A HISTORY OF SUSSEX 



warfare. Why Hastings, which was one of the weakest of the Cinque Ports in men and ships, 

 should have taken the first place in the confederation is an obscure point of which the explanation is 

 perhaps to be found in an antecedence of appearance in the North Sea and in the local conditions 

 existing after the Conquest. 



Harold was too good a soldier to leave to chance more than he was compelled to risk, and 

 when invasion was preparing in 1066 collected a fleet and army with which he kept watch on the 

 south coast during the summer ; of the squadrons two were stationed at Hastings and Pevensey. 1 

 There must have been reasons we can only guess at why the fleet was not used during the summer 

 to attack the Norman ports where vessels and men were collecting. The local situation was very 

 similar to that reproduced in 1801 and 1804, and the Saxons and Danes knew quite as well as 

 Nelson and Keith the advantage of striking at an enemy in his own ports and on his own coast. 2 

 There must have been overwhelming reasons, perhaps political, for the discharge of the fleet when 

 invasion was seen to be imminent in September, for the cause given by the chroniclers lack of 

 provisions is obviously inadequate, seeing that Harold had previously shown himself to be a capable 

 organizer and still had sufficient provisions, or was able to obtain sufficient, to take an army into 

 Yorkshire and back to Sussex.' Mr. Freeman suggested that the need for getting in the harvest 

 made it impossible to keep an army composed chiefly of husbandmen away from their homes, but 

 that explanation will not meet the dismissal or removal of the fleet. It is possible that the mackerel 

 fishery, which commences in the eastern Channel in August, was a potent influence in causing 

 desertion on a large scale, and thus .destroying the fighting value of the fleet. A fisherman to-day 

 expects to earn sufficient during the season to support himself and his family through the remainder 

 of the year ; and no doubt the need was still keener in 1066, for there were then no auxiliary ways 

 of retrieving the effects of a lost or bad season. The tepid Saxon sense of national unity, unbacked 

 by organization or esprit de corps, would have yielded easily to the urgent call of self-interest. It 

 would be an interesting speculation to consider what course Duke William would have adopted, and 

 the possible consequences, had the fleet still remained on its station. As it was he knew that it had 

 gone, that Tostig and Harold of Norway were effecting a diversion in the north of priceless value to 

 him, and that his path was cleared. But had the English held the Channel he would have had to face 

 the crossing in a fleet largely consisting of small and weakly-built vessels hastily got together, many 

 of them probably fishing boats, manned by crews from many provinces strangers to each other when 

 not enemies, and loaded with horses and the impedimenta of an army. Definite leadership and 

 tactical handling of such a fleet would have been impossible in the battle which would have followed; 

 it would not even have been possible to ensure that any considerable portion would have come 

 into action at all. William was in every way a greater leader than Harold and he must have had 

 his solution of the problem ready, but if he was prepared to take the risk, and his artificially attracted 

 force could not have been kept together long, it was one from which even Napoleon flinched, so 

 that we may conclude that English sea power had not yet acquired any great reputation. 



Pevensey lies about 60 geographical miles NW. W. (true) from St. Valery sur Somme. 

 William left St. Valery with a fair wind on the evening of 27 September and disembarked at 

 Pevensey during the forenoon of the 28th. His landfall was probably Beachy Head or the high 

 land about Hastings, and to make either he must have crossed the whole or a part of one western 

 and one eastern stream of the tide. No doubt there were many seamen in his fleet skilled in 

 working the Channel tides. Whether by design or accident Pevensey was the best spot that could 

 have been chosen, for the flats east and west of Dungeness, preferred by Napoleon, were only coming 

 into existence. The harbour was, then, probably nearly or quite as good as that of Hastings ; 

 William's reason for pushing on to Hastings must have been because it offered a stronger position 

 for a fortification, and perhaps commanded a better road, rather than because of any value he attached 

 to the harbour over that of Pevensey. Mr. F. Baring, tracing the Conqueror's movements by the 

 entries in Domesday 4 , finds evidence that the fleet raided the West Sussex coast after the battle of 

 Hastings and finally used Chichester harbour as a base. 



If the union of the coast ports was in its tentative stage before the Conquest that event was the 

 deciding factor which rendered development certain and rapid. For nearly a century and a half the 

 English Channel no longer separated powers more or less hostile, but was a sea road uniting 

 territories subject to the same sovereign. From the point of view of domestic policy it was to the 

 interest of the king to have, in what was the strategic portion of the Channel at that date, subjects 

 on whom he could rely either for a quick and sure passage between his island and continental 



1 Ordericus Vitalis, Hist. Eccles. bk. iii, c. xiv. 



1 Freeman (Norman Conquest, iii, 338, 393, 716) thinks that there may have been some slight action by 

 sea ' of no great importance.' 



* We read that H.irold marched night and day. That need not be taken literally, but it implies move- 

 ment too rapid to permit supplies of any volume to be swept up along the line of march. 



4 Engl. Hist. Rev. xiii, 23. 



128 



