year 1826, before the Law Officers for their opinion, as to the most eligible mode of proceeding for the establishment of the title of the Crown thereto, and under their advice an inquisition was taken at Battle, on the 6th Dec, 1827, when the ground in question, consisting of Two Parcels, one marked (A.) on the annexed Plan, containing 7a. 1r. 10p., and the other marked (B.), containing la. 39p., was found and declared to have been in former times covered with the sea, and to be Waste Land, not within the bounds of any Manor or Manors, and unoccupied until within 60 years, within which period many Buildings have been erected thereon without any License, Lease, or Grant of any description from the Crown, and that therefore the inquest had caused the same to be seized into the hands of His Majesty.
"We have not yet been able to bring the claim to the property at Rye, to the same satisfactory termination, but as Mr. Miller's bills are certified to us by Mr. Green to be fair and reasonable, and further, that he afforded him great assistance in collecting evidence in support of His Majesty's title to the property at Hastings, and in making the necessary arrangements for holding the inquisition, we beg leave to recommend that we may be authorised to pay the same, amounting together to the sum of £71 6s. 4d. " We are, my Lords, " Your Lordships' most obedient servants " LOWTHER. " W. D. ADAMS.
" To the Right Hon. the Lords Commissioners of " His Majesty's Treasury."
" Office of Woods, etc., 31st December, 1829.
" My Lords. In our Report to your Lordships dated the 14th of April last, on the application then made by Mr. Miller, of Bedford-row, Solicitor, for payment of his bill for his professional assistance in establishing the title of the Crown to a considerable tract of Derelict Land, at Hastings, lying under the Western Cliff, near the lands called The Priory, on which a number of Houses had been erected by various persons without any authority for that purpose, we stated the particulars attending the discovery of the property in question and the steps we had taken for establishing the title of the Crown thereto. Since that time we have caused an accurate survey to be made of the whole of the property, by Messrs. Driver, our Surveyors, for that District, when we directed them not merely to certify the present state of value of the whole of the Houses and other Buildings erected on the land, and the names of the holders of them, but also to state the circumstances under which they came into their possession, whether as the original occupiers of the land, on which they afterwards erected Buildings or as the purchasers of the Buildings from the parties who originally -
