Note 8 — PART II HISTORICAL STUDIES (continued 2)

It is always, in these matters, necessary to bear in mind that the local organization was apt to be ahead of the crown, and that communal institutions and municipal developments might be winked at for a time to avoid formal recognition. In this way I believe the rights and privileges belonging in strictness to Hastings alone were gradually extended in practice to the other ports. There is, for instance, a St Bertin charter granted by the so-called 'barons of Dover', although the formal legend on their seal styles them only 'burgesses'. The portsmen may all in practice have been loosely styled 'barons', even though Hastings alone had a special right to that distinction. Professor Burrows speaks of 'its acknowledged claim to be the Premier Port of the Confederation' as 'a circumstance of the greatest significance in our inquiry',8 and here I entirely agree with him. But I cannot think his explanation of that pre-eminence in any way satisfactory. He lays great stress on 'the identification lately established beyond any reasonable doubt between the town in the Bourne valley and the "New Burgh" of Domesday Book'. I have searched long and in vain for this identification, but, whether it be accepted or not, it throws no light on the old town, the King's town, of Hastings.9