The Sussex Coast - online book

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	296 THE SUSSEX COAST divided their army into two bodies, one of which carried on the siege, while the other repelled the attacks from without. After this the Britons were so reduced by continual famine that they were unable any longer to withstand the force of the besiegers, so that they all fell by the edge of the sword, with their women and children, not one escaping alive. " The foreigners were so enraged at the loss which they had sustained that they totally de-

	LANDING OF THE CONQUEROR.
	stroyed the town and it was never afterwards rebuilt so that only the desolate site as of a very noble city is pointed out to those who pass." The victors occupied the place, but so great was their preference for the open country that they never built their houses within the walls. A Saxon village thus grew up outside the gates to east and west; one of them, called the island of Peofn, was eventually to have its place in the organisation of the Cinque Ports as a limb of