides upon the church-doors. Such treatment left no room for doubt.