From Bognor it is a mere step to Felpham, a village less than a mile to

the east. Whether or not one goes there to-day is a matter of taste; but

a hundred years ago to omit a visit was to confess one's-self a boor,

for William Hayley, the poet and friend of genius, lived there, and his

castellated stucco house became a shrine. At that day it seems to have

been no uncommon sight for the visitor to Bognor to be refreshed by the

spectacle of the poet falling from his horse. According to his

biographer, Cowper's Johnny of Norfolk, Hayley descended to earth almost

as often as Alice's White Knight, partly from the high spirit of his

steed, and partly from a habit which he never abandoned of wearing

military spurs and carrying an umbrella. The memoir of the poet contains

this agreeable passage: "The Editor was once riding gently by his side,

on the stony beach of Bognor, when the wind suddenly reversed his

umbrella as he unfolded it; his horse, with a single but desperate

plunge, pitched him on his head in an instant.... On another occasion,

on the same visit ... he was tost into the air on the Downs, at the

precise moment when an interested friend whom they had just left, being

apprehensive of what would happen, was anxiously viewing him from his

window, through a telescope." Those who look through telescopes are

rarely so fortunate. It is odd that Hayley, a delicate and heavy man

suffering from hip-disease, should have taken so little hurt. Although

he had a covered passage for horse exercise in the grounds of his villa,

no amount of practice seems to have improved his seat. This covered way

has been removed, but a mulberry tree planted by Hayley still

flourishes.

Whenever Hayley was ill he became an object of intense interest to

visitors at Bognor. Binsted's Library in the town exhibited a daily

bulletin; and in 1819 the Prince and Princess of Saxe-Coburg called upon

him, while the Princess of Hesse Homburg on her return sent a

prescription from Germany.

[Sidenote: HAYLEY HOUR BY HOUR]

Mrs. Opie, the novelist, who stayed with Mr. Hayley every summer, and

also served as a magnet to devout sojourners at Bognor, has left an

account of the poet's habits which is vastly more entertaining than his

poetry. He rose at six or earlier and at once composed some devotional

verse. At breakfast, he read to Mrs. Opie; afterwards Mrs. Opie read to

him. At eleven they drank coffee, and before he dressed for dinner, a

very temperate meal, Mrs. Opie sang. After dinner there was more reading

aloud, the matter being either manuscript compositions of Mr. Hayley's,

or modern publications. Mr. Hayley took cocoa and Mrs. Opie tea, and

afterwards Mrs. Opie read aloud or sang. At nine, the servants came to

prayers, which were original compositions of Mr. Hayley's, read by him

in a very impressive manner, and before bed, Mrs. Opie sang one of Mr.

Hayley's hymns.

Hayley's grave is at Felpham, and his epitaph by Mrs. Opie may be read

by the industrious on the wall of the church. Among the many epitaphs on

his neighbours by Hayley himself, who had a special knack of mortuary

verse, is this on a Felpham blacksmith:--

My sledge and hammer lie reclined;

My bellows too have lost their wind;

My fire's extinct; my forge decay'd,

And in the dust my vice is laid;

My coal is spent, my iron gone;

The nails are driven--my work is done.

The last verses that Hayley wrote have more charm and delicacy than

perhaps anything else among his works:

Ye gentle birds that perch aloof,

And smooth your pinions on my roof,

Preparing for departure hence

Ere winter's angry threats commence;

Like you, my soul would smooth her plume

For longer flights beyond the tomb.

May God, by whom is seen and heard

Departing man and wandering bird,

In mercy mark us for his own,

And guide us to the land unknown.

[Sidenote: A FAIRY'S FUNERAL]

But it is not Hayley that gives its glory to Felpham. The glory of

Felpham is that William Blake was happy there for nearly three years. It

was at Felpham that he saw the fairy's funeral. "Did you ever see a

fairy's funeral, ma'am?" he asked a visitor. "Never, sir!" "I have!... I

was walking alone in my garden; there was great stillness among the

branches and flowers, and more than common sweetness in the air; I heard

a low and pleasant sound, and I knew not whence it came. At last I saw

the broad leaf of a flower move, and underneath I saw a procession of

creatures, of the size and colour of green and grey grasshoppers,

bearing a body laid out on a rose-leaf, which they buried with songs,

and then disappeared. It was a fairy's funeral!"

Blake settled at Felpham to be near Hayley, for whom he had a number of

commissions to execute. He engraved illustrations to Hayley's works,

and painted eighteen heads for Hayley's library--among them,

Shakespeare, Homer, and Hayley himself; but all have vanished, the

present owner knows not where.

In some verses which Blake addressed to Anna Flaxman, the wife of the

sculptor, in September, 1800, a few days before moving from London to

the Sussex coast, he says:--

This song to the flower of Flaxman's joy;

To the blossom of hope, for a sweet decoy;

Do all that you can and all that you may

To entice him to Felpham and far away.

Away to sweet Felpham, for Heaven is there;

The ladder of Angels descends through the air,

On the turret its spiral does softly descend,

Through the village then winds, at my cot it does end.

[Sidenote: THE PROPHETS AT FELPHAM]

Blake's house still stands, a retired, thatched cottage, facing the sea,

but some distance from it. In a letter to Flaxman a little later, he

says, "Felpham is a sweet place for study, because it is more spiritual

than London. Heaven opens here on all sides its golden gates; the

windows are not obstructed by vapours; voices of celestial inhabitants

are more distinctly heard, their forms more distinctly seen; and my

cottage is also a shadow of their houses." Beside the sea Blake communed

with the spirits of Dante and Homer, Milton and the Hebrew Prophets.

Blake's sojourn at Felpham ended in 1803. A grotesque and annoying

incident marred its close, the story of which, as told by the poet in a

letter to Mr. Butler, certainly belongs to the history of Sussex. It

should, however, first be stated that an ex-soldier in the Royal

Dragoons, named John Scholfield, had accused Blake of uttering seditious

words. The letter runs:--"His enmity arises from my having turned him

out of my garden, into which he was invited as an assistant by a

gardener at work therein, without my knowledge that he was so invited. I

desired him, as politely as possible, to go out of the garden; he made

me an impertinent answer. I insisted on his leaving the garden; he

refused. I still persisted in desiring his departure. He then threatened

to knock out my eyes, with many abominable imprecations, and with some

contempt for my person; it affronted my foolish pride. I therefore took

him by the elbows, and pushed him before me until I had got him out.

There I intended to have left him; but he, turning about, put himself

into a posture of defiance, threatening and swearing at me. I, perhaps

foolishly and perhaps not, stepped out at the gate, and, putting aside

his blows, took him again by the elbows, and, keeping his back to me,

pushed him forward down the road about fifty yards--he all the while

endeavouring to turn round and strike me, and raging and cursing, which

drew out several neighbours. At length when I had got him to where he

was quartered, which was very quickly done, we were met at the gate by

the master of the house--the Fox Inn--(who is the proprietor of my

cottage) and his wife and daughter, and the man's comrade, and several

other people. My landlord compelled the soldiers to go indoors, after

many abusive threats against me and my wife from the two soldiers; but

not one word of threat on account of sedition was uttered at that time."

[Sidenote: WILLIAM BLAKE, TRAITOR]

As a result, Blake was haled before the magistrates and committed for

trial. The trial was held in the Guildhall at Chichester, on January

11th, 1804. Hayley, in spite of having been thrown from his horse on a

flint with, says Gilchrist, Blake's biographer, "more than usual

violence" was in attendance to swear to the poet's character, and

Cowper's friend Rose, a clever barrister, had been retained. According

to the report in the County paper, "William Blake, an engraver at

Felpham, was tried on a charge exhibited against him by two soldiers for

having uttered seditious and treasonable expressions, such as 'd--n the

king, d--n all his subjects, d--n his soldiers, they are all slaves;

when Buonaparte comes, it will be cut-throat for cut-throat, and the

weakest must go to the wall; I will help him; &c., &c.'" Blake

electrified the court by calling out "False!" in the midst of the

military evidence, the invented character of which was, however, so

obvious that an acquittal resulted. "In defiance of all decency," the

spectators cheered, and Hayley carried off the sturdy Republican (as he

was at heart) to Mid Lavant, to sup at Mrs. Poole's.

[Sidenote: BLAKE'S FLASHING EYE]

Mr. Gilchrist found an old fellow who had been present at the trial,

drawn thither by the promise of seeing the great man of the

neighbourhood, Mr. Hayley. All that he could remember was Blake's

flashing eye.

The Fox Inn, by the way, is still as it was, but the custom, I fancy,

goes more to the Thatched House, which adds to the charms of refreshment

a museum containing such treasures as a petrified cocoanut, the skeleton

of a lobster twenty-eight years old, and a representation of Moses in

the bulrushes.

A third and fourth great man, of a different type both from Hayley and

Blake, met at Felpham in 1819. One was Cyril Jackson, Dean of Christ

Church, who, lying on his death-bed in the Manor House, was visited by

the other--his old pupil, the First Gentleman in Europe.

FOOTNOTE:

[2] The Sussex provincial name for the whimbrel.

[Illustration: _Arundel._]

CHAPTER VII

ARUNDEL AND NEIGHBOURHOOD

A feudal town--Castles ruined and habitable--The old religion and

the new--Bevis of Southampton--Lord Thurlow lays an egg--A noble

park--A song in praise of Sussex--The father of cricket.

Seen from the river or from the east side of the Arun valley, Arundel is

the most imposing town in Sussex. Many are larger, many are equally old,

or older; but none wears so unusual and interesting an air, not even

Lewes among her Downs.

Arundel clings to the side of a shaggy hill above the Arun. Castle,

cathedral, church--these are Arundel; the town itself is secondary,

subordinate, feudal. The castle is what one likes a castle to be--a mass

of battlemented stone, with a keep, a gateway, and a history, and yet

more habitable than ever. So many of the rich make no effort to live in

their ancestral halls; and what might be a home, carrying on the

tradition of ages, is so often only a mere show, that to find an

historic castle like Arundel still lived in is very gratifying. In

Sussex alone are several half-ruined houses that the builders could

quickly make habitable once more. Arundel Castle, in spite of time and

the sieges of 1102, 1139, and 1643, is both comfortable and modern;

Arundel still depends for her life upon the complaisance of her

over-lord.

[Sidenote: MODERN MEDIEVALISM]

I know of no town with so low a pulse as this precipitous little

settlement under the shadow of Rome and the Duke. In spite of picnic

parties in the park, in spite of anglers from London, in spite of the

railway in the valley, Arundel is still medieval and curiously foreign.

On a very hot day, as one climbs the hill to the cathedral, one might be

in old France, and certainly in the Middle Ages.

