Pevensey is nowadays, too, divided by stretches of flat marshy fields from the Channel, and has little of interest remaining save the traditions of its historic past as a Cinque Port “limb,” the jokes which are recorded against its municipal rulers, and the fact that it undoubtedly occupies the site of Anderida of the Romans. The remains of the Roman walls, which surround the Norman castle of Robert de Moreton, half-brother of the Conqueror, give to the place an interest not exceeded even by that of Lewes or Richborough. Here was once a city or at least a great settlement bordering upon that great, widely extending forest of Anderida, once covering the Weald of Sussex, which was probably as large, though perhaps not so famous, as the New Forest of Hampshire. The departure of the Roman legions was the signal for piratical descents upon our coasts, and the Saxons under Ella landed on the shore near Pevensey, and slew every Briton they came across. Pevensey Castle has had a stirring and chequered history. Its stalwart walls, now ivy-clad and crumbling, have survived many an attack in those ages when the strongholds of nobles were called upon to resist not alone the assaults of foreign invaders, but also those of English nobles making private war; and within its walls have languished many whose names are written on the page of history for better or for worse. Brave Queen Maude held the place against the forces of Stephen, and only yielded when brought face to face with famine; and it has had yet another brave woman defender (ranking with Lady Bankes, of Corfe, in Dorsetshire) for the Lancastrians in the last year of the fourteenth century, Lady Joan Pelham. As one writer has put it, “she wielded her pen not less readily than she commanded and directed the sword.” In a letter to her husband--a model of tenderness and felicitous expression--she says, “My dear Lord,--I recommend me to your high Lordship, with heart and body and all my poor might, and with all this I think (of) you, as my dear Lord, dearest and best beloved of all earthly Lords.... I heard by your letter that ye were strong enough with the grace of God for to keep you from the malice of your enemies. And, dear Lord, if it like you to your high Lordship that as soon as ye might that I might hear of your gracious speed, which God Almighty continue and increase. And my dear Lord, if it like you to know my fare, I am here laid by in manner of a siege with the county of Sussex, Surrey, and a great parcel of Kent, so that I may not go out nor no victuals get me, but with much hard.” Then, in the concluding paragraph, we get a sight of the tender heart of a devoted and loving woman, the same in all time and stress, and not variable at all. “Farewell, my dear Lord,” writes the beleaguered Joan Pelham, “the Holy Trinity keep you from your enemies, and soon send me good tidings of you.... By your own poor J. Pelham.” And then the superscription, “To my true Lord.” July 25, 1399.[B]