On 28 August 1457 a French raiding force took deliberate advantage of the political instability then gripping England, sending a party of around 4,000 men across the Channel from the Norman port of Honfleur to descend upon the Cinque Port town of Sandwich in Kent. The expedition was led by Pierre de Brezé, Marshal of France, a commander of considerable standing, and its purpose was straightforward pillage. Sandwich, long one of England's foremost embarkation and landing points on the road to France, was a natural and tempting target.
The French force came ashore and set about plundering the town with destructive thoroughness, burning much of Sandwich to the ground. In the course of the raid the mayor of the town, John Drury, was murdered. The attack left an indelible mark on the town and its civic memory, and the chaos that French raiders were able to inflict on the Kent coast at this period was a direct consequence of the disorder the Wars of the Roses had brought to English governance and sea-keeping.
The raid passed into lasting local tradition. It thereafter became the established custom, observed to this day, that the Mayor of Sandwich wears a black robe in mourning for John Drury. Order along the Kent coast was not restored until after the Yorkist commander the Earl of Warwick cleared the Channel of French pirates in 1460, following which he was received in Kent as a hero.
The most striking legacy of the raid is one of the most quietly poignant civic traditions in England: ever since Pierre de Brezé's men murdered Mayor John Drury on 28 August 1457, the Mayor of Sandwich has worn a black robe as a mark of perpetual mourning. More than five and a half centuries on, a local official still dresses for grief at the death of a man killed during a single night of French pillage, making the robe itself a living memorial to the vulnerability of a medieval port town when the sea ceased to be a barrier and became a highway for an enemy.
Mayor John Drury killed. Further casualties not recorded.
Around 4,000 French troops from Honfleur, under Pierre de Brezé, Marshal of France. English defending forces not recorded.
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