parochial district now termed the parish of the Holy Trinity, but which has never appeared as a parish in any of the ancient returns, occupies no inconsiderable part of the Old St. Michael's Parish . It consists of 192 acres, and exactly corresponds to the demesne of the Priory of the Holy Trinity, and the ecclesiastical independence of the Prior may have tended to sever this part of the parish from the rest.
In the recital of the property of the Priory, as quoted by the Rev. G . G . Stonestreet,[1] it is made to consist principally of a farm in the parish of St. Michael. Not only , however , was a great part of St. Michael's absorbed by the Priory, but it also suffered terribly from the incursions of the sea. For it is just where this parish abuts on the sea that at low water may be traced the remains of the forest trees and hedges, alluded to in the earlier part of the paper ; and within the memory of living persons, Cuckoo Hill extended much further to the south , under the name of the White Rock, on which the old church stood. Moss has a good engraving of the rock in his History. I consider, therefore , the Saxons succeeded the Britons and Romans in the occupation of a town on the western slope of the Priory Valley, between the hills and the Brook, which formed its harbour.
When the Saxons established themselves in the land,they had in their turn to guard against foreign invaders, and as soon as their power became consolidated under a single king, an officer with like duties to those of the Count of the Saxon shore, ruled these regions as Guardian of the ports : and in -
- ↑ Horsfield' s Sussex, i. 452.
