Page:Notes on the churches in the counties of Kent, Sussex, and Surrey.djvu/131

Rh 199. .—(A.D. 1291) "Ecclia de Limme cum capella." Some considerable remains exist here of Studfall Castle, which are deemed Roman, though not exhibiting the undoubted evidence of red mortar.—In attempting to identify the Roman Portus Lemanis or Limenis of Antoninus, the Lemannis of the Notitia, and the Lemavius of the Peutingerian Tables. Somner, (Rom. Ports and Forts in Kent, 87, et seq.), argues at some length in favour of Romney, Old or New; but, inasmuch as he bases his argument on the supposition of an error in the distance to Lemanis from Durovernum, Canterbury, as that distance is given in our copies of the Itinerary of Antoninus, his reasoning will hardly be deemed very conclusive. The Roman walls existing at Limpne, with the absence of any such vestiges at Romney, may justly be regarded a strong testimony in favour of the former locality.

"In the year 893 the great (pagan, i.e. Danish) army passed from the eastern kingdom (of the Franks) toward the west at Boulogne, where it embarked, so that with all their horses they were transported in one voyage. They landed at the haven of Limme with 250 vessels. That haven is on the east side of Kent, at the eastern boundary of the great forest called Andred, which is at least 120 miles long from east to west, and thirty miles broad; the river we have named runs from that forest. They brought their ships upon that river as far as the forest, viz., four miles from the outer part of the estuary, and there stormed a certain fort in the marsh inhabited by a few villans, and half finished. Not long after Hæstenus landed with eighty ships at the mouth of the Thames, and built himself a fort at Middeltune; but another" part of the "army" did the same "at Apuldre." (Gibs. Chron. Sax. 91.)

The river alluded to is considered to have been the Rother, which now disembogues at Rye in Sussex, after skirting, but not entering, the county of Kent. The above description appears to imply, that the river spoken of was the natural drain of the eastern portion of the forest, which can apply to no stream of the district but the Rother, because that alone, though rising in Sussex beyond Rotherfield, runs toward the sea in this direction. Every other stream, which can ever have possessed the smallest pretensions to be the river of the Saxon Chronicle, joins the Medway, therefore takes a totally different course. And though the Rother now enters the sea at Rye, there seems sufficient evidence, that its ancient channel, turning