In connection with the Norman Conquest it is of some historical importance to ask one’s self what was the remaining function of the Weald, the great forest which ran along the rising swell of clay and sand, and bounded Sussex on the north? We have seen that in prehistoric times the Weald was undoubtedly the obstacle which delimited Sussex, and made all this district a maritime province with its towns on the sea. The Romans pierced the Weald with one great military road and probably several minor ways. But they did not settle it thickly. One may say that with the exception of a trace or two of fortifications it is practically destitute of Roman remains. It may possibly, or even probably, have contained many isolated farms in the prosperous middle and conclusion of the Roman period, but with the advent of the barbarians it fell again, as did so many other parts of Europe, into the prehistoric conditions, and we have at least one allusion in Anglo-Saxon history to its desertion, in the story of that Saxon king who fled during the tenth century from his enemies and hid in the Weald for many months. We know then that in Roman times it was traversed by at least one great military road and probably by several others; that in the Dark Ages it was certainly a dividing line between the coast district and the Thames valley; that in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries it was thoroughly civilised again. The main historical question or doubt relates to the eleventh century. Was this old wild condition of the forest a complete barrier to any travel northward from the coast at the time of the Conquest? It may be seriously doubted that it was such a barrier. It is probable that a certain amount of communication between North and South had already arisen, and, as we shall see in a moment, it is certain that communication became very vigorous in the centuries immediately succeeding Hastings. The nature of the obstacle, it must be remembered, has been mistaken by historians, notably by Freeman and by Green, and by all the smaller modern men, such as Mr. Davis and Mr. Oman [Sidenote: THE WEALD]