now is by so many others, which, in those remoter periods, were themselves comparatively insignificant, if not unknown. Hastings, the principal of the Cinque Ports, is the chief town of the rape which takes its name from it. It is situated upon the sea- coast, near the eastern extremity of Sussex, in 50° 34' N. Lat. and 0° 37' E. Long .; distant from London sixty - four miles.
This rape lies on the east side of the county, encompassed on the east and south by the sea ; is bounded by the rape of Pevensey on the west, and by the county of Kent to the north. It contains thirteen hundreds, comprising together forty sub-divisions, or parishes. The names of the hundreds are as follow ; viz.: Goldspur, Staple, Shoyswell, Henhurst, Hawksborough, Netherfield, Foxearle, Battel, Baldslow , Gostrow, Nenfield, Guestling, and Bexhill.
The word Rape, according to respectable authorities on the subject, is a corruption of the Latin word ripa, a bank or shore, and is a term peculiar to the county of Sussex. Its application here, if this etymology be correct, may be deemed perfectly just and appropriate, from the contiguity of the lands it comprises to the sea -shore, and to which the inhabitants of the different parts of it would naturally assign the additional denominations of the different places where they applied it. Thus, the ports or harbours of Chichester, Arundel, Bramber, Lewes, Pevensey, and Hastings, have severally given names to their respective shores or rapes; and the names became extended to so much of the inland county as lay within each shore.
The whole of the rape[1] of Hastings, with the manor, was held by the earls of Eu, a Norman family, descended from a natural son of Richard Duke of Normandy. Robert, the first earl, to whom it was given, was one of the Conqueror's chief counsellors, and had many other large estates, settled on him by William. In the year 1069, A.R. 3d of William I.2, Humphrey de Tilleul was governor of Hastings; but, on his refusing to stay in England, when the king stood in most need of his -
- ↑ Burrell MSS. in the British Museum.