Time's revenges have had their play in this town. Although the church is

still bravely of the establishment, half of it is closed to the Anglican

visitor (the chancel having been adjudged the private property of the

Dukes of Norfolk), and the once dominating position of the edifice has

been impaired by the proximity of the new Roman Catholic church of St.

Philip Neri, which the present Duke has been building these many years.

Within, it is finished, a very charming and delicate feat in stone; but

the spire has yet to come. The old Irish soldier, humorous and

bemedalled, who keeps watch and ward over the fane, is not the least of

its merits.

Although the chancel of the parish church has been closed, permission to

enter may occasionally be obtained. It is rich in family tombs of great

interest and beauty, including that of the nineteenth Earl of Arundel,

the patron of William Caxton. In the siege of Arundel Castle in 1643,

the soldiers of the parliamentarians, under Sir William Waller, fired

their cannon from the church tower. They also turned the church into a

barracks, and injured much stone work beyond repair. A fire beacon

blazed of old on the spire to serve as a mark for vessels entering

Littlehampton harbour.

Bevis of Southampton, the giant who, when he visited the Isle of Wight,

waded thither, was a warder at Arundel Castle; where he ate a whole ox

every week with bread and mustard, and drank two hogsheads of beer.

Hence "Bevis Tower." His sword Morglay is still to be seen in the

armoury of the castle; his bones lie beneath a mound in the park; and

the town was named after his horse. So runs a pretty story, which is,

however, demolished with the ruthlessness that comes so easily to the

antiquary and philologist. Bevis Tower, science declares, was named

probably after another Bevis--there was one at the Battle of Lewes, who

took prisoner Richard, King of the Romans, and was knighted for

it--while Arundel is a corruption of "hirondelle," a swallow. Mr. Lower

mentions that in recent times in Sussex "Swallow" was a common name in

stables, even for heavy dray horses. But before accepting finally the

swallow theory, we ought to hear what Fuller has to say:--"Some will

have it so named from _Arundel_ the _Horse_ of _Beavoice_, the great

_Champion_. I confess it is not without precedence in _Antiquity_ for

_Places_ to take _names_ from _Horses_, meeting with the _Promontory

Bucephalus_ in Peloponesus, where some report the _Horse_ of _Alexander_

buried, and Bellonius will have it for the same cause called _Cavalla_

at this day. But this _Castle_ was so called long before that _Imaginary

Horse_ was _foled_, who cannot be fancied elder than his Master

Beavoice, flourishing after the Conquest, long before which _Arundel_

was so called from the river _Arund_ running hard by it."

[Sidenote: LORD THURLOW LAYS AN EGG]

The owls that once multiplied in the keep have now disappeared. They

were established there a hundred years or so ago by the eleventh Duke,

and certain of them were known by the names of public men. "Please, your

Grace, Lord Thurlow has laid an egg," is an historic speech handed down

by tradition. Lord Thurlow, the owl in question, died at a great age in

1859.

[Illustration: _The Arun at North Stoke._]

[Sidenote: ARUNDEL PARK]

To walk through Arundel Park is to receive a vivid impression of the

size and richness of our little isolated England. Two or three great

towns could be hidden in it unknown to each other. Valley succeeds to

valley; new herds of deer come into sight at almost every turn; as far

as the eye can see the grass hills roll away. Those accustomed to parks

whose deer are always huddled close and whose wall is never distant, are

bewildered by the vastness of this enclosure. Yet one has also the

feeling that such magnificence is right: to so lovely a word as Arundel,

to the Premier Duke and Hereditary Earl Marshal of England, should

fittingly fall this far-spreading and comely pleasaunce. Had Arundel

Park been small and empty of deer what a blunder it would be.

Walking west of Arundel through the vast Rewell Wood, we come suddenly

upon Punch-bowl Green, and open a great green valley, dominated by the

white facade of Dale Park House, below Madehurst, one of the most remote

of Sussex villages.

[Sidenote: SLINDON]

By keeping due west for another mile Slindon is reached. This village is

one of the Sussex backwaters, as one might say. It lies on no road that

any one ever travels except for the purpose of going to Slindon or

coming from it; and those that perform either of these actions are few.

Yet all who have not seen Slindon are by so much the poorer, for Slindon

House is nobly Elizabethan, with fine pictures and hiding-places, and

Slindon beeches are among the aristocracy of trees. And here I should

like to quote a Sussex poem of haunting wistfulness and charm, which was

written by Mr. Hilaire Belloc, who once walked to Rome and is an old

dweller at Slindon:--

[Sidenote: A SOUTH COUNTRY SONG]

THE SOUTH COUNTRY.

When I am living in the Midlands,

That are sodden and unkind,

I light my lamp in the evening:

My work is left behind;

And the great hills of the South Country

Come back into my mind.

The great hills of the South Country

They stand along the sea:

And it's there walking in the high woods

That I could wish to be,

And the men that were boys when I was a boy

Walking along with me.

The men that live in North England

I saw them for a day:

Their hearts are set upon the waste fells,

Their skies are fast and grey:

From their castle-walls a man may see

The mountains far away.

The men that live in West England

They see the Severn strong,

A-rolling on rough water brown

Light aspen leaves along.

They have the secret of the Rocks,

And the oldest kind of song.

But the men that live in the South Country

Are the kindest and most wise,

They get their laughter from the loud surf,

And the faith in their happy eyes

Comes surely from our Sister the Spring,

When over the sea she flies;

The violets suddenly bloom at her feet,

She blesses us with surprise.

I never get between the pines,

But I smell the Sussex air,

Nor I never come on a belt of sand

But my home is there;

And along the sky the line of the Downs

So noble and so bare.

A lost thing could I never find,

Nor a broken thing mend;

And I fear I shall be all alone

When I get towards the end.

Who will there be to comfort me,

Or who will be my friend?

I will gather and carefully make my friends

Of the men of the Sussex Weald,

They watch the stars from silent folds,

They stiffly plough the field.

By them and the God of the South Country

My poor soul shall be healed.

If I ever become a rich man,

Or if ever I grow to be old,

I will build a house with deep thatch

To shelter me from the cold,

And there shall the Sussex songs be sung

And the story of Sussex told.

I will hold my house in the high wood

Within a walk of the sea,

And the men who were boys when I was a boy

Shall sit and drink with me.

[Sidenote: NEWLAND, NYREN, AND SILVER BILLY]

Richard Newland, the father of serious cricket, came from this parish.

He was born in 1718, or thereabouts, and in 1745 he made 88 for England

against Kent. He was left-handed, and the finest bat ever seen in those

days. He taught Richard Nyren, of Hambledon, all the skill and judgment

that that noble general possessed; Nyren communicated his knowledge to

the Hambledon eleven, and the game was made. An interest in historical

veracity compels me to add that William Beldham--Silver Billy--talking

to Mr. Pycroft, discounted some of Nyren's praise. "Cricket," he said,

"was played in Sussex very early, before my day at least [he was born in

1766]; but that there was no good play I know by this, that Richard

Newland, of Slindon in Sussex, as you say, sir, taught old Richard

Nyren, and that no Sussex man could be found to play Newland. Now a

second-rate man of our parish beat Newland easily; so you may judge what

the rest of Sussex then were." But this is disregarding the

characteristic uncertainty of the game.

If one would spend a day far from mankind, on high ground, there is no

better way than to walk from Arundel through Houghton Forest (where, as

we have seen, Charles II. avoided the Governor) to Cocking.

CHAPTER VIII

LITTLEHAMPTON

A children's paradise--Wind-swept villages--Cary and

Coleridge--Sussex folklore--Climping--Richard Jefferies and

Sussex--John Taylor the Water Poet--Highdown Hill--A miller in love

with death--A digression on mills and millers--Treason at

Patching--A wife in a thousand--A Sussex truffler--The Palmer

triplets.

Littlehampton is favoured in having both sea and river. It also has

lawns between the houses and the beach, as at Dieppe, and is as nearly a

children's paradise as exists. The sea at low tide recedes almost beyond

the reach of the ordinary paddler, which is as it should be except for

those that would swim. A harbour, a pier, a lighthouse, a windmill--all

these are within a few yards of each other. On the neighbouring beach,

springing from the stones, you find the yellow-horned poppy, beautiful

both in flower and leaf, and the delicate tamarisk makes a natural hedge

parallel with the sea, to Worthing on the one side, and to Bognor on the

other.

The little villages in the flats behind the eastern tamarisk

hedge--Rustington, Preston, Ferring, are, in summer, veritable sun

traps, with their white walls dazzling in radiance. Such trees as grow

about here all bow to the north-east, bent to that posture by the

prevailing south-west winds. A Sussex man, on the hills or south of

them, lost at night, has but to ascertain the outline of a tree, and he

may get his bearings. If he cannot see so much as that he has but to

feel the bark for lichen, which grows on the north east, or lee, side.

It was at Littlehampton in September, 1817, that Coleridge met Cary, the

translator of Dante. Cary was walking on the beach, reciting Homer to

his son. Up came a noticeable man with large grey eyes: "Sir, yours is a

face I should know. I am Samuel Taylor Coleridge."

[Sidenote: A CHURCH DUEL]

The county paper for February 27, 1796, has this paragraph: "On Monday

last a duel was fought betwixt Mr. R----n and Lieut. B----y, both of

Littlehampton, in a field near that place, which, after the discharge of

each a pistol, terminated without bloodshed. The dispute, we understand,

originated about a pew in the parish church."

A local proverb says that if you eat winkles in March it is as good as a

dose of medicine; which reminds me that Sussex has many wise sayings of

its own. Here is a piece of Sussex counsel in connection with the

roaring month:--

If from fleas you would be free,

On the first of March let all your windows closed be.

I quote two other rhymes:--

If you would wish your bees to thrive

Gold must be paid for every hive;

For when they're bought with other money

There will be neither swarm nor honey.

The first butterfly you see,

Cut off his head across your knee,

Bury the head under a stone

And a lot of money will be your own.

On Whit Sunday the devout Sussex man eats roast veal and gooseberry

pudding. A Sussex child born on Sunday can neither be hanged nor

drowned.

[Sidenote: "CLIMPING FOR PERFECTION"]

West of Littlehampton is an architectural treasure, in the shape of

Climping church, which no one should miss. The way is over the ferry and

along the road to the first signboard, when one strikes northward

towards Ford, and comes suddenly upon this squat and solid fane. A Saxon

church stood here, built by the Prioress of Leominster, before the

Conquest: to Roger de Montgomerie was the manor given by the Conqueror,

as part of the earldom of Arundel and Chichester, together with

Atherington manor, much of which is now, like Selsey's park, under the

Channel. De Montgomerie gave Climping manor to the nuns of Almanesches,

by whom the present Norman fortress-tower (with walls 4-1/4 feet thick)

was added, and in 1253 John de Climping, the vicar, rebuilt the

remainder. The church is thus six and a half centuries old, and parts of

it are older. "Bosham, for antiquity; Boxgrove, for beauty; and

Climping, for perfection" is the dictum of an antiquary quoted by the

present vicar in a little pamphlet-history of his parish. As regards the

Norman doorway, at any rate, he is right: there is nothing in Sussex to

excel that; while in general architectural attraction the building is of

the richest. It is also a curiously homely and ingratiating church.

