The Franciscans, however, were not the only Friars in Winchelsea in spite of the agreement made at the foundation of the new town.  In 1318 Edward II. granted the Black Friars, the Dominicans, twelve acres on the southern side of the hill.  This situation was found inconvenient, and in 1357 the Dominicans obtained six acres “near the town.”  Nothing, or almost nothing, remains of their house.

Besides these two religious houses, Winchelsea possessed three hospitals, those of St John, St Bartholomew and Holy Cross.

The Hospital of St Bartholomew was near the New Gate on the south-west of the town, and dated from the refounding of Edward.  Nothing remains of it, or of the Hospital of Holy Cross, which had existed in old Winchelsea and was set up in the new town also near the New Gate.  But the oldest and the most important of the three hospitals was that of St John.  A fragment of this remains where the road turns towards Hastings to the north of the churchyard.  Close by is the thirteenth-century Court House.

It is always with regret I leave Winchelsea when I must, and even the beautiful road through Icklesham into Hastings will not reconcile one who has known how to love this place, to departure.  And yet how fair that road is and how fair is the Norman church of St Nicholas at Icklesham upon the way!  The road winds up over the low shore towards Fairlight, ever before one, and at last as one goes up Guestling Hill through a whole long afternoon and reaches the King’s Head Inn at sunset, suddenly across the smoke of Hastings one sees Pevensey Level, and beyond, the hills where fell the great fight in which William Duke of Normandy disputed for England with Harold the King.  At sunset, when all that country is half lost in the approaching darkness, one seems to feel again the tragedy of that day so fortunate after all, in which once more we were brought back into the full life of Europe and renewed with the energy Rome had stored in Gaul.

CHAPTER X

THE BATTLE OF HASTINGS

It is not often on one’s way, even in England of my heart, that one can come upon a place, a lonely hill-side or a city, and say:  this is a spot upon which the history of the world was decided; yet I was able on that showery morning, as I went up out of Hastings towards Battle and saw all the level of Pevensey full of rain, to recall two such places in which I had stood already upon my pilgrimage.  For I had lingered a whole morning upon the battlefield where the Romans first met and overthrew our forefathers and thus brought Britain within the Empire; while at Canterbury I had been in the very place where, after an incredible disaster, England was persuaded back again out of barbarism into the splendour of the Faith and of civilisation.  These places are more than English, they are European sanctuaries, two of the greater sites of the history of Europe.  Perhaps as much cannot rightly be said for the hill where the town of Battle stands, the landing-place at Pevensey and the port of Hastings.