towers must have been undermined, and hurled Into the morass below, to a depth which would probably render any search after them a perfectly thankless task.
Considering the number of Roman coins that have been found at various .time in Pevensey Castle, it is rather singular that our extensive excavations should have yielded so few. The following is Mr. Roach Smith's note of them:
"The coins found during the excavations are few, and without any particular interest. They are all in small brass, and do not exceed 20 in number. They range from Gallienus to the sons of Constantine, as follows:—
| No. | No. | ||
| Gallienus | 1 | Constantine | 2 |
| Posthumus | 1 | The Constantine Family | 8 |
| Maximianus | 1 | Magnentius | 2 |
"The penny of Canute [mentioned at page 275] is of the type Ruding, pl. xxiii, No. 17."[1]
In the month of November, we gave directions for uncovering the foundations of a building which had stood within the medieval castle. My attention was called during the summer of 1849 to the burnt appearance of the turf to the southward of tower No. 2, and I hazarded a conjecture that it indicated the site of the "free chapel within the castle of Pevensey," which is named in a grant of this fortress to John of Gaunt, by his father, King Edward III. Our excavations have shown the truth of this surmise. The site of the chapel is marked 7, in the plan.
It consisted of a nave, north aisle, and chancel. The general thickness of the foundation walls was 2 feet 5 inches. The interior dimensions of the edifice were as follows:—
| Length of Nave | 40 ft. | Length of Chancel | 12 ft. 8 in. |
| Breadth of ditto | 16 ft. 8 in. | Breadth of ditto | 11 ft. 6 in. |
- ↑ In the 'Numismatic Chronicle,' iii, 66, Mr. Smith published an account of a discovery of Roman coins at Pevensey Castle. They range from Carausius to Gratian. The late Mr. Charles Brooker of Alfriston, had nearly 100 third brass coins. My friends, Messrs. Charles Ade, William Harvey, and John Macrae, possess others. Nearly all these are of the reigns of Constantius Chlorus, Constantine, and Constans. I will not include in this note the "find" in 1848, of 866 silver and brass coins boasted of by an individual to whose name I would gladly give a well-deserved "setting-down" were it not for the pain which I should thereby inflict upon his respectable relatives who reside in the county. Suffice it to say that I have documents to prove that a more shameful fraud was never attempted than that of digging up these hundreds of Roman (P first-brass Birminghcm) coins, from a tower built in the reign of Edward II (!) where they had been deposited by the digger himself not many hours previously! — See Suss. Arch. Coll. I, 5.
Mr. Harvey and Mr. E. Miller of Hailsham have in their cabinets several Bactrian coins found (as I have good evidence to show) among the rains of Pevensey. These coins are on all hands admitted to be genuine, but a doubt of their having been found here has been entertained. For my own part, I see nothing more wonderful in their discovery than in the indisputable fact that many Saracenic coins of the ninth century have been found in the shingle and sand at Eastbourne.