One of the new windows, representing St. Paul, has a peculiar interest,

as the vicar tells us:--"St. Paul was a prisoner at Rome shortly after

Caractacus, the British Chief, whose daughter, Claudia, married Pudens,

both friends of the Apostle (2 Tim. iv. 21). Pudens afterwards commanded

the Roman soldiers stationed at Regnum (Chichester), and if St. Paul

came to Britain, at Claudia's request (as ancient writers testify), he

certainly would visit Sussex. How close this brings us here in Sussex to

the Bible story!"

At Baylies Court, now a farmhouse, the Benedictine monks of Seez, also

proteges of Robert de Montgomerie, had their chapel, remains of which

are still to be seen.

Climping, which otherwise lives its own life, is the resort of golfers

(who to the vicar's regret play all Sunday and turn Easter Day into "a

Heathen Festival") and of the sportsmen of the Sussex Coursing Club, who

find that the terrified Climping hare gives satisfaction beyond most in

the county.

Of Ford, north of Climping, there is nothing to say, except that popular

rumour has it that its minute and uninteresting church (the antithesis

of Climping) was found one day by accident in a bed of nettles.

[Sidenote: JEFFERIES IN SUSSEX]

A good eastern walk from Littlehampton takes one by the sea to Goring,

and then inland over Highdown Hill to Angmering, and so to Littlehampton

again or to Arundel, our present centre. Goring touches literature in

two places. The great house was built by Sir Bysshe Shelley, grandfather

of the poet; and in the village died, in 1887, Richard Jefferies, author

of _The Story of My Heart_, after a life of ill-health spent in the

service of nature. Many beautiful and sympathetic descriptions of Sussex

are scattered about in Jefferies' books of essays, notably, "To

Brighton," "The South Down Shepherd," and "The Breeze on Beachy Head" in

_Nature near London_; "Clematis Lane," "Nature near Brighton," "Sea, Sky

and Down," and "January in the Sussex Woods" in _The Life of the

Fields_; "Sunny Brighton" in _The Open Air_, and "The Country-Side,

Sussex" and "Buckhurst Park" in _Field and Hedgerow_. Jefferies had a

way of blending experiences and concealing the names of places, which

makes it difficult to know exactly what part of Sussex he is describing;

but I think I could lead anyone to Clematis Lane. I might, by the way,

have remarked of South Harting that the luxuriance of the clematis in

its hedges is unsurpassed.

John Taylor, the water poet, has a doggerel narrative entitled "A New

Discovery by Sea with a Wherry from London to Salisbury," 1623, wherein

he mentions a woful night with fleas at Goring, and pens a couplet

worthy to take a place with the famous description of a similar

visitation in _Eothen_:--

Who in their fury nip'd and skip'd so hotly,

That all our skins were almost turned to motley.

[Sidenote: JOHN TAYLOR AND THE CONSTABLE]

Taylor gives us in the same record a pleasant picture of the Sussex

constable in 1623:--

The night before a Constable there came,

Who asked my trade, my dwelling, and my name,

My businesse, and a troupe of questions more,

And wherefore we did land vpon that shore?

To whom I fram'd my answers true and fit,

(According to his plenteous want of wit)

But were my words all true or if I ly'd

With neither I could get him satisfi'd.

He ask'd if we were Pyrats? We said No,

(_As if we had we would haue told him so_)

He said that Lords sometimes would enterprise

T' escape and leaue the Kingdome in disguise:

But I assur'd him on my honest word

That I was no disguised Knight or Lord.

He told me then that I must goe sixe miles

T' a Justice there, Sir John or else Sir Giles:

I told him I was lothe to goe so farre,

And he told me he would my journey barre.

Thus what with Fleas and with the seuerall prates

Of th' officer, and his _Ass_-sociats

We arose to goe, but Fortune bade us stay:

The Constable had stolne our oares away,

And borne them thence a quarter of a mile

Quite through a Lane beyond a gate and stile;

And hid them there to hinder my depart,

For which I wish'd him hang'd with all my heart.

A plowman (for us) found our Oares againe,

Within a field well fil'd with Barley Graine.

Then madly, gladly, out to sea we thrust,

'Gainst windes and stormes, and many a churlish Gust,

By _Kingston_ Chappelle and by _Rushington_,

By _Little-Hampton_ and by _Middleton_.

[Sidenote: THE MILLER AND SWEET DEATH]

Highdown, above Goring, is a good hill in itself, conical in shape, as a

hill should be according to the exacting ideas of childhood, with a

sweeping view of the coast and the Channel; but its fame as a resort of

holiday makers comes less from its position and height than from the

circumstance that John Oliver is buried upon it. John Oliver was the

miller of Highdown Hill. When not grinding corn he seems to have busied

himself with thoughts upon the necessary end of all things, to such an

extent that his meditations on the subject gradually became a mania.

His coffin was made while he was still a young man, and it remained

under his bed until its time was ripe, fitted--to bring it to a point of

preparedness unusual even with the Chinese, those masters of

anticipatory obsequies--with wheels, which the miller, I doubt not,

regularly oiled. John Oliver did not stop there. Having his coffin

comfortably at hand, he proceeded to erect his tomb. This was built in

1766, with tedious verses upon it from the miller's pen; while in an

alcove near the tomb was a mechanical arrangement of death's-heads which

might keep the miller's thoughts from straying, when, as with Dr.

Johnson's philosopher, cheerfulness would creep in.

The miller lived in the company of his coffin, his tomb, and his

_mementi mori_, until 1793, when at the age of eighty-four his hopes

were realised. Those who love death die old.

Between two and three thousand persons attended the funeral; no one was

permitted to wear any but gay clothes; and the funeral sermon was read

by a little girl of twelve, from the text, Micah vii. 8, 9.

[Sidenote: A DIGRESSION ON MILLS]

The mill of John Oliver has vanished, nothing but a depression in the

turf now indicating where its foundations stood. Too many Sussex

windmills have disappeared. Clayton still has her twain, landmarks for

many miles--I have seen them on exceptionally clear days from the

Kentish hills--and other windmills are scattered over the county; but

many more than now exist have ceased to be, victims of the power of

steam. There is probably no contrast aesthetically more to the

disadvantage of the modern substitute than that of the steam mill of

to-day with the windmill of yesterday. The steam mill is always ugly,

always dusty, always noisy, usually in a town. The windmill stands high

and white, a thing of life and radiance and delicate beauty, surrounded

by grass, in communion with the heavens. Such noise as it has is

elemental, justifiable, like a ship's cordage in a gale. No one would

paint a steam mill; a picture with a windmill can hardly be a failure.

Constable, who knew everything about the magic of windmills, painted

several in Sussex--one even at Brighton.

Brighton now has but one mill. There used to be many: one in the West

Hill road, a comelier landmark than the stucco Congregational tower that

has taken its place close by and serves as the town's sentinel from

almost every point of approach. In 1797 a miller near Brighton

anticipated American enterprise by moving his mill bodily to a place two

miles distant by the help of eighty oxen.

Another weakness of steam mills is that they are apparently without

millers--at least there is no unmistakable dominating presence in a

white hat, to whom one can confidently apply the definite article, as in

the mill on the hill. Millers' men there are in plenty, but the miller

is lacking. This is because steam mills belong to companies. Thus, with

the passing of the windmill we lose also the miller, that notable figure

in English life and tradition; always jolly, if the old songs are true;

often eccentric, as the story of John Oliver has shown; and usually a

character, as becomes one who lives by the four winds, or by water--for

the miller of tradition was often found in a water-mill too. The

water-miller's empire has been threatened less than that of the

windmill, for there is no sudden cessation of water power as of wind

power. Sussex still has many water-mills--cool and splashing homes of

peaceful bustle. Long may they endure.

Highdown Hill has other associations. In 1812 the Gentlemen of the Weald

met the Gentlemen of the Sea-coast at cricket on its dividing summit.

The game, which was for one hundred guineas, was a very close thing, the

Gentlemen of the Weald winning by only seven runs. Among the Gentlemen

of the Sea-coast was Mr. Osbaldeston, while the principal Gentleman of

the Weald was Mr. E. H. Budd.

A mile north of Highdown Hill, in a thickly wooded country, are Patching

and Clapham; Patching celebrated for its pond, which washes the

high-road to Arundel, and Clapham for its woods. Three hundred and more

years ago Patching Copse was the scene of a treasonable meeting between

William Shelley, an ancestor of the poet, one branch of whose family

long held Michelgrove (where Henry VIII. was entertained by our

plotter's grandfather), and Charles Paget: sturdy Roman Catholics both,

who thus sought each other out, on the night of September 16, 1583, to

confer as to the possibility of invading England, deposing Elizabeth,

and setting Mary Queen of Scots upon the throne. Nothing came of the

plot save the imprisonment of Shelley (who was condemned to death but

escaped the sentence) and the flight of Paget, to hatch further treason

abroad.

[Sidenote: THE PERFECT WIFE]

The last Shelley to hold Michelgrove, now no more, was Sir John, who,

after it had been in the family for three hundred and fifty years, sold

it in 1800. This was the Sir John Shelley who composed the following

epitaph in Clapham church (one of Sir Gilbert Scott's restorations) to

commemorate the very remarkable virtues of his lady--untimely snatched

from his side:--

Here Lyeth the Body of Wilhelmina Shelley

who departed this Life the 21st of March 1772

Aged Twenty three years.

She was a pattern for the World to follow:

Such a being both in form and mind perhaps never existed before.

A most dutiful, affectionate, and Virtuous Wife,

A most tender and Anxious parent,

A most sincere and constant Friend,

A most amiable and elegant companion;

Universally Benevolent, generous, and humane;

The Pride of her own Sex,

The admiration of ours.

She lived universally belov'd, and admir'd

She died as generally rever'd, and regretted,

A loss felt by all who had the happiness of knowing Her,

By none to be compar'd to _that_ of her disconsolate, affectionate, Loving,

& in this World everlastingly Miserable Husband,

Sir JOHN SHELLEY,

Who has caused this inscription to be Engrav'd.

Horsfield tells us that "the beechwoods in this parish [Patching] and

its immediate neighbourhood are very productive of the Truffle

(_Lycoperdon tuber_). About forty years ago William Leach came from the

West Indies, with some hogs accustomed to hunt for truffles, and

proceeding along the coast from the Land's End, in Cornwall, to the

mouth of the River Thames, determined to fix on that spot where he found

them most abundant. He took four years to try the experiment, and at

length settled in this parish, where he carried on the business of

truffle-hunter till his death."

