toll-gate, as seen in the annexed view. The said view - perhaps the only one extant - was sketched by Mr. J. R. Mitchell in 1865. The foreground is a hollow of the Magdalen Charity estate on which in 1896 were erected the new Board Schools. The railing shows the direction of what at present forms Tower Road. The whole district being now covered with buildings, the original tower and toll-gate would have been these many years looked for in vain.
For quite a lengthened period there resided in the tower house a venerable dame and doctress of the name of Dabney. The old lady was much respected by all who knew her, and died at a very advanced age. Mr. W. Dabney, drill-master at Bohemia, was her son, and lived as great a span of years as his mother. His father, the old lady's husband, whose pedigree I have worked out is he whose descendents claim to be next-of-kin to the great estate of Sir Humphrey Jennings, or of William Jennings, the latter of whom died, intestate in the year 1798. The story is that the said William Dabney was a grandson of Cornelius Dabney who, with his brother John, left England and settled in America. These, with another brother named Robert were Huguenots, and first came to England from France at the perfection of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. When in America, Cornelius Dabney (a corruption of D'Aubique) married, as his second wife, Sarah Jennings, who had gone out from England with the family. They were married in 1721, and had a son, baptised as Benjamin Dabney, who, appears to have come to Hastings, where he was married and had a family, whose descendants down to the present claimants have been traced by the writer of this History. The Sarah Jennings who was married to Cornelius Dabney, was said to be related to Sir Humphrey Jennings, the great napmaster[a], and her descendants to be wholly or partly entitled to the thirty millions of pounds, some of which has been wrongfully -
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