neighbourhood of Hastings to the Abbey of St. Dennis, and styles Bertwald, the proprietor of Hastings and PEVENSEY, his Fidelis.
Offa reigned from the year 755 to 794, it follows therefore that historians have been mistaken in supposing that the town derived its name from Hastings, the celebrated Danish pirate, who invaded England in the reign of Alfred, about the year 879, which was more than a century after the grants above mentioned .
From the different records which have been publlished relative to this town we learn that as early as the reign of Athelstan, Anno Dom . 924 , it will of sufficient importance to have a mint, from which circumstance an inference may be drawn, that it must have been in a flourishing condition : HASTINGS too was bound, on receiving legal notice of forty days, to provide and equip twenty -one ships, to co-operate with those furnished by the Ports, to suppress the daring enterprizes of Danish pirates. During the early part of the reign of Henry the Third , the Cinque Ports fitted out forty ships, wunder the command of Hubert de Burgho, (Warden of those Ports, and Governor of Dover Castle ,) which putting to sea , came up with and engaged -