Angmering, which we may take on our return to Arundel, is a typically

dusty Sussex village, with white houses and thatched roofs, and a rather

finer church than most. On our way back to Arundel, in the middle of a

wood, a little more than a mile from Angmering, to the west, we come

upon an interesting relic of a day when tables bore nobler loads than

now they do: a decoy pond formed originally to supply wild duck to the

kitchen of Arundel Castle, but now no longer used. The long tapering

tunnels of wire netting, into which the tame ducks of the decoy lured

their wild cousins, are still in place, although the wire has largely

perished.

[Sidenote: THE PALMER TRIPLETS]

At an old house near the Decoy (now converted into cottages), which any

native will gladly and amusedly point out, lived, in the reign of Henry

VIII., Lady Palmer, the famous mother of the Palmer triplets, who were

distinguished from other triplets, not only by being born each on a

successive Sunday but by receiving each the honour of knighthood. The

curious circumstances of their birth seem to be well attested.

[Illustration: _Gateway, Amberley Castle._]

CHAPTER IX

AMBERLEY AND PARHAM

Sussex fish--A straw-blown village--A painter of Sussex light--A

castle only in name--Parham's treasures--The Parham

heronry--Storrington and the sagacious Jack Pudding--A Sussex

audience.

[Sidenote: SUSSEX FISH]

Five miles to the north of Arundel by road (over the Arun at Houghton's

ancient bridge, restored by the bishops of Chichester in the fifteenth

century), and a few minutes by rail, is Amberley, the fishing metropolis

of Sussex, where, every Sunday in the season, London anglers meet to

drop their lines in friendly rivalry. "Amerley trout" (as Walton calls

them) and Arundel mullet are the best of the Arun's treasures; and this

reminds me of Fuller's tribute to Sussex fish, which may well be quoted

in this watery neighbourhood: "Now, as this County is eminent for both

_Sea_ and _River-_fish, namely, an _Arundel Mullet_, a _Chichester

Lobster_, a _Shelsey Cockle_, and an _Amerly Trout_; so _Sussex_

aboundeth with more _Carpes_ than any other of this Nation. And though

not so great as _Jovius_ reporteth to be found in the _Lurian Lake_ in

_Italy_, weighing more than fifty pounds, yet those generally of great

and goodly proportion. I need not adde, that _Physicians_ account the

galls of _Carpes_, as also a stone in their heads, to be _Medicinable_;

only I will observe that, because _Jews_ will not eat _Caviare_ made of

_Sturgeon_ (because coming from a fish wanting Scales, and therefore

forbidden in the _Levitical Law_); therefore the _Italians_ make greater

profit of the _Spaun_ of _Carps_, whereof they make a _Red Caviare_,

well pleasing the _Jews_ both in _Palate_ and _Conscience_. All I will

adde of _Carps_ is this, that _Ramus_ himself doth not so much redound

in _Dichotomies_ as they do; seeing no one bone is to be found in their

body, which is not _forked_ or divided into two parts at the end

thereof."

Amberley proper, as distinguished from Amberley of the anglers, is a

mile from the station and is built on a ridge. The castle is the extreme

western end of this ridge, the north side of which descends

precipitously to the marshy plain that extends as far as Pulborough.

Standing on the castle one sees Pulborough church due north--height

calling unto height. The castle is now a farm; indeed, all Amberley is a

huge stockyard, smelling of straw and cattle. It is sheer Sussex--chalky

soil, whitewashed cottages, huge waggons; and one of the best of Sussex

painters, and, in his exquisite modest way, of all painters living,

dwells in the heart of it--Edward Stott, who year after year shows

London connoisseurs how the clear skin of the Sussex boy takes the

evening light; and how the Southdown sheep drink at hill ponds beneath a

violet sky; and that there is nothing more beautiful under the stars

than a whitewashed cottage just when the lamp is lit.

[Sidenote: AMBERLEY AND PARHAM]

Amberley has no right to lay claim to a castle, for the old ruins are

not truly, as they seem, the remains of a castellated stronghold, but

of a crenellated mansion. John Langton, Bishop of Chichester in the

fourteenth century, was the first builder. Previously the Church lands

here had been held very jealously, and in 1200 we find Bishop Gilbert de

Leofard twice excommunicating, and as often absolving, the Earl of

Arundel for poaching (as he termed it) in Houghton Forest. The Church

lost Amberley in the sixteenth century. William Rede, who succeeded

Langton to both house and see, wishing to feel secure in his home,

craved permission to dig a moat around it and to render it both hostile

and defensive. Hence its lion-like mien; but it has known no warfare,

and the castle's mouldering walls now give what assistance they can in

harbouring live stock. Twentieth-century sheds lean against

fourteenth-century masonry; faggots are stored in the moat; lawn tennis

is played in the courtyard; and black pigeons peep from the slits cut

for arquebusiers.

[Illustration: _Amberley Castle._]

Amberley Castle only once intrudes itself in history: Charles II.,

during his flight in 1651, spent a night there under the protection of

Sir John Briscoe, as we saw in Chapter III.

In winter, if you ask an Amberley man where he dwells, he says,

"Amberley, God help us." In summer he says, "Amberley--where _would_ you

live?"

From Amberley to Parham one keeps upon the narrow ridge for a mile or

so, branching off then to the left. Parham's advance guard is seen all

the way--a clump of fir trees, indicating that the soil there changes to

sand.

[Sidenote: A NOBLE DAME]

For two possessions is Parham noted: a heronry in the park, and in the

house a copy of Montaigne with Shakespeare's autograph in it. The house,

a spreading Tudor mansion, is the seat of Lord Zouche, a descendant of

the traveller, Robert Curzon, who wrote _The Monasteries of the Levant_,

that long, leisurely, and fascinating narrative of travel. In addition

to Montaigne, it enshrines a priceless collection of armour, of

incunabula and Eastern MSS. Among the pictures are full lengths of Sir

Philip Sidney and Lady Sidney, and that Penelope D'Arcy--one of Mr.

Hardy's "Noble Dames"--who promised to marry three suitors in turn and

did so. We see her again at Firle Place.

A hiding hole for priests and other refugees is in the long gallery,

access to it being gained through a window seat. There was hidden

Charles Paget after the Babington conspiracy.

[Sidenote: THE PARHAM HERONS]

Parham Park has deer and a lake and an enchanted forest of sombre trees.

On the highest ground in this forest is the clump of firs in which the

famous herons build. The most interesting time to visit the heronry is

in the breeding season, for then one sees the lank birds continually

homing from the Amberley Wild Brooks with fishes in their bills and long

legs streaming behind. The noise is tremendous, beyond all rookeries.

Mr. Knox's _Ornithological Rambles_, from which I have already quoted

freely, has this passage: "The herons at Parham assemble early in

February, and then set about repairing their nests, but the trees are

never entirely deserted during the winter months; a few birds, probably

some of the more backward of the preceding season, roosting among their

boughs every night. They commence laying early in March, and the greater

part of the young birds are hatched during the early days of April.

About the end of May they may be seen to flap out of their nests to the

adjacent boughs, and bask for hours in the warm sunshine; but although

now comparatively quiet during the day, they become clamorous for food

as the evening approaches, and indeed for a long time appear to be more

difficult to wean, and less able to shift for themselves, than most

birds of a similar age. They may be observed, as late as August, still

on the trees, screaming for food, and occasionally fed by their parents,

who forage for them assiduously; indeed, these exertions, so far from

being relaxed after the setting of the sun, appear to be redoubled

during the night; for I have frequently disturbed herons when riding by

moonlight among the low grounds near the river, where I have seldom seen

them during the day, and several cottagers in the neighbourhood of

Parham have assured me that their shrill cry may be heard at all hours

of the night, during the summer season, as they fly to and fro overhead,

on their passage between the heronry and the open country.

[Illustration: _Amberley Castle, entrance to Churchyard._]

[Sidenote: MANY MIGRATIONS]

"The history or genealogy of the progenitors of this colony is

remarkable. They were originally brought from Coity Castle, in Wales, by

Lord Leicester's steward, in James the First's time, to Penshurst, in

Kent, the seat of Lord de Lisle, where their descendants continued for

more than two hundred years; from thence they migrated to Michelgrove,

about seventy miles from Penshurst and eight from Parham; here they

remained for nearly twenty years, until the proprietor of the estate

disposed of it to the late Duke of Norfolk, who, having purchased it,

not as a residence, but with the view of increasing the local property

in the neighbourhood of Arundel, pulled down the house, and felled one

or two of the trees on which the herons had constructed their nests. The

migration commenced immediately, but appears to have been gradual; for

three seasons elapsed before all the members of the heronry had found

their way over the Downs to their new quarters in the fir-woods of

Parham. This occurred about seventeen years ago [written c. 1848]."

Sussex, says Mr. Borrer, author of _The Birds of Sussex_, has two other

large heronries--at Windmill Hill Place, near Hailsham, and Brede, near

Winchelsea--and some smaller ones, one being at Molecomb, above

Goodwood.

Betsy's Oak in Parham Park is said to be so called because Queen

Elizabeth sat beneath it. But another and more probable legend calls it

Bates's Oak, after Bates, an archer at Agincourt in the retinue of the

Earl of Arundel (and in _Henry V._). Good Queen Bess, however, dined in

the hall of Parham House in 1592. At Northiam, in East Sussex, we shall

come (not to be utterly baulked) to a tree under which she truly did sit

and dine too.

[Sidenote: JACK PUDDING'S WISDOM]

Beyond Parham, less than two miles to the east, is Storrington, a quiet

Sussex village far from the rail and the noise of the world, with the

Downs within hail, and fine sparsely-inhabited country between them and

it to wander in. The church is largely modern. I find the following

sententious paragraph in the county paper for 1792:--"This is an age of

_Sights_ and _polite entertainment_ in the country as well as in the

city.--The little town of _Storrington_ has lately been visited by a

_Company of Comedians_,--_a Mountebank Doctor_,--and a _Puppet Show_.

One day the Doctor's _Jack Pudding_ finding the shillings come in but

slowly, exclaimed to his Master, 'Gad, Sir, it is not worth _our_ while

to stay here any longer, _players_ have got all the _gold_, _we_ all the

_silver_, and _Punch_ all the _copper_, so, like sagacious locusts, let

us migrate from the place we helped to impoverish."

