The Warden of the Cinque Ports

The Cinque Ports are the five ancient ports along the southeastern coast of England. They were Dover, Hastings, Hythe, Sandwich and Romney; to which were added, later, Winchelsea and Rye, as "ancient towns."

The Cinque Ports (five ports) swarmed with hardy, practiced mariners, and sea fights between the English and French mariners were much more frequent than between the English and French Governments. These five ports were under the control of an office of the Crown, whose duty it was to guard England against foreign invasion. In 1293 there was a great battle between the marines of the Cinque Ports and the French coast marines, in which the French were defeated. King Edward I. of England was ready to court-martial and punish the English marines. But King Philip summoned Edward, as a vassal of the French Crown, England still holding territory in France, to appear before his Lord's Court in Paris. An agreement, however, was reached between the two kings. Edward was, for mere form's sake, to surrender to Philip such French fortresses as England held, as an act of submission; then Philip was to return them. But once in possession of the fortresses, the French King refused to keep his part of the agreement. Thus England was deprived of her strongholds on the French coast.

In modern days there are a great many more than five ports along England's southeastern coast, and no one man is charged with guarding England against foreign invasion. But the title remains, and was borne by England's greatest general during the last threatened invasion of the Island. The Duke of Wellington was England's great Field Marshal, and also the Warden of the Cinque Ports during the Napoleonic wars at the beginning of this century.

The British nation presented the Duke with the estate of Strathfieldsaye, Hampshire, coasting $263,000, but he died suddenly, in the night, at his official residence as Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, Walmer Castle, Kent, September 22d, 1852.

His death furnished Longfellow the subject for his famous poem, "The Warden of the Cinque Ports."