Holinshead mentions an attack upon the town by the French, about this time; and there is the probability that he refers to the same invasion, as he terms it a nocturnal visit from some French ships, but commanded by Prior Jehan, the high admiral. He says: “but when the people began to gather, by firing the beacons, Prior Jehan sounded his trumpet to call his men aboard, and by that time it was day. The certain archers that kept the watch followed Prior Jehan to the sea, and shot so fast that they beat the galley men from the shore, and wounded many in the fleet: to which Prior Jehan was constrained to wade, and was shot in the face with an arrow, so that he lost one of his eyes, and was like to have died of the hurt, and therefore he offered his image of wax before our Lady at Bullogne, with the English arrow in the face, for a miracle.” According to the Burrell MSS., {21} in 1589, strict orders were given for maintaining beacons in all accustomed places, with orders to the watchmen, that if the number of invading ships did not exceed two, they were not to fire the beacons, but to cause larums to be rung from church to church as far as the skirts of the hill reached from the sea shore, and no further; and to send a post to the nearest justices: but if the ships exceeded two, they were to fire both their beacons, which were to be duly answered by the corresponding ones, and thus rouse the “force of the shire.” Five discreet householders in the neighbourhood, were assigned to each beacon, one to keep watch constantly. In 1590, the beacon watches were ordered to be discharged till further orders. CHAPTER V. ANCIENT AND MODERN GOVERNMENT OF THE TOWN. When king Alfred divided England into shires, the shires into hundreds, and the hundreds into tithings, tithing men or headboroughs—heads of boroughs—were the only guardians of the peace, and dispensers of justice within their respective districts, the original limits being the residences of ten _creorles_ or freemen, with their families and slaves. Under the Saxon constitution, Brighton had two headboroughs; a proof that its population, even then, was far from being inconsiderable. These headboroughs sat alternately or together, at the borough court, at which the decenners, or free, or frankpledges (friborgs) as had no causes to be tried there, attended as jurors or sworn assessors to the presiding officer. These free-pledges were the origin of the Society of Twelve, which continued in Brighthelmston to the commencement of the present century.