Yet, the fate of England
being decided by the bloody engagement at Battel, this town, with many
other large possessions in the county, was granted to William de Warren,
who married the Conqueror's daughter: and he soon made it part of the
endowment of that rich priory, which he founded at Lewes.
This resigning of the town into the hands of monks was a fatal stroke to
its ancient greatness. Too attentive to their own immediate interest, and
too regardless of that of their vassals, as soon as they were in
possession of it, they laboured, and with success, to obtain an exemption
for it from supplying the king with ships, or affording him such other
succour, as a large and powerful maritime town ought to have done, on the
pretence of its being part of a religious estate.
(_To be concluded in our next_.)
[1] It appears to have been called Brighton in a terrier of lands,
dated in 1660.
[2] In the years 1800 and 1801, when wheat was at an unprecedented
price, the occupiers of farms on the South Downs converted much
of their downland into tillage, from which they acquired abundant
crops of corn.
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