[Illustration: _Amberley Church._]

[Sidenote: A TRAVELLING CIRCUS]

[Sidenote: A TIME-HONOURED JOKE]

This reminds me that I saw recently at Petworth, whither we are now

moving, a travelling circus whose programme included a comic interlude

that cannot have received the slightest modification since it was first

planned, perhaps hundreds of years ago. It was sheer essential elemental

horse-play straight from Bartholomew Fair, and the audience received it

with rapture that was vouchsafed to nothing else. The story would be too

long to tell; but briefly, it was a dumb show representation of the

visit of a guest (the clown) to a wife, unknown to her husband. The

scenery consisted of a table, a large chest, a heap of straw and a huge

barrel. The fun consisted in the clown, armed with a bladder on a

string, hiding in the barrel, from which he would spring up and deliver

a sounding drub upon the head of whatever other character--husband or

policeman--might be passing, to their complete perplexity. They were, of

course, incapable of learning anything from experience. At other times

he hid himself or others in the straw, in the chest, or under the table.

When, in a country district such as this, one hears the laughter that

greets so venerable a piece of pantomime, one is surprised that circus

owners think it worth while to secure novelties at all. The primitive

taste of West Sussex, at any rate, cannot require them.

[Illustration: _Pulborough Church._]

CHAPTER X

PETWORTH

Pulborough and its past--Stopham--Fittleworth--The natural

advantages of the Swan--Petworth's feudal air--An historical

digression naming many Percies--The third Earl of Egremont--The

Petworth pictures--Petworth Park--Cobbett's opinion--The

vicissitudes of the Petworth ravens--Tillington's use to business

men--A charming epitaph--Noah Mann of the Hambledon Club.

Petworth is not on the direct road to Horsham, which is our next centre,

but it is easily gained from Arundel by rail (changing at Pulborough),

or by road through Bury, Fittleworth, and Egdean.

[Sidenote: AN ANCIENT FORTRESS]

Pulborough is now nothing: once it was a Gibraltar, guarding Stane

Street for Rome. The fort was on a mound west of the railway,

corresponding with the church mound on the east. Here probably was a

catapulta and certainly a vigilant garrison. Pulborough has no invader

now but the floods, which every winter transform the green waste at her

feet into a silver sea, of which Pulborough is the northern shore and

Amberley the southern. The Dutch _polder_ are not flatter or greener

than are these intervening meadows. The village stands high and dry

above the water level, extended in long line quite like a seaside town.

Excursionists come too, as to a watering place, but they bring rods and

creels and return at night with fish for the pan.

Between Pulborough and Petworth lie Stopham and Fittleworth, both on the

Rother, which joins the Arun a little to the west of Pulborough. Stopham

has the most beautiful bridge in Sussex, dating from the fourteenth

century, and a little church filled with memorials of the Bartelott

family. One of Stopham's rectors was Thomas Newcombe, a descendant of

the author of _The Faerie Queene_, the friend of the author of _Night

Thoughts_, and the author himself of a formidable poem in twelve books,

after Milton, called _The Last Judgment_.

Fittleworth has of late become an artists' Mecca, partly because of its

pretty woods and quaint architecture, and partly because of the warm

welcome that is offered by the "Swan," which is probably the most

ingeniously placed inn in the world. Approaching it from the north it

seems to be the end of all things; the miles of road that one has

travelled apparently have been leading nowhere but to the "Swan."

Runaway horses or unsettled chauffeurs must project their passengers

literally into the open door. Coming from the south, one finds that the

road narrows by this inn almost to a lane, and the "Swan's" hospitable

sign, barring the way, exerts such a spell that to enter is a far

simpler matter than to pass.

[Illustration: _At Pulborough._]

[Sidenote: AN IRRESISTIBLE INN]

The "Swan" is a venerable and rambling building, stretching itself

lazily with outspread arms; one of those inns (long may they be

preserved from the rebuilders!) in which one stumbles up or down into

every room, and where eggs and bacon have an appropriateness that make

them a more desirable food than ambrosia. The little parlour is

wainscoted with the votive paintings--a village Diploma Gallery--of

artists who have made the "Swan" their home.

Fittleworth has a dual existence. In the south it is riparian and low,

much given to anglers and visitors. In the north it is high and sandy,

with clumps of firs, living its own life and spreading gorse-covered

commons at the feet of the walker. Between its southern border and

Bignor Park is a superb common of sand and heather, an inland paradise

for children.

Petworth station and Petworth town are far from being the same thing,

and there are few more fatiguing miles than that which separates them. A

'bus, it is true, plies between, but it is one of those long, close

prisons with windows that annihilate thought by their shattering

unfixedness. Petworth's spire is before one all the way, Petworth itself

clustering on the side of the hill, a little town with several streets

rather than a great village all on one artery. I say several streets,

but this is dead in the face of tradition, which has a joke to the

effect that a long timber waggon once entered Petworth's single,

circular street, and has never yet succeeded in emerging. I certainly

met it.

[Sidenote: THE SHADOW OF THE PEER]

The town seems to be beneath the shadow of its lord even more than

Arundel: it is like Pompeii, with Vesuvius emitting glory far above. One

must, of course, live under the same conditions if one is to feel the

authentic thrill; the mere sojourner cannot know it. One wonders, in

these feudal towns, what it would be like to leave democratic London or

the independence of one's country fastness, and pass for a while beneath

the spell of a Duke of Norfolk, or a Baron Leconfield--a spell possibly

not consciously cast by them at all, but existing none the less, largely

through the fostering care of the townspeople on the rent-roll, largely

through the officers controlling the estates; at any rate unmistakable,

as present in the very air of the streets as is the presage of a

thunderstorm. Surely, to be so dominated, without actual influence,

must be very restful. Petworth must be the very home of low-pulsed

peace; and yet a little oppressive too, with the great house and its

traditions at the top of the town--like a weight on the forehead. I

should not like to make Petworth my home, but as a place of pilgrimage,

and a stronghold of architectural taste, it is almost unique.

[Illustration: _Stopham Bridge._]

[Sidenote: PETWORTH'S HISTORY]

[Sidenote: HOTSPUR'S DESCENDANTS]

In the Domesday Book Petworth is called Peteorde. It was rated at 1,080

acres, and possessed a church, a mill worth a sovereign, a river

containing 1,620 eels, and pannage for 80 hogs. In the time of the

Confessor the manor was worth _L_18; a few years later the price went down

to ten shillings. Robert de Montgomerie held Petworth till 1102, when he

defied the king and lost it. Adeliza, widow of Henry I., having a

brother Josceline de Louvaine whom she wished to benefit, Petworth was

given to him. Josceline married Agnes, daughter of William de Percy, the

descendant of one of the Conqueror's chief friends, and, doing so, took

his name. In course of time came Harry Hotspur, whose sword, which he

swung at the Battle of Shrewsbury, is kept at Petworth House. The second

Earl was his son, also Henry, who fought at Chevy Chase; he was not,

however, slain there, as the balladmonger says, but at St. Albans.

Henry, the third Earl, fell at Towton; Henry, the fourth Earl, was

assassinated at Cock Lodge, Thirsk; Henry, the fifth Earl, led a

regiment at the Battle of the Spurs; Henry, the sixth Earl, fell in love

with Anne Boleyn, but had the good sense not to let Henry the Eighth see

it. Thomas, his brother, was beheaded for treason; Thomas, the seventh

Earl, took arms against Queen Elizabeth, and was beheaded in Scotland;

Henry, the eighth Earl, attempted to liberate Mary Queen of Scots, and

was imprisoned in the Tower, where he slew himself; Henry, the ninth

Earl, was accused of assisting Guy Fawkes and locked up for fifteen

years. He was set at liberty only after paying _L_30,000, and promising

never to go more than thirty miles from Petworth House. This kept him

out of London.

The last two noble Earls of Northumberland were Algernon, Lord High

Admiral of England, who married Lady Anna Cecil, and planted an oak in

the Park (it is still there) to commemorate the union; and Josceline,

eleventh Earl, who died in 1670, leaving no son. He left, however, a

daughter, a little Elizabeth, Baroness Percy, who had countless suitors

and was married three times before she was sixteen. Her third husband

was Charles Seymour, sixth Duke of Somerset, who became in time the

father of thirteen children. Of these all died save three girls, and a

boy, Algernon, who became seventh Duke of Somerset. Through one of the

daughters, Catherine, who married Sir William Wyndham, the estates fell

to the present family. The next important Lord of Petworth was George

O'Brien Wyndham, third Earl of Egremont, the friend of art and

agriculture, who collected most of the pictures. The present owner is

the third Baron Leconfield.

[Illustration: _The Rother at Fittleworth._]

[Sidenote: THE EARL AND THE HOUSEMAID]

C. R. Leslie, who painted more than one picture in the Petworth gallery,

has much to say in his _Autobiographical Recollections_ of its noble

founder the third Earl, his generosity, courtesy, kindly thoughtfulness,

and extreme modesty of bearing. One story contains half his biography. I

give it in Leslie's words. After referring to his Lordship's

men-servants and their importance in the house, the painter continues:

"His own dress, in the morning, being very plain, he was sometimes by

strangers mistaken for one of them. This happened with a maid of one of

his lady guests, who had not been at Petworth before. She met him,

crossing the hall, as the bell was ringing for the servants' dinner, and

said: 'Come, old gentleman, you and I will go to dinner together, for I

can't find my way in this great house.' He gave her his arm, and led her

to the room where the other maids were assembled at their table, and

said: 'You dine here, I don't dine till seven o'clock.'"

[Sidenote: THE PETWORTH PICTURES]

On certain days in the week visitors are allowed to walk through the

galleries of Petworth House. The parties are shown by a venerable

servitor into the audit room, a long bare apartment furnished with a

statue and the heads of stags; and at the stroke of the hour a

commissionaire appears at the far door and leads the way to the office,

where a visitors' book is signed. Then the real work of the day begins,

and for fifty-five minutes one passes from Dutch painters to Italian,

from English to French: amid boors by Teniers, beauties by Lely,

landscapes by Turner, carvings by Grinling Gibbons. The commissionaire

knows them all. The collection is a fine one, but the lighting is bad,

and the conditions under which it is seen are not favourable to the

intimate appreciation of good art. One finds one's attention wandering

too often from the soldier with his little index rattan to the deer on

the vast lawn that extends from the windows to the lake--the lake that

Turner painted and fished in. Hobbemas, Vandycks, Murillos--what are

these when the sun shines and the ceaseless mutations of a herd of deer

render the middle distance fascinating? Among the more famous pictures

is a Peg Woffington by Hogarth, not here "dallying and dangerous," but

demure as a nun; also the "Modern Midnight Conversation" from the same

hand; three or four bewitching Romneys; a room full of beauties of the

Court of Queen Anne; Henry VIII by Holbein; a wonderful Claude Lorraine;

a head of Cervantes attributed to Velasquez; and four views of the

Thames by Turner. Hazlitt, in his _Sketches of the Picture Galleries of

England_, says of this collection:--"We wish our readers to go to

Petworth ... where they will find the coolest grottoes and the finest

Vandykes in the world."

