DOMESDAY SURVEY torial division hrepp^ it is at least as likely that it might be derived from the Saxon rap^ a (measuring) rope/ or reaps^ a space. It would seem improbable that the Conqueror should divide one county alone in England in this manner ; but on the other hand, it must be remembered that Sussex was of unique importance to the Normans as the key of England, its ports being the shortest and most direct route between the two countries. It was therefore necessary for William to secure his lines of communication by placing them in the hands of men bound to him by the closest ties of blood and service, such as Robert of Mortain, his half-brother ; the Count of Eu ; the great Roger de Montgomery, his cousin and trusted officer ; William deWarenne, whose wife seems to have been the Conqueror's step-daughter ; and William de Braose. It was especially important to secure the fencible ports of Hastings, Pevensey, Lewes, Steyning, Arundel and Chichester, while the necessity of protecting the Unes of communication from the coast to London and the midlands in the always possible event of one of the tenants-in-chief proving rebellious would favour the shaping of these fiefs or baronies into a series of parallel strips running north and south. Thus only by a most improbable political combination could the road from Normandy to London be blocked. A further argument in favour of the Norman origin of the rape is to be found in the fact that, as will be shown later, the rapes appear to have been essentially geldable units and to have been granted by the Conqueror to their tenants at an arbitrary assessment of a round number of hides, which bore no such definite relation to the pre- Conquest assessment of the same districts as we should have expected had those districts enjoyed the same organization before as after the Conquest. Also the apparent application of the term rape^ to the liberty of Battle Abbey (fo. ^b) which we know to have been formed by grant of William I. suggests that the other rapes must also have been of Norman formation. Again, the far greater frequency with which the rapes are referred to by their possessorial than by their territorial titles suggests a recent institution, which is further borne out by the fact that the outlying portions of many manors were in the Confessor's time scattered through the county without regard to the boundaries of the rapes, though after the Conquest all such outlying portions were cut off from the parent manor and included in the body of the rape within which they lay. Finally, we may notice that the boundary between the rapes of WiUiam de Warenne and William de Braose cut through the two hundreds of Windham and Fishergate, and was therefore probably of more recent establishment than they ; and it will be seen later that these hundreds were probably of no great antiquity. ' Lower {Compendious Hist, of Suss. i. p. vii.) quotes from a ' recent publication by an able French antiquary (Herichcr) ' the following passage :—' We shall find in Normandy a great number of the names of those chiefs to whom Rollo distributed Neustria by the cord—" suis fidelibus terrain funiculo divisit." ' 2 But see below, p. 375. I 353 45
