[2588] Britannia antiqua, pp. 262-3.
[2589] Hist. of Romney Marsh, 1849, pp. 16, 20.
[2590] Mem. Geol. Survey,—The Geology of the Country between Folkestone and Rye, pp. 19-20.
[2591] Ravennatis anonymi cosmographia, ed. M. Pinder and G. Parthey, 1860, v, 31 (p. 438, 19).
[2592] Geogr. Journal, ix, 1897, p. 545.
Mr. H. E. Malden, who believes that Caesar landed somewhere near Hurst, which is in Romney Marsh, about two miles and a half west of Lympne, affirms (Journal of Philology, xvii, 1888, pp. 176-7, n. 1) that, in A.D. 893, ‘Hastings the pirate came here with his fleet ... and sailed four miles up the Rother to the Weald.’ There is not the slightest evidence that ‘Hastings’ came ‘here’ with his fleet. The record of his expedition is in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (ed. B. Thorpe, ii, 1861, p. 69). ‘In this year’ [893], says the chronicler, ‘the great army, of which we long before spoke ... came up to the mouth of the Limen with two hundred and fifty ships. The mouth is in the east of Kent, at the east end of the great wood which we call Andred.... The river, of which we before spoke, flows out from the weald. On the river they towed up their ships as far as the weald, four miles from the outward mouth, and there stormed a work.’ Mr. Malden (op. cit., p. 176, note) avows his belief that ‘the Romans embanked the marsh’, and immediately afterwards says that ‘the Portus Lemanis after that became accessible only from the east, inside the shingle spit opposite Hythe’. It would appear, then, that, according to Mr. Malden, the mouth of the Limen, up which the Danes sailed, was ‘opposite Hythe’. But, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, to which he refers, it was at Appledore (see p. 542, n. 4, infra); and doubtless the Danes reached it by sailing up the channel, formed by the Rhee wall (see p. 538, supra), which then connected the Limen with the sea.
[2593] C. Roach Smith, Report on Excavations ... at Lymne, pp. 39-40.
[2594] Proc. Geologists’ Association, viii, 1883, p. 93. Topley, indeed, frankly admits that one argument may be adduced in support of the theory that the Rother flowed out opposite Lympne. This argument is identical with that of Drew, which I have quoted in the text; but, as Topley’s exposition is the more lucid, I give it here. He observes (Mem. Geol. Survey,—The Geology of the Weald, pp. 303-4) that on Romney Marsh the shingle ‘has chiefly accumulated to the windward of tidal harbours, whilst the blown sand has accumulated to leeward of those harbours’; and then, remarking that, on the south of West Hythe, the ‘fulls’, or ridges of shingle, ‘curve well round to the north-west, as though to a harbour here,’ and that ‘on the north of this there is again a little blown-sand’, he admits that these facts lend some support to the popular view: but, he adds, ‘no trace of the ancient channel is to be found along the northern side of the marsh.’ But Topley seems not to know his own mind; for he afterwards says (ib., p. 304) that ‘it is by no means unlikely that the ancient Rother had more than one mouth. There may have been one at Lympne, one at Romney, and one near Rye.’ However, in his final utterance on the subject (Proc. Geologists’ Association, viii, 1883, p. 93) he says, ‘there is no evidence of any old river along the northern side of the Marsh.’
[2595] Twenty-third Report East Kent Nat. Hist. Soc., 1881, p. 66. See also Proc. Geologists’ Association, xv, 1898, pp. 216-7.
[2596] Cf. John Harris, Hist. of Kent. 1719, p. 366.