to Domesday was founded on the lands of the Abbot of Fecamp and the 'Nove Hasting' of the Ripe Rolls."
Thus we get the first peeps at the Hastings of the present time. Count Robert of Eu was the first Lord of the Castlery of Hastings which remained in his family for many years, and who founded the Collegiate Church of St. Mary-in-the-Castle, Hastings, within its walls, some remains of which still exist.
At the death of William I. William Rufus, his second son, was appointed his successor to the Throne of England, and during his reign he occupied the Castle and held his Court there, and summoned the Bishops and Lords to do homage to their new King. By all accounts his court was corrupt and immoral. Archbishop Anselm admonished Rufus without effect, which led to a bitter feud between them. While his elder brother, Robert of Normandy, disputed by arms his right to the throne, Rufus assembled at Hastings an army for the purpose of crossing to Normandy ; but the enterprise was abandoned and the quarrel subsided. During this reign Hastings was prominent as the centre of naval and military activity. A revolt of the Norman nobles who supported Robert's cause against Rufus, during which the Castles of Pevensey and Hastings were attacked and defended, while a fleet of warships guarded the coast and prevented the landing of a powerful army from Normandy sent by Duke Robert. The men of Hastings in their ships took an active part in attacking the advance of Robert's army, and it is recorded that "William's cruisers slew many of them on their passage to England, sank others at sea, so that no one could tell the number that perished." The History of Hastings Castle is the History of Hastings, and I commend readers to Mr. Charles Dawson's History of Hastings Castle, in which a connected account of the Castle and the Church of St. Mary-in-the Castle from its foundation in 1066 to the suppression of Monasteries 1547, will be found. Students of local history are under the deepest obligation to Mr. Dawson for his incomparable work, which should be in the library of all lovers of Hastings.
The Castle had been for centuries prior to the Dissolution in ruins, and at the death of Henry VIII., the Castle and Rape of Hastings was in the possession of the Earl of Huntingdon's family, so far as the Castle itself, but the Collegiate buildings had been granted to Sir Anthony Browne. Mr. Dawson gives us extracts from the original indenture of the sale of the Rape and Castle of Hastings to Thomas Pelham, Esq., in the 33rd of Elizabeth's reign (1591) whose descendant, the Earl of Chichester, is the present owner. What the civil and social life of its inhabitants was at this early period is obscure. Piracy on the high seas was rife, and doubtless export and import smuggling was the occupation of its bold and lawless sea rovers for centuries and continued till well into the 19th century, as recorded by Mr. Durrant Cooper, and later by Mr. John Banks in his "Smugglers and Smuggling."