[Sidenote: A PICTORAL PARK]

Lord Leconfield's park has not the remarkable natural formation of the

Duke of Norfolk's, nor the superb situation of the Duke of Richmond and

Gordon's, with its Channel prospects, but it is immense and imposing.

Also it is unreal: it is like a park in a picture. This effect may be

largely due to the circumstance that _fetes_ in Petworth Park have been

more than once painted; but it is due also, I think, to the shape and

colour of the house, to the lake, to the extent of the lawn, to the

disposition of the knolls, and to the deer. A scene-painter, bidden to

depict an English park, would produce (though he had never been out of

the Strand) something very like Petworth. It is the normal park of the

average imagination on a large scale.

[Illustration: _Almshouse at Petworth._]

Cobbett wrote thus of Petworth:--"The park is very fine, and consists of

a parcel of those hills and dells which nature formed here when she was

in one of her most sportive moods. I have never seen the earth flung

about in such a wild way as round about Hindhead and Blackdown, and this

park forms a part of this ground. From an elevated part of it, and,

indeed, from each of many parts of it, you see all around the country to

the distance of many miles. From the south-east to the north-west the

hills are so lofty and so near that they cut the view rather short; but

for the rest of the circle you can see to a very great distance. It is,

upon the whole, a most magnificent seat, and the Jews will not be able

to get it from the _present_ owner, though if he live many years they

will give even him a _twist_."

[Sidenote: THE YOUNG RAVENS]

On an eminence in the west is a tower (near a clump where ravens build),

from which the other parks of this wonderful park-district of Sussex may

be seen: Cowdray to the west, the highest points of Goodwood to the

south-west, the highest points of Arundel to the south-east, and

Parham's dark forest more easterly still. Mr. Knox's account of the

vicissitudes of the Petworth ravens sixty years ago is as interesting as

any history of equal length on the misfortunes of man. Their sufferings

at the hands of keepers and schoolboys read like a page of Foxe. The

final disaster was the spoliation of their nest by a boy, who removed

all four of the children, or "squabs" as he called them. Mr. Knox, who

used to come every day to examine them through his glass, was in

despair, until after much meditation he thought of an expedient. Seeking

out the boy he persuaded him to give up the one "squab" whose wings had

not yet been clipped, and this the ornithologist carried to the clump

and deposited in the ruined nest. The next morning the old birds were to

be seen, just as of old, and that was their last molestation.

Just under the park on the road to Midhurst is Tillington, a little

village with a rather ornamental church, which dates from 1807. There is

nothing to say of Tillington, but I should like to quote a pretty

sentence from Horsfield's _History of Sussex_ concerning the monuments

in the church, in a kind of writing of which we have little

to-day:--"And as the volume, for which this has been written, is likely

to fall chiefly into the hands of men who are occupied almost solely

with the cares and business of this life, this slight reference is made

to the monuments of the dead in order that, should the reader of this

book find, in the present dearth of honesty, of faithfulness, of

disinterested valour and of loyalty, an aching want in his spirit for

such high qualities, let him hence be taught where to go--let him learn

that, though they are rarely found in the busy haunts of men, they are

still preserved and have their home around the sanctuary of the altar of

his God."

[Sidenote: A TREASURY OF ARCHITECTURE]

Petworth should be visited by all young architects; not for the mansion

(except as an object-lesson, for it is like a London terrace), but for

the ordinary buildings in the town. It is a paradise of old-fashioned

architecture. The church is hideous; the new hotel, the "Swan," might be

at Balham; but the old part of the town is perfect. There is an

almshouse (which Mr. Griggs has drawn), in which in its palmy days a

Lady Bountiful might have lived; even the workhouse has charms--it is

the only pretty workhouse I remember: with the exception, perhaps, of

Battle, but that is, however, self-conscious.

Petworth has known, at any rate, one poet. In the churchyard was once

this epitaph, now perhaps obliterated, from a husband's hand:--

"She was! She was! She was, what?

She was all that a woman should be, she was that."

[Sidenote: NOAH MANN]

In a book which takes account of Sussex men and women of the past, it is

hard to keep long from cricket. To the north of Petworth, whither we now

turn, is Northchapel, where was born and died one of the great men of

the Hambledon Club, Noah Mann, who once made ten runs from one hit, and

whose son was named Horace, after the cricketing baronet of the same

name, by special permission. "Sir Horace, by this simple act of

graceful humanity, hooked for life the heart of poor Noah Mann," says

Nyren; "and in this world of hatred and contention, the love even of a

dog is worth living for."

[Illustration: _Petworth Churchyard._]

[Sidenote: GEORGE LEAR'S STRATEGY]

This is Nyren's account of Noah Mann:

"He was from Sussex, and lived at Northchapel, not far from Petworth. He

kept an inn there, and used to come a distance of at least twenty miles

every Tuesday to practise. He was a fellow of extraordinary activity,

and could perform clever feats of agility on horseback. For instance,

when he has been seen in the distance coming up the ground, one or more

of his companions would throw down handkerchiefs, and these he would

collect, stooping from his horse while it was going at full speed. He

was a fine batter, a fine field, and the swiftest runner I ever

remember: indeed, such was his fame for speed, that whenever there was a

match going forward, we were sure to hear of one being made for Mann to

run against some noted competitor; and such would come from the whole

country round. Upon these occasions he used to tell his friends, 'If,

when we are half-way, you see me alongside of my man, you may always bet

your money upon me, for I am sure to win.' And I never saw him beaten.

He was a most valuable fellow in the field; for besides being very sure

of the ball, his activity was so extraordinary that he would dart all

over the ground like lightning. In those days of fast bowling, they

would put a man behind the long-stop, that he might cover both long-stop

and slip; the man always selected for this post was Noah. Now and then

little George Lear (whom I have already described as being so fine a

long-stop), would give Noah the wink to be on his guard, who would

gather close behind him: then George would make a slip on purpose, and

let the ball go by, when, in an instant, Noah would have it up, and into

the wicket-keeper's hands, and the man was put out. This I have seen

done many times, and this nothing but the most accomplished skill in

fielding could have achieved....

"At a match of the Hambledon Club against All England, the club had to

go in to get the runs, and there was a long number of them. It became

quite apparent that the game would be closely fought. Mann kept on

worrying old Nyren to let him go in, and although he became quite

indignant at his constant refusal, our General knew what he was about in

keeping him back. At length, when the last but one was out, he sent Mann

in, and there were then ten runs to get. The sensation now all over the

ground was greater than anything of the kind I ever witnessed before or

since. All knew the state of the game, and many thousands were hanging

upon this narrow point. There was Sir Horace Mann, walking about outside

the ground, cutting down the daisies with his stick--a habit with him

when he was agitated; the old farmers leaning forward upon their tall

old staves, and the whole multitude perfectly still. After Noah had had

one or two balls, Lumpy tossed one a little too far, when our fellow got

in, and hit it out in his grand style. Six of the ten were gained.

Never shall I forget the roar that followed this hit. Then there was a

dead stand for some time, and no runs were made; ultimately, however, he

gained them all, and won the game. After he was out, he upbraided Nyren

for not putting him in earlier. 'If you had let me go in an hour ago'

(said he), 'I would have served them in the same way.' But the old

tactician was right, for he knew Noah to be a man of such nerve and

self-possession, that the thought of so much depending upon him would

not have the paralysing effect that it would upon many others. He was

sure of him, and Noah afterwards felt the compliment. Mann was short in

stature, and, when stripped, as swarthy as a gipsy. He was all muscle,

with no incumbrance whatever of flesh; remarkably broad in the chest,

with large hips and spider legs; he had not an ounce of flesh about him,

but it was where it ought to be. He always played without his hat (the

sun could not affect _his_ complexion), and he took a liking to me as a

boy, because I did the same."

[Sidenote: A LURGASHALL SATIRIST]

Lurgashall, on the road to Northchapel, is a pleasant village, with a

green, and a church unique among Sussex churches by virtue of a curious

wooden gallery or cloister, said to have been built as a shelter for

parishioners from a distance, who would eat their nuncheon there. The

church, which has distinct Saxon remains, once had for rector the

satirical James Bramston, author of "The Art of Politics" and "The Man

of Taste," two admirable poems in the manner of Pope. This is his

unimpeachable advice to public speakers:--

Those who would captivate the well-bred throng,

Should not too often speak, nor speak too long:

Church, nor Church Matters ever turn to Sport,

Nor make _St. Stephen's Chappell, Dover-Court_.

CHAPTER XI

BIGNOR

Burton and the sparrowhawk--James Broadbridge--The quaintest of

grocer's shops--A transformation scene--The Roman

pavement--Charlotte Smith the sonneteer--Parson Dorset's

advice--Humility at West Burton--Bury's Amazons.

Two miles due south from Petworth is Burton Park, a modest sandy

pleasaunce, with some beautiful deer, an ugly house, and a church for

the waistcoat pocket, which some American relic hunter will assuredly

carry off unless it is properly chained.

Mr. Knox has an interesting anecdote of a sparrowhawk at Burton. "In

May, 1844," he writes, "I received from Burton Park an adult male

sparrowhawk in full breeding plumage, which had killed itself, or rather

met its death, in a singular manner. The gardener was watering plants in

the greenhouse, the door being open, when a blackbird dashed in

suddenly, taking refuge between his legs, and at the same moment the

glass roof above his head was broken with a loud crash, and a hawk fell

dead at his feet. The force of the swoop was so great that for a moment

he imagined a stone hurled from a distance to have been the cause of the

fracture."

At Duncton, the neighbouring village, under the hill, James Broadbridge

was born in 1796--James Broadbridge, who was considered the best

all-round cricketer in England in his day. He had a curious hit to

square-leg between the wicket and himself, and he was the first of whom

it was said that he could do anything with the ball except make it

speak. In order to get practice with worthy players he would walk from

Duncton to Brighton, just as Lambert would walk from Reigate to London,

or Noah Mann ride to Hambledon from Petworth. Jim Broadbridge's first

great match was in 1815, for Sussex against the Epsom Club, including

Lambert and Lord Frederick Beauclerk, for a Thousand Guineas.

Broadbridge, after his wont, walked from Duncton to Brighton in the

morning, and he looked so much like a farmer and so little like a

cricketer that there was some opposition to his playing. But he bowled

out three and caught one and Sussex won the money.

Above Duncton rises Duncton Down, which is eight hundred and

thirty-seven feet high, one of our mountains. But we are not to climb it

just now, having business in the weald some four miles away to the east,

past Barlavington and Sutton, at Bignor.

[Sidenote: THE OLDEST GROCER'S SHOP]

Admirers of yew trees should make a point of visiting Bignor churchyard.

