under the heads of the leading incidents of the battle to which they refer. Where previous translations have been adopted, care has been taken to check them by the aid of the best evidence available.
The aim of the whole work is thus to present to the reader the most reliable data obtainable, retaining, to a great extent, all the vigour and beauty of the original draftsmanship, freed from and untrammelled by former conclusions, and in such a manner that he may be enabled to picture for himself the true history, as nearly as possible, at first hand. The History of Hastings as a Cinque Port is in many respects so distinct from the history of the Castle and Rape, that the subject receives only passing references. The author is in possession of numerous local records relating to the former subject, and hopes to deal with it specifically on another occasion. In the meantime, those interested should refer to the short History of the Cinque Ports by the late Prof. Montague Burrows (Chichele Professor of Modern History, in the University of Oxford), in the revision of which the present author was concerned for the edition of 1903.
In the present work the author has endeavoured to avoid, as far as possible, matters of controversy, and it is only here, in mentioning the former literature relating to the Castle, that he points out certain matters which require refutation because they appear to have taken an undue hold upon the public mind. William Prynne, in his history of the Papal Usurpations (entitled An Exact History of the Pope's Intolerable Usurpations Upon the Liberties of the King and Subjects of England and Ireland), Volume III., 1670, quoted largely from the public records (then preserved in the Tower of London) when dealing with the controversy between the Bishop of Chichester and the King's Clerks respecting the jurisdiction of the former over the Royal Free Chapels.
Of early published accounts relating to the Castle that of Francis Grose (Antiquities of England and Wales, 1773-87, Volume III.) may be considered the first important printed topographical reference, and it has been much copied and quoted by various local writers. The quotation referred to by Grose respecting Arviragus, of whom it is said that when he threw off the Roman yoke he fortified certain places including Hastings, turns out to rest historically upon the sole authority of the writer of the Chronicle of the Dover Monastery of St. Martin, a production of the late thirteenth century, and this statement is probably therefore mere guess-work of little historical weight.
The next account of any importance is by William Herbert who, in the year 1824, wrote the letter-press acknowledgment by the ostensible of Moss's History of Hastings, but without acknowledgement by the ostensible writer. This must be regarded as the first serious attempt to unravel the history of the Castle.
The Reverend Prebendary Mackenzie E. C. Walcott, B.D. (Guide to the South Coast of England, Stanford's, 1859), is responsible for the publication of two absurd "traditions", as he calls them, relating to the Castle: one, that the first tournay in England was held there in the time of William I.: and another story ending with a conflagration at the Castle. These tales bear internal evidence of having been composed since the date of the excavations at the Castle in the year 1824, and would not have been mentioned here, had not some writers -
