a sluice-gate when the “Black Hole” was cleared out and filled up being a well established fact. The site of the same was at about where is now the junction of Trinity street and Robertson street. T. B. B.]
Note. The Etymology of Winchelsea has excited interest in a contemporary publication, and I would hazard a notice of that of Hastings. Somnerus writes “Haesting and Haesting-aceaster, Sus., derives it of haeste, heat, because of the bubbling or boiling of the sea; but Camden surmises that it was so-called from one Hasting, a Dane, a great robber, who either seized, built or fortified it”. The surmise of Camden is shown to be erroneous in Hastings Past and Present. [That work states that in a charter of Offa, 755-794, 100 years before the time of Hasting, the havens of Pevensey and Hastings are named as settled on the Abbey of St. Dennis at Paris,] As to Hastings, see Histoire des Expeditions Maritimes des Normands, par G. B. Depping. In the year 840 – After the death of Louis le Debonaire, it speaks of a troup of Normans, composed of Danes and Swedes, conducted by one of the most famous chiefs in the history of the Pirates, called ‘Hasting, Hadding or Hastern. He was compared to a devastating torrent of the North. Some say he was the son of a countryman of the environs of Troyes, in Champagne, and that he quitted his religion and his country to join the pirates of the North. In his retreat from Touraine he ravaged the Monastery of St. Saens, near Rouens. Next year he was near Staples, where a Monastery was pillaged. Hasting and Bicern prepared a grand expedition against the Francs. One part of the fleet entered the Seine. The other part made a memorable expedition. It consisted of 60 long-vessels, which sailed for La Bretayne’. In 845 another expedition went up the Seine, consisting of 120 vessels, when Charles Le Chauve was at Paris. They then levied half a million of francs (or equal to that in silver). After the above, Hasting sailed for Italy, and mistook a small town, ‘Luna’, in the gulph of Spezzea for Rome. Here he was nearly made prisoner. He pretended death and was carried to the grave, when he arose and struck down the officiating priest. His fellow mourners drew their concealed arms and became masters of the place. Some time after, it appears Hasting returned to the coast of Normandy, with a fleet from England. “E. M.”
[Although in the charter of Offa the havens of Hasting and Pevensea are mentioned nearly a century before the exploits of the Viking Hasting, thus showing the surmise of Camden to be erroneous, Mr. Durrant Cooper, in Sussex Archaeological Collections, was -