The village has also what is probably the quaintest grocer's shop in

England; certainly the completest contrast that imagination could devise

to the modern grocer's shop of the town, plate-glassed, illumined and

stored to repletion. It is close to the yew-shadowed church, and is

gained by a flight of steps. I should not have noticed it as a shop at

all, but rather as a very curious survival of a kindly and attractive

form of architecture, had not a boy, when asked the way to the Roman

pavement, which is Bignor's glory, mentioned "the grocer's" as one of

the landmarks. One's connotation of "grocer" excluding diamond panes,

oak timbers, difficult steps, and reverend antiquity, I was like to lose

the way in earnest, had not a customer emerged opportunely from the

crazy doorway with a basket of goods. It was natural for the boy, whose

pennies had gone in oranges and sweets, to lay the emphasis on the

grocery; but the house externally is the only one of its kind within

miles.

[Sidenote: A ROMAN VILLA]

In some respects there is no more interesting spot in Sussex than the

mangold field on Mr. Tupper's farm that contains the Roman pavements.

Approaching this scene of alien treasure one observes nothing but the

mangolds; here and there a rough shed as if for cattle; and Mr. Tupper,

the grandson of the discoverer of the mosaics, at work with his hoe.

This he lays on one side on the arrival of a visitor, taking in his hand

instead a large key. So far, we are in Sussex pure and simple; mangolds

all around, cattle sheds in front, a Sussex farmer for a companion, the

sky of Sussex over all, and the twentieth century in her nonage. Mr.

Tupper turns the key, throws open the creaking door--and nearly two

thousand years roll away. We are no longer in Sussex but in the province

of the Regni; no longer at Bignor but Ad Decimum, or ten miles from

Regnum (or Chichester) on Stane Street, the direct road to Londinum, in

the residence of a Roman Colonial governor of immense wealth, probably

supreme in command of the province.

The fragments of pavement that have been preserved are mere indications

of the splendour and extent of the building, which must have covered

some acres--a welcome and imposing sight as one descended Bignor Hill by

Stane Street, with its white walls and columns rising from the dark

weald. The pavement in the first shed which Mr. Tupper unlocks has the

figure of Ganymede in one of its circular compartments; and here the

hot-air pipes, by which the villa was heated, may be seen where the

floor has given way. A head of Winter in another of the sheds is very

fine; but it is rather for what these relics stand for, than any

intrinsic beauty, that they are interesting. They are perfect symbols of

a power that has passed away. Nothing else so brings back the Roman

occupation of Sussex, when on still nights the clanking of armour in the

camp on the hill-top could be heard by the trembling Briton in the Weald

beneath; or by day the ordered sounds of marching would smite upon his

ears, and, looking fearfully upwards, he would see a steady file of

warriors descending the slope. I never see a Sussex hill crowned by a

camp, as at Wolstonbury, without seeing also in imagination a flash of

steel. Perhaps one never realises the new terror which the Romans must

have brought into the life of the Sussex peasant--a terror which utterly

changed the Downs from ramparts of peace into coigns of minatory

advantage, and transformed the gaze of security, with which their grassy

contours had once been contemplated, into anxious glances of dismay and

trepidation--one never so realises this terror as when one descends

Ditchling Beacon by the sunken path which the Romans dug to allow a

string of soldiers to drop unperceived into the Weald below. That

semi-subterranean passage and the Bignor pavements are to me the most

vivid tokens of the Roman rule that England possesses.

[Sidenote: PARSON DORSET]

Charlotte Smith, the sonneteer and novelist, was the daughter of

Nicholas Turner, of Bignor Park, which contains, I think, the plainest

house I ever saw in the country. Charlotte Smith, who was all her life

very true to Sussex both in her work and in her homes--she was at school

at Chichester, and lived at Woolbeding and Brighton--was born in 1749. A

century ago her name was as well known as that of Mrs. Hemans was later.

To-day it is unknown, and her poems and novels are unread, nor will

they, I fear, be re-discovered. Her sister, Catherine Turner, afterwards

Mrs. Dorset, was the author of _The Peacock at Home_, a very popular

book for children at the beginning of the last century, suggested by

Roscoe's _Butterfly's Ball_. Mrs. Dorset, by the way, married a son of

the vicar of Walberton and Burlington, whose curious head-dress gave to

an odd-looking tree on Bury hill the name of Parson Dorset's wig--for

the parson was known by his eccentricities far from home. The old story

of advice to a flock: "Do as I say, not as I do," is told also of him.

[Sidenote: VILLAGE HUMILITY]

The little village of West Burton, east of Bignor, is associated in my

mind with an expression of the truest humility. A kindly villager had

given me a glass of water, and I unfolded my map and spread it on her

garden wall to consult while I drank. "Why," she said, "you don't mean

to say a little place like West Burton is marked on a map." This is the

very antipodes of the ordinary provincial pride, which would have the

world's axis project from the ground hard by the village pump. But pride

of place is not, I think, a Sussex characteristic.

Bury, the next hamlet in the east, under the hills, has curious cricket

traditions. In June, 1796, the married women of Bury beat the single

women by 80 runs, and thereupon, uniting forces, challenged any team of

women in the county. Not only did the women of Bury shine at cricket,

but in a Sussex paper for 1791 I find an account of two of Bury's

daughters assuming the names of Big Ben and Mendoza and engaging in a

hardly contested prize fight before a large gathering. Big Ben won.

[Illustration: _The Causeway, Horsham._]

CHAPTER XII

HORSHAM

Horsham stone--Horsham and history--Pressing to death--Juvenile

hostility to statues--Horsham's love of pleasure--Percy Bysshe

Shelley's boyhood--a letter of invitation--Sedition in Sussex--a

Slinfold epitaph--Rudgwick's cricket poet--Warnham pond--Stane

Street--Cobbett at Billingshurst--The new Christ's Hospital.

Horsham is the capital of West Sussex: a busy agricultural town with

horse dealers in its streets, a core of old houses, and too many that

are new. There is in England no more peaceful and prosperous row of

venerable homes than the Causeway, joining Carfax and the church, with

its pollarded limes and chestnuts in line on the pavement's edge, its

graceful gables, jutting eaves, and glimpses of green gardens through

the doors and windows. The sweetest part of Horsham is there. Elsewhere

the town bustles. (I should, however, mention the very picturesque

house--now cottages--on the left of the road as one leaves the station:

as fine a mass of timbers, gables, and oblique lines as one could wish,

making an effect such as time alone can give. The days of such relics

are numbered.)

[Sidenote: HORSHAM STONE]

Horsham not only has beautiful old houses of its own, but it has been

the cause of beautiful old houses all over the county; since nothing so

adds to the charm of a building as a roof of Horsham stone, those large

grey flat slabs on which the weather works like a great artist in

harmonies of moss, lichen, and stain. No roofing so combines dignity and

homeliness, and no roofing except possibly thatch (which, however, is

short-lived) so surely passes into the landscape. But Horsham stone is

no longer used. It is to be obtained for a new house only by the

demolition of an old; and few new houses have rafters sufficiently

stable to bear so great a weight. Our ancestors built for posterity: we

build for ourselves. Our ancestors used Sussex oak where we use fir.

Not only is Horsham stone on the roofs of the neighbourhood: it is also

on the paths, so that one may step from flag to flag for miles, dryshod,

or at least without mud.

Horsham's place in history is unimportant: but indirectly it played its

part in the fourteenth century, by supplying the War Office of that era

with bolts for cross bows, excellent for slaying Scots and Frenchmen.

The town was famous also for its horseshoes. In the days of Cromwell we

find Horsham to have been principally Royalist; one engagement with

Parliamentarians is recorded in which it lost three warriors to

Cromwell's one. In the reign of William III. a young man claiming to be

the Duke of Monmouth, and travelling with a little court who addressed

him as "Your Grace," turned the heads of the women in many an English

town--his good looks convincing them at once, as the chronicler says,

that he was the true prince. Justices sitting at Horsham, however,

having less susceptibility to the testimony of handsome features, found

him to be the son of an innkeeper named Savage, and imprisoned him as a

vagrant and swindler.

[Sidenote: PRESSING TO DEATH]

Horsham was the last place in which pressing to death was practised. The

year was 1735, and the victim a man unknown, who on being charged with

murder and robbery refused to speak. Witnesses having been called to

prove him no mute, this old and horrible sentence, proper (as the law

considered) to his offence and obstinacy, was passed upon him. The

executioner, the story goes, while conveying the body in a wheelbarrow

to burial, turned it out in the roadway at the place where the King's

Head now stands, and then putting it in again, passed on. Not long

afterwards he fell dead at this spot.

The church of St. Mary, which rises majestically at the end of the

Causeway, has a slender shingled spire that reaches a great height--not

altogether, however, without indecision. There is probably an altitude

beyond which shingles are a mistake: they are better suited to the more

modest spire of the small village. The church is remarkable also for

length of roof (well covered with Horsham stone), and it is altogether a

singularly commanding structure. Within is an imposing plainness. The

stone effigy of a knight in armour reclines just to the south of the

altar: son of a branch of the Braose family--of Chesworth, hard by, now

in ruins--of whose parent stock we shall hear more when we reach

Bramber. The knight, Thomas, Lord Braose, died in 1395. The youth of

Horsham, hostile invincibly, like all boys, to the stone nose, have

reduced that feature to the level of the face; or was it the work of the

Puritans, who are known to have shared in the nasal objection? South of

the churchyard is the river, from the banks of which the church would

seem to be all Horsham, so effectually is the town behind it blotted out

by its broad back. On the edge of the churchyard is perhaps the smallest

house in Sussex: certainly the smallest to combine Gothic windows with

the sale of ginger-beer.

[Sidenote: A SCHOOL OF CHAMPIONS]

Horsham seems always to have been fond of pleasure. Within iron railings

in the Carfax, in a trim little enclosure of turf and geraniums, is the

ancient iron ring used in the bull-baiting which the inhabitants

indulged in and loved until as recently as 1814. That the town is still

disposed to entertainment, although of a quieter kind, its walls

testify; for the hoardings are covered with the promise of circus or

conjuror, minstrels or athletic sports, drama or lecture. In July, when

I was there last, Horsham was anticipating a _fete_, in which a mock

bull-fight and a battle of confetti were mere details; while it was

actually in the throes of a fair. The booths filled an open space to the

west of the town known as the Jew's Meadow, and among the attractions

was Professor Adams with his "school of undefeated champions." The

plural is in the grand manner, giving the lie to Cashel Byron's pathetic

plaint:--

It is a lonely thing to be a champion.

