The Saxon Castle
collection of hundreds, varying in number. The divisions are determined, as far as possible, by natural boundaries, as in the case of the hundreds, and each rape has its castle, a port, and a river. The name is not met with in England earlier than Norman times, and it seems to have been derived from the Norman measuring rope.[1] It appears to have been a division created for military purposes, namely, for the raising of troops and for the defence of the Castle and its bailiwick.
The first mention of this Castle or Ceaster, in any record, occurs in the Saxon Chronicle under the year 1050 (in the Cott. Liber., B. IV. Version, Brit. Mus. The other versions say the " The men of Hastings"). Anno 1050. After reciting the murder of Beorn by Sweyn, and his exhumation at Dartmouth and burial at Winchester, the chronicler says :-
- "A little before that, the men of Hastinga-Ceastre' and thereabouts won two of his ships with their ships, and slew all the men, and brought the ships to Sandwich to the King. He (Sweyn) had eight ships before he inveigled Beorn ; after that, all forsook him but two."
In this account we find the first mention of the mariners of Hastings as a distinct body in the King's service. In one other paragraph of the Saxon Chronicle we have a reference to them as a body of men in some manner distinct from the men of the counties of Kent, Sussex, and Surrey, namely, under A.D. 1052.
Speaking of Godwin's quarrel with King Eadward, the Saxon Chronicle says (anno 1052) :--
- "When the King's fleet lay at Sandwich, Godwin's men got to land, so that they did not know it. And in the time that he was here in the land, he enticed all the Kentish men, and all the ' butse carls '[2] from Hastings (Hastingum), and everywhere there by the sea -coast, and all the east end, and Sussex, and Surrey, and much else in addition thereto : they all said that with him they would die and live." (The Sandwich fleet then comes out after Godwin, and he retreats. When they have gone to London, he goes to Wight, etc.)
All the known recorded evidences relating to Hastings before the year of the Norman Conquest have now been quoted, and it will be remarked how few there are, and how large are the gaps which remain to be filled up. It may now be fully realized how little there is to support those unwarranted and high-flown speculations and theories which have occasionally figured in many so-called guide-books and histories of Hastings.[3]
- ↑ It is strange that the Court of the Rape seems to have been called the " Lathe Court." This seems to point to the fact that originally the county was divided into " lathes," as was Kent.
- ↑ The first compound of this word is doubt our buss, as in herring-buss; Old Norman, bussa, a large boat; Old High German, Buso.
- ↑ ' For a history of the coinage of Hastings see Appendix.
