"Ralph holds Bristelmestune of William (de Warrenne). Brictric held it by the gift of Earl Godwin. It has been assessed at five hides and a half, equally under the Saxon & Norman rule. The arable is three ploughlands. There is half a plough in the demesne, and 18 villeins with 9 bondmen have 3 ploughs & a domestic. Four thousand herrings are paid as rent. In the time of Edward it was valued at eight pounds twelve shillings, and it is now estimated at 12 pounds."

 

 

Thus says Domesday Book, and you can make what you like of it. But it shows, at any rate, that those supercilious people who would make out that our great, overgrown Sussex pleasure town is a mere mushroom of the Hanoverian and Victorian eras are in error. One wonders what Ralph did with his four thousand herrings. He must sometimes have longed for a change of diet.

 

Except tor the steepness and breeziness of her hills that were once green Downland, there is very little of the bustling "Queen of Watering Places" to-day which is typically Sussex, or which turns the mind to thoughts of old romance. The most notable survival of antiquity about the district is the fine outline of the prehistoric Hollingbury Camp, overlooking the swarming, modern town from the north-east, and there are some more or less unverifiable traditions attaching to the ancient name of Goldstone in the sister town of Hove.

 

Nevertheless, since the fame of Brighton has gone out over the civilised world, and since Brighton is in many ways the centre of the business and social life of our county, besides being, with Hove, a City, it seems proper that an attempt should be made to sketch the career of Brighton from the time when Ralph held Bristelmestune of Earl William de Warenne, to the present day, when the wealth and fashion of the world congregate in her great caravanserais, and spread in "peacock parades"

along her miles of elegant sea front for the admiration and envy of all beholders. There is more than one reference to " Bristelmestune" in Doomsday book, with different particulars given in each, from which some have deduced that in ancient times there were two separate manors comprised under the name.

 

The spelling of Brighton's ancient name of Bristelmestune, or Brighthelmstone, afforded splendid scope for the display of originality and inventiveness on the part of writers in the good old times, and there are almost as many variations of it as there are letters in the word. Apart from the name of Brighton itself, some of the oldest associations of the town cling about the name of " Bartholomews," the street which faces the modern town hall.

 

The church, or a church, of Norman Brighton is mentioned in an ancient charter as part of a gift of land made by one John de Caysneto to the Priory of St. Pancras at Lewes, together with "all the tithes which he had in the same town," and it continued to be held by the monks of St. Pancras till the Priory was suppressed. At the close of the 12th Century a free chantry, dedicated to St. Bartholomew, was founded in "Brightelmstone " in the interests of Lewes Priory.

 

Close to "Bartholomew's" stands Brighton's fine modern covered market, and we first hear of a market at Brighton as one of a number in Sussex and Surrey for which a grant was made at the commencement of the reign of Edward II., to John, the eighth and last Earl of Warenne, who stood in high favour with the King because he accompanied Edward into Scotland against Robert Bruce when other nobles deserted him.

 

Earl John's Brighton market was held every Thursday. Of what was sold in it we have no record, but probably there was some of that "fine mackerowoo" which Brighton fishermen shout to-day, for even in those distant times the men of Brighton and other ports of Sussex were great fishermen, and used to go every year from September to November to Great Yarmouth and Scarborough, to fish in boats of from 15 to 40 tons, with an averaege crew of twelve men. The produce was divided into shares, which the vicar, the town, and the master of the ship divided between them.

 

These Brighton fishermen sailed generally with the fleets of the Cinque Ports, which, as we have seen, used to have some busy times quarrelling with the men of Essex. With it's open and unprotected beach, Brighton though a place not without importance as a fishing centre, seems to nave been fairly free from raiders from the sea until a comparatively late period.

 

The French, in the course of their Harrying expeditions against the Sussex coast in the days of Richard II., made a landing at Rottingdean, but the prior of St. Pancras at Lewes, who seems to have been a hefty cleric of the same stout fibre as his reverend brother Hamo, the abbot of Battle, raised the countryside, and with a hastily mustered crowd of Sussex peasants, led by a few of the principal residents, sallied forth and encountered the invaders, and like Sir Nicholas Pelham of famous memory, " did repel 'em back aboord."

 

The first really big affair which Brighton had with our old enemies and present fast friends across the Channel was in Tudor days, and a highly picturesque account of it is given under the date 1514 an old-work known as Hall's Chronicle.

 

"About this time," we are told, ' the warres still contynewynge between England and France, Prior Jhon, great capitaine of the Frenche nauy, with his galeys and foystes charged with great basylysks and other great artillery, came in the border of Sussex, and came a-land in the night at a poore village in Sussex called bright Helmston, and or the watch coulde him esaye, he sett fyer on the towne and toke suche poore goodes as he founde: then the watche fyred the bekyns, and people began to gather; which seynge, Prior Jhon sowned his trompett to call his men aboorde, and by that tyme it was day. When six archers whiche kept the watche folowed Prior Jhon to the sea, and shott so fast that they bett the galyme from the shore; and Prior Jhon hymselfe waded to hys foist and Thenglishemen went into the water after, but they were put back with pickes, or els they had entered the foyst.

 

But they shott so fast that they wounded many in the foyst. and Prior Jhon was shoott in the face with an arrow, and was likely to have dyed, and therefore he offered his image of wax before Our Lady at Bolleyn (Boulogne) with the English arrow in the face for a myracle.

 

When the lord admirale of England had hard these news, he was not content, and sent Sir Jhon Wallopp to the sea incontinent, with diuerse English shippes, which sayled to the cost of Normandy and thr landed and brent 21 villages and townes with great slaughter of people, and brent shippes and boates in the hauens of Tresport, Stapils (Etaples), and in euery place. This Sir Jhon Wallopp quit himself so that men maruelled of his enterprise, consyderying he had at the most but viii.c. men, and toke land ther so often."

 

In the schooldays of some of us the verb " to wallop" was one of a painful significance. Whether " walloping," as schoolboy slang for a sound thrashing, is restricted to Sussex or no, this writer knoweth not, though he rather thinks it is an expression understood wherever schoolboys congregate. Learned philologists may perhaps find some other derivation for the word, but to the Sussex man the gallant Sir "Jhon," who quit himself so that men marvelled, may well seem to have a good claim to be the originator.

 

Not so very many years after this "walloping" business - in 1545, to be precise - the French king Francis 1., with a view to recapture Boulogne, which the English had taken from him, fitted out a fleet to harry them in the Channel, and sailed along the Sussex coast "before Bright Hamstead,"and sent men on land "to burn and spoile the countrie." Brighton was ready for them, however.

 

" Beacons were fired, and the inhabitants thereabouts came down so thicke that the Frenchmen were driuen to flie, with losse of diuerse of their numbers, so that they did little hurt there." They went off to the Isle of Wight and Portsmouth, where there was great fighting, in the course of which one of the King's great ships, the " Mary Rose," capsized in the midst of Portsmouth Harbour because she was overloaded with guns and had the ports left open.

 

The French drew off along the coast of Sussex, and a certain number again landed, "of whom few returned to their ships, for diuerse gentlemen of the countrie, as Sir Nicholas Pelham and others, with such power as was raised upon the sudden, tooke them up by the waie and quicklie distressed them." The French finally " turned sterne, and so got them home againe without anie act atchieued worthie to be mentioned."

 

 

 

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