From the position of this fortress, it is most probable that, like Dover, it may originally have been a British work, the entrenchments, including the promontory and the south ditches, being the defences landward. The mound, however, placed at an angle of the inner ward, upon the bank, and covering the approach, is almost certainly a later, and no doubt an English, work. Whatever may be the origin of Hastings as a defensive work, its known history commences towards the end of the sixth and the beginning of the eighth centuries in the times of Offa and Athelstane, when it was a place of some consequence, and contained a mint. Coins, indeed, were minted here as late as the reign of Henry I. The termination “ceaster,” which it then bore, shows it to have been fortified. Towards the middle of the eleventh century it was plundered by the Danes, and towards the middle of that century it was the men of Hastings who, after the murder of Beorn by Swegen, captured his ships and slew his accomplices in the murder, though Swegen himself escaped. Hastings also played a part in the Norman Conquest, though not that popularly assigned to it as the scene of the battle. William landed at Pevensey, and thence moved rapidly to Hastings in search of food. There Odo of Bayeux, as one of his lieutenants, ordered a fortress to be thrown up, “ut foderetur castellum,” and thence, according to the same authority, the Bayeux tapestry, William marched against Harold. William, we are told, on reaching the port, selected a proper site, and fortified it rapidly with a castle in timber, “ligneum castellum.” This, we must suppose to be a replacing or restoration of whatever there was standing on the old site. It can scarcely have been a palisade on the low ground below the castle rock. He then placed Humphrey de Tilliol, brother-in-law of Hugh de Grantmaisnil, to execute his orders, “qui Hastinges a prima die constructionis ad custodiendum susceperat.” Wace’s description applies more to Hastings than to Pevensey, which was already walled in:— “Un chastel ì ont fermé De bretesches è de fossé.”