Ever since the historic period, and doubtless long before the era of recorded things began, there existed a castle, or a fortified post, on this lofty cliff-top, where the shattered ruins of Hastings Castle still stand, few and almost formless—the long superannuated warden of the town that has grown so great and has now absolutely no defences against the foreign foe. When the Normans came, they found defences of some nature here, and hastened from their landing-place at Pevensey to seize and to more strongly fortify them, as scenes in that graphic record, the Bayeux Tapestry, show. The wooden walls, palisades, and outworks thus hastily constructed by the Conqueror’s men were speedily discarded for a permanent building of stone, and the grim hold thus erected was given into the custody of the Norman Counts d’Eu; who, jointly with the Abbots of Fécamp, were responsible for keeping open the sea-passage between England and Normandy. This duty was laid upon those secular and ecclesiastical personages in consideration of the rights granted to the Count d’Eu in the Castle and the Old Town, and the lordship over the “New Burgh” bestowed upon the Abbot of Fécamp. Time has worked odd changes with Hastings and very thoroughly obscured the ancient names, so that what was then the “old town” has been so long and so utterly swept away and built over that its very existence at any former time is unknown to all save Dryasdust and his brethren. The old original “old town” stood, in fact, where the new town of Hastings stands to-day, and the Old Town of the present time is the “New Burgh” referred to in Domesday Book as the property of the Abbot of Fécamp. Dryasdust, who is a very estimable person and a learned, will tell you all you want to know about it—and much more; but he is always so fully informed, and diverges so abundantly and promiscuously into notes, parentheses, sub-heads, and innumerable asides of that kind that he presently lands you in topographical swamps and mazes, and, feeding you overfull of knowledge, gives you a severe literary and antiquarian indigestion. In short, to make a plain story of it, where modern Hastings stands, practically level with the water, there spread, at the time when the Battle of Hastings was fought, a quiet inlet of the sea. This was the haven, the natural harbour of refuge against winds and waves, that originally caused the site of Hastings to be selected for a port. It would never have been chosen and settled had it been without shelter, as it is now; and Hastings of to-day is merely an artificial growth, like Brighton, Eastbourne, and many another seaside town, sprung up to serve a century or more of holiday-making by the sea. The town, as we see it to-day, would have been impossible had the place depended merely upon fishing and shipping; for on this stark-naked foreshore, swept by gales and raging seas, there is no shelter for vessels.