A HISTORY OF SUSSEX 



Hastings rape, it may be as well to point out that the contrary can be 

 shown to be the fact, by analogy with the cases in the other rapes — 

 of which a few are quoted above — by the fact that the descendants of 

 those who held most largely in the lands in question subsequently held 

 in Hastings and not in Pevensey, and by a charter of Henry L, referred 

 to below, which shows that portions of Alciston manor did actually lie 

 at Borzell, Shoeswell, and other places in the eastern rape. 



The origin of these scattered members can be explained in two 

 ways, either by the simple grant of the lesser estate to the tenant of the 

 greater, or by the settlement on waste lands of coloni from the manor for 

 purposes of cultivation. The latter theory would suit well enough in 

 the case of the densely wooded country in the rape of Hastings, but is 

 improbable in most of the instances outside that rape, and especially 

 in such a case as that of Bosham, where it is far more likely that 

 Plumpton and Saddlescombe should have been granted to the richly 

 endowed church than that they should have been waste or uncultivated. 

 The manner in which the outlying estates are spoken of inclines one to 

 believe that both such processes — grant and colonization — may have 

 been at work. On the one hand we have definitely named estates 

 apparently as complete in themselves as their parent manor ; on the 

 other we have estates which, although now separate and self-contained, 

 have as yet no name, but can only be referred to as having been ' in ' 

 such a manor ; and finally we have two instances of transition in the 

 ' manor which is called Hou ' — now Howcourt in Lancing — formerly 

 part of Hurst(pierpoint), and the other ' manor which is called Hou ' 

 — now Hooe — which had belonged to Willingdon. 



It is noteworthy that though all these outlying members had a 

 potential assessment they were not paying geld at the end of the Con- 

 fessor's reign ; as in each case it is either definitely asserted that the 

 detached holding in question 'nunquam geldavit,' or else all mention of its 

 assessment T.R.E. is omitted. Now before 1086 these outlying estates 

 had all been cut off from their manors and formed into separate 

 holdings attached to the rape in which they physically lay ; and in 

 almost every case the geld assessment of the parent manor was reduced 

 by an amount equal to that at which the lost member was potentially 

 assessed.' This can only point to the geld having been assessed in Sussex 

 at the end of King Edward's reign not by vills but by manors. In 

 support of this theory may be advanced the phrase already quoted, 

 ' non fuit ibi halla neque geldavit', and the most interesting phrase in 

 connection with Washington, ' Lewin dedit geldum domino suo et 

 dominus suus nihil dedit ' (fo. 28). To this latter instance we have a 

 post-Conquest parallel in the liberty of Battle Abbey, which was exempt 

 from payment of geld to the king, but which paid geld — as is shown by 



' The few cases in which the assessment remained unchanged in spite of the loss of a member may 

 be due to the reconstruction of manors, a new estate being absorbed in compensation for that lost — 

 or by the fact that the assessment was arbitrary and not directly connected with the extent or even value 

 of the holding. 



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