The Sussex Coast - online book

A Literary & Historical travel guide to the Sussex Coast

	CAMDEN tells us that "some have ridiculously derived this name from our word Haste, because Matthew Paris tells us that 'William the Conqueror run up a wooden fort at Hastings in haste.' It seems rather to have taken its new name from Hastings, a Danish pirate.' More likely it was from the clan of Hsestingan or Hastings, who settled the port and colonised the vicinity in the fifth century, and may for a time have been independent between South Saxony and Jutish Kent. Even in 1011 the Saxon Chronicle refers to Kent, Sussex and Hastings as having been harried by the Danes. Simeon of Durham, writing from older materials in the early twelfth century, tells us how OfPa of Mercia afterwards subdued the district, but his charter granting the ports of Pevensey and Hastings to the great Continental Abbey of St. Denis has been shown 332