In the fourteenth century the town, which had sprung up to some considerable importance, was raided by the French, sacked, and burned. But by the fifteenth it had grown up again to be a large place with a considerable military force attached to it. By the sixteenth it had received a charter and had a mayor and twelve jurats, a harbour of some size, and a considerable trade in shipbuilding. No traces of the inlet once existing now break the coast-line, and the closest search meets with no reward in discoveries of antiquity. The first Hastings lies fathoms deep under the sea, the second has passed away, and in the third one has the modern town with its long lines of boarding-houses and hotels lining the sea-front. Not very picturesque save when seen at night brilliantly lit, with the numberless fishing boats carrying riding or other lights twinkling like huge glow worms in the foreground. Hastings during the latter part of the eighteenth and early years of the nineteenth centuries was one of the most notorious places along the whole Sussex coast for smuggling, on account of its convenient landing-places. The lawless Hawkhurst gang, to which reference will later be made, had several of its members hailing from the town, and the bands of smugglers in the immediate district were bold to a degree, often (as we are told) daring to land their cargoes of contraband under the very noses of the preventive men whose duty it was to frustrate such attempts. Wrecking, too, was an occasional variation of occupation for the smugglers, and several vessels are known in the first decade of the last century to have been lured to destruction by false lights shown on the cliffs. The smugglers extended their operations far inland, daring to take their cargoes as far as Brede and other places for storage. Brede Place, which was one of their resorts, once the home of the Attefords, but afterwards that of the Oxenbridges, has several weird legends connected with it. Not the least uncanny is the story of one Sir Goddard Oxenbridge, who died in 1557, we should imagine little lamented by his neighbours. This owner of the manor, besides being a reputed dealer in the “black arts,” had so strong a liking for human flesh that children of the neighbourhood were constantly disappearing, to the grief of their parents and the “engorgement of this terrible ogre-like being.” For babies this Sir Goddard, who, we are informed, was of great stature and “flourished amazingly on his diet of human flesh,” had an especial partiality. Further, “neither bow, nor arrow, nor axe, nor sword, nor spear could slay this redoubtable giant, but some of the country people about here succeeded at length in making him drunk and in sawing him in half with a wooden saw!” A truly marvellous performance in good keeping with the rest of the tale!