In the defensive measures early undertaken against these marauding hosts some historians trace the first inception of that famous alliance of seashore towns known as the “Cinque Ports,” among which, although Dover has always been accounted chief, Sandwich certainly makes the better figure in olden story. Of all those seaports in that brotherhood whose privilege it was to bear the proud and strange dimidiated arms of the half-lions and half-boats, Sandwich suffered more severely at the hands of the foreigner, it was more honoured, it rose to loftier heights of prosperity, made greater sacrifices, and in the end its decay was the more marked. It will be convenient here to concisely tell the story of those ports. The Cinque Ports, as a confederacy, arose from an early necessity for guarding the south coast against the sea-rovers and other piratical hordes out of the north of Europe, who began to harry these shores so early as the time of the Romans. In the later years of the Roman occupation of Britain, when the grip of that masterful people was growing enfeebled with luxurious habits, and when not even the twin great fortresses of _Regulbium_ and _Rutupiæ_ sufficed to overawe those fierce strangers, it had been found necessary to provide especially for the defence of these ports, and to appoint a commander whose particular charge the great stretch of coast from Yarmouth, down past the Thames and Medway, and so on to the Kentish and Sussex coasts, should be. This official was the _Comes littoris Saxonici_, that is to say, the “Count of the Saxon Shore.” This warden of the coasts was not ill provided with fortresses. There were, in all, nine. In addition to _Regulbium_ and _Rutupiæ_, there was the like defence of _Garianonum_, now known as Burgh Castle, near Yarmouth; _Branodunum_, Brancaster in Norfolk; _Othona_, now known as St. Peter’s-on-the-Wall, near Bradwell, Essex; the original castle at Dover, _Portus Lemanis_, now Lympne; _Anderida_, Pevensey; and _Portus Adurni_. The fortunes of the various Counts of the Saxon Shore are unknown. All records are lost in the final overthrow of civilisation after the departure of the Romans, and when the conquering Saxons had established themselves here, they were strong enough for a long time to hold what they had made their own, without the necessity for vigilant defence of the coast. It was only when the Saxons, in their turn, had begun to feel the effects of ease and luxury, and when they, too, had suffered from piratical rovers, that coast-defence again became urgent. And the protection of our shores has been, more or less, a matter of urgency ever since, and so remains.