Page:The Antiquities of Hastings and the Battlefield.pdf/53

Mr. COOPER argues (History of Winchelsea, p . 5) that the New Burg in the manor of Rameslie cannot be Hastings, because Doomsday expressly says that there were four burgesses in Hastings (as distinct from the New Burg) yielding 63 shillings to the said manor ; and that Robert of Hastings held two hides and a half from the abbot of Fecamp, who held Rameslie ; and I quite agree with him that the Hastings of that day was not included in the manor of Rameslie or Brede ; but the present Hastings is included in the manor of Brede ; it consequently must, at some time or other, have actually occupied the position of a New Burg, or town, on the Abbot's land : and if so, can we resist the conclusion that it was the New Burg mentioned in Doomsday Book . And if we adopt this hypothesis, there would then be no inconsistency in burgesses of Old Hastings holding lands in an adjoining suburb ; nay further, the intimate connexion of burgesses of Hastings with this manor, and with no other in the whole of Doomsday, would make it antecedently highly probable that a new town should spring up within this very manor as an offshoot from the parent town. And when would such an occurrence be more likely to take place than when the old town was in its most flourishing state, in the reign of Edward, the exact period in which we first hear of this New Burg ? But Mr. COOPER proceeds to identify the New Burg with his own town of Winchelsea , in which he has been anticipated by Moss : but I cannot understand how he recon-