Note 303 — BOOK III.

“Whatever may have been the conqueror’s orders, to restrain his army from plundering, it is conclusive, from the Domesday Survey, that they were of no avail. The whole of the country, in the neighbourhood of Hastings, appears to have been laid waste. Sir Henry Ellis, in the last edition of his General Introduction to Domesday, observes, that the destruction occasioned by the conqueror’s army on its first arrival, is apparent more particularly under Hollington, Bexhill, &c. The value of each manor is given as it stood in the reign of the conqueror; afterwards it is said, ‘vastatum fuit;’ and then follows the value at the time of the survey. The situation of those manors evidently shows their devastated state to have been owing to the army marching over it; and this clearly evinces another circumstance relating to the invasion, which is, that William did not land his army at one particular spot, at Bulwerhithe, or Hastings, as is supposed,—but at all the several proper places for landing along the coast, from Bexhill to Winchelsea.”—Hardy.