Page:VCH Sussex 1.djvu/419

 ANGLO-SAXON REMAINS the same period as those since discovered were found. In December 1866 this site was ploughed for the first time, and the jar in which the hoard had been deposited was disturbed and the contents scattered in all directions. A general scramble ensued and a large number of coins were dispersed, but 1,720 were delivered to the Treasury as treasure-trove.' All these coins, secreted probably by some tenant of Earl Gurth just before the arrival of the Normans, were silver pennies of Edward the Confessor and Harold II., struck at various mints, including four in Sussex, viz., Chichester, Hastings, Lewes and Steyning.' About 17 miles east of Chancton is Offham, where in 1796 a small quantity of Anglo-Saxon coins was discovered.* It consisted chiefly of pennies of Edward the Confessor and Harold, which appeared as if they had come fresh from the mint, so that they were probably deposited at the same time and under the same circumstances as the famous Chancton hoard. A coin of Offa found at Beddingham recalls the charter of Arch- bishop Wulfred, dated 825, in which Offa's previous connexion with the monastery ^ there is recorded ; and an allusion is also made to it in a charter, dated 801, of Coenwulf King of Mercia, one of whose coins is supposed to have been found in the neighbourhood.* A coin of Alfred is recorded from the West Gate, Chichester^ ; and of five silver pennies of Ethelred II. found in digging for flints just below the turf on the south side of Harting Beacon four were struck in London, and one at Colchester.' The village of Sedlescombe lies between two and three miles east of Battle Abbey, and in 1876 a labourer employed in draining found a metal vessel ' containing a hoard of coins, perhaps once enclosed in a leather bag. They numbered between two and three thousand pieces, of which 1,136 were catalogued, and all belonged to the reign of Edward the Confessor (1042-66). They were minted at forty-four different cities and towns in England, from York to Dover and Exeter, but three-fifths were struck at Hastings itself; and all belong to the middle of the reign.* By that time Norman influence was gaining strength, and the Anglo-Saxon race that had fought and conquered some six centuries before were soon to find a master on the fatal field of Senlac. > Sussex Arch. Collns. xix. 189 ; xx. 212. Numismatic Chronicle, N.S. vii. (1867), 63. ' Sussex Arch. Collns. xxi. 219. Dallaway and Cartwright, History of Rape of Arundel, 222. 3 Sussex Arch. Collns. xxi. 32. • Ibid. xxi. 219. . 6 Ibid. xxiv. 29S. • Ibid, xxxix. 225. ' Now in the Barbican at Lewes. s Sussex Arch. Collns. xxvii. 227 ; xxxiii. I, 20. 349