On Friday, 13 October 1066, Harold Godwinson and his English army arrived at Senlac Hill just outside Hastings, to face William of Normandy and his invading army. This ensured supplies for the army, and as Harold and his family held many of the lands in the area, it weakened William's opponent and made him more likely to attack to put an end to the raiding. See also Norman conquest of England and English feudal barony Landing Дuke William's forces landed at Pevensey on 28 September 1066 and erected a wooden castle at Hastings, from which they raided the surrounding area. To protect against rebellion or invasion, the scattered Saxon estates in Sussex were consolidated into the rapes as part of William the Conqueror's ' Channel march'. Before the Norman Conquest Sussex had the greatest concentration of lands belonging to the family of Earl Godwin. Although Sussex may have been divided into rapes earlier in its history, under the Normans they were clearly administrative and fiscal units. Sussex also experienced the most radical and thorough reorganisation of land in England, as the Normans divided the county into five (later six) tracts of lands called rapes. The growth in Sussex's population, the importance of its ports and the increased colonisation of the Weald were all part of changes as significant to Sussex as those brought by the neolithic period, by the Romans and the Saxons. Throughout the High Middle Ages, Sussex was on the main route between England and Normandy, and the lands of the Anglo-Norman nobility in what is now western France. It was during the Norman period that Sussex achieved its greatest importance in comparison with other English counties. Sussex in the High Middle Ages includes the history of Sussex from the Norman Conquest in 1066 until the death of King John, considered by some to be the last of the Angevin kings of England, in 1216.

Level 112 piperoll