PHILLIPS tells me it once bore. It is also a corroboration of this view , that as late as 1746, there was no bridge across the Bourne lower than the Court House. The remains of the principal gate of the town, known as the Drawbridge Gate, were discovered at the bottom of High Street, (once called Oak Hill) when the drainage works were carried out about ten years ago.
It may be interesting to my fellow townsmen to know , that the custom of Borough English, or the right by which the youngest inherits the copyhold , to the exclusion of the elder sons (which is almost peculiar to this part of the country) prevails in so much of their town as is included in the Manor of Brede.
Domesday Book informs us that there were five churches in this manor, which Mr. COOPER thus distributes : one to Rye, two to Winchelsea, one to Brede, and the fifth he considers to be St. Leonards, which , though in the liberties of Hastings, is actually situated on the confines of modern Winchelsea . Now, I think, I have shown good reason why the three first churches must be sought for elsewhere than in Winchelsea and Rye, and also that we might expect to meet with them in the Bourne Valley ; but from very ancient times there have been three, and only three churches in that valley : St. Clements, destroyed in 1236, and probably situated near the Light Steps, for the present St. Clements was built in 1286, by the Abbot of Fecamp, on a different site, on land obtained from Alan De Ches mongre, and again rebuilt about 1380. All Saints', men-