Avoiding Professor Adams, and walking due west, one comes after a couple

of miles to Broadbridge Heath, where is Field Place, the birthplace of

the greatest of Sussex poets, and perhaps the greatest of the county's

sons--Percy Bysshe Shelley. The author of _Adonais_ was born in a little

bedroom with a south aspect on August 4, 1792. His father's mother,

_nee_ Michell, was the daughter of a late vicar of Horsham and member of

an old Sussex family; another Horsham cleric, the Rev. Thomas Edwards,

gave the boy his first lessons. Field Place is still very much what it

was in Shelley's early days--the only days it was a home to him. It

stands low, in a situation darkened by the surrounding trees, a rambling

house neither as old as one would wish for aesthetic reasons nor as new

as comfort might dictate. There is no view. In the garden one may in

fancy see again the little boy, like all poetic children, "deep in his

unknown day's employ." Indeed, like all children, might be said, for is

not every child a poet for a little while? In the _Life of Shelley_ by

his cousin Thomas Medwin is printed the following letter to a friend at

Horsham, written when he was nine, which I quote not for any particular

intrinsic merit, but because it helps to bring him before us in his

Field Place days, of which too little is known:--

"_Monday, July 18, 1803._

"MISS KATE,

"HORSHAM,

"SUSSEX.

"DEAR KATE,--We have proposed a day at the pond next Wednesday, and if

you will come to-morrow morning I would be much obliged to you, and if

you could any how bring Tom over to stay all the night, I would thank

you. We are to have a cold dinner over at the pond, and come home to eat

a bit of roast chicken and peas at about nine o'clock. Mama depends upon

your bringing Tom over to-morrow, and if you don't we shall be very much

disappointed. Tell the bearer not to forget to bring me a fairing, which

is some ginger-bread, sweetmeat, hunting-nuts, and a pocket-book. Now I

end.

"I am not

"Your obedient servant,

"P. B. SHELLEY."

[Sidenote: SHELLEY IN SUSSEX]

We are proud to call Shelley the Sussex poet, but he wrote no Sussex

poems, and a singularly uncongenial father (for the cursing of whom and

the King the boy was famous at Eton) made him glad to avoid the county

when he was older. It was, however, to a Sussex lady, Miss Hitchener of

Hurstpierpoint, that Shelley, when in Ireland in 1812, forwarded the box

of inflammatory matter which the Custom House officers

confiscated--copies of his pamphlet on Ireland and his "Declaration of

Rights" broadside, which Miss Hitchener was to distribute among Sussex

farmers who would display them on their walls. These were the same

documents that Shelley used to put in bottles and throw out to sea,

greatly to the perplexity of the spectators and not a little to the

annoyance of the Government. Miss Hitchener, as well as the

revolutionary, was kept under surveillance, as we learn from the letter

from the Postmaster-General of the day, Lord Chichester:--"I return the

pamphlet declaration. The writer of the first is son of Mr. Shelley,

member for the Rape of Bramber, and is by all accounts a most

extraordinary man. I hear he has married a servant, or some person of

very low birth; he has been in Ireland for some time, and I heard of his

speaking at the Catholic Convention. Miss Hitchener, of Hurstpierpoint,

keeps a School there, and is well spoken of; her Father keeps a Publick

House in the Neighbourhood, he was originally a Smuggler and changed his

name from Yorke to Hitchener before he took the Public House. I shall

have a watch upon the daughter and discover whether there is any

Connection between her and Shelley."

[Sidenote: "THE SUSSEX MUSE"]

There Shelley's connection with Sussex may be said to end. Yet a poet,

whether he will or no, is shaped by his early surroundings. In some

verses by Mr. C. W. Dalmon called "The Sussex Muse," I find the

influence of Shelley's surroundings on his mind happily recorded:--

"When Shelley's soul was carried through the air

Toward the manor house where he was born,

I danced along the avenue at Denne,

And praised the grace of Heaven, and the morn

Which numbered with the sons of Sussex men

A genius so rare!

So high an honour and so dear a birth,

That, though the Horsham folk may little care

To laud the favour of his birthplace there,

My name is bless'd for it throughout the earth.

I taught the child to love, and dream, and sing

Of witch, hobgoblin, folk and flower lore;

And often led him by the hand away

Into St. Leonard's Forest, where of yore

The hermit fought the dragon--to this day,

The children, ev'ry Spring,

Find lilies of the valley blowing where

The fights took place. Alas! they quickly drove

My darling from my bosom and my love,

And snatched my crown of laurel from his hair."

[Illustration: _Cottages at Slinfold._]

[Sidenote: SLINFOLD]

Two miles south-west of Field Place, by a footpath which takes us beside

the Arun, here a narrow stream, and a deserted water mill, we come to

the churchyard of Slinfold, a little quiet village with a church of

almost suburban solidity and complete want of Sussex feeling. James

Dallaway, the historian of Western Sussex, was rector here from 1803 to

1834. He lived, however, at Leatherhead, Slinfold being a sinecure. A

Slinfold epitaph on an infant views bereavement with more philosophy

than is usual: in conclusion calling upon Patience thus to comfort the

parents:

Teach them to praise that God with grateful mind

For babes that yet may come, for one still left behind.

A quarter of a mile west is Stane Street, striking London-wards from

Billingshurst, and we may follow it for a while on our way to Rudgwick,

near the county's border. We leave the Roman road (which once ran as

straight as might be as far as Billingsgate, but is now diverted and

lost in many spots) at the drive to Dedisham, on the left, and thus save

a considerable corner. Dedisham, in its hollow, is an ancient

agricultural settlement: a farm and feudatory cottages in perfect

completeness, an isolated self-sufficing community, lacking nothing--not

even the yellow ferret in the cage. The footpath beyond the homestead

crosses a field where we find the Arun once again--here a stream winding

between steep banks, sure home of kingfisher and water-rats.

[Sidenote: RUDGWICK]

Rudgwick, which is three miles farther west along the hard high road, is

a small village on a hill, with the most comfortable looking

church-tower in Sussex hiding behind the inn and the general shop. In

the churchyard lies a Frusannah--a name new to me.

Rudgwick was the birthplace, in 1717, of Reynell Cotton, destined to be

the author of the best song in praise of cricket. He entered Winchester

College in 1730, took orders and became master of Hyde Abbey school in

the same city, and died in 1779. Nyren prints his song in full. This is

the heart of it:--

The wickets are pitch'd now, and measur'd the ground,

Then they form a large ring, and stand gazing around,

Since AJAX fought HECTOR, in sight of all TROY,

No contest was seen with such fear and such joy.

Ye bowlers, take heed, to my precepts attend,

On you the whole fate of the game must depend;

Spare your vigour at first, nor exert all your strength,

But measure each step, and be sure pitch a length.

Ye fieldsmen, look sharp, lest your pains ye beguile;

Move close, like an army, in rank and in file,

When the ball is return'd, back it sure, for I trow

Whole states have been ruin'd by one overthrow.

Ye strikers, observe when the foe shall draw nigh,

Mark the bowler advancing with vigilant eye:

Your skill all depends upon distance and sight,

Stand firm to your scratch, let your bat be upright.

Further west is Loxwood, on the edge of a little-known tract of country,

untroubled by railways, the most unfamiliar village in which is perhaps

Plaistow. Plaistow is on the road to nowhere and has not its equal for

quietude in England. It is a dependency of Kirdford, whence comes the

Petworth marble which we see in many Sussex churches. Shillinglee Park,

the seat of the Earl of Winterton, is hard by.

From these remote parts one may return to Horsham by way of Warnham, on

whose pond Shelley as a boy used to sail his little boat, and where

perhaps he gained that love of navigation which never left him and

brought about his death. Warnham, always a cricketing village, until

lately supplied the Sussex eleven with dashing Lucases; but it does so

no more.

[Sidenote: STANE STREET]

Before passing to the east of Horsham, something ought to be said of one

at least of the villages of the south-west, namely, Billingshurst, on

Stane Street, once an important station between Regnum and Londinum, or

Chichester and London, as we should now say. It has been conjectured

that Stane Street (which we first saw at Chichester under the name of

East Street, and again as it descended Bignor hill in the guise of a

bostel) was constructed by Belinus, a Roman engineer, who gave to the

woods through which he had to cut his way in this part of Sussex the

name, Billingshurst, and to the gate by which London was entered,

Billingsgate.

Billingshurst's place in literature was made by William Cobbett, for it

was here that he met the boy in a smock frock who recalled to his mind

so many of his deeds of Quixotry. The incident is described in the

_Rural Rides_:--

[Sidenote: COBBETT AND THE LITTLE CHAP]

"This village is seven miles from Horsham, and I got here to breakfast

about seven o'clock. A very pretty village, and a very nice breakfast,

in a very neat little parlour of a very decent public-house. The

landlady sent her son to get me some cream, and he was just such a chap

as I was at his age, and dressed just in the same sort of way, his main

garment being a blue smock-frock, faded from wear, and mended with

pieces of _new_ stuff, and, of course, not faded. The sight of this

smock-frock brought to my recollection many things very dear to me. This

boy will, I daresay, perform his part at Billingshurst, or at some place

not far from it. If accident had not taken me from a similar scene, how

many villains and fools, who have been well teased and tormented, would

have slept in peace at night, and have fearlessly swaggered about by

day!

[Illustration: _Rudgwick._]

"When I look at this little chap--at his smock-frock, his nailed shoes,

and his clean, plain, coarse shirt, I ask myself, will anything, I

wonder, ever send this chap across the ocean to tackle the base,

corrupt, perjured Republican Judges of Pennsylvania? Will this little

lively, but, at the same time, simple boy, ever become the terror of

villains and hypocrites across the Atlantic? What a chain of strange

circumstances there must be to lead this boy to thwart a miscreant

tyrant like M'keen, the Chief Justice, and afterwards Governor, of

Pennsylvania, and to expose the corruptions of the band of rascals,

called a 'Senate and a House of Representatives,' at Harrisburgh, in

that state!"

[Sidenote: A VILLAGE DISPUTE]

Billingshurst church has an interesting ceiling, an early brass (to

Thomas and Elizabeth Bartlet), and the record of one of those disputes

over pews which add salt to village life and now and then, as we saw at

Littlehampton, lead to real trouble. The verger (if he be the same) will

tell the story, the best part of which describes the race which was held

every Sunday for certain seats in the chancel, and the tactical

"packing" of the same by the winning party. In the not very remote past

a noble carved chair used to be placed in one of the galleries for the

schoolmaster, and there would he sit during service surrounded by his

boys.

One returns to Horsham from Billingshurst through Itchingfield, where

the new Christ's Hospital has been built in the midst of green fields: a

glaring red-brick settlement which the fastidiously urban ghost of

Charles Lamb can now surely never visit. "Lamb's House," however, is the

name of one of the buildings; and Time the Healer, who can do all

things, may mellow the new school into Elian congeniality.

CHAPTER XIII

ST. LEONARD'S FOREST

Recollections of the Forest--Leonardslee--Michael Drayton and the

iron country--Thomas Fuller on great guns--The serpent of St.

Leonard's Forest--The Headless Horseman--Sussex and nightingales.

To the east of Horsham spreads St. Leonard's Forest, that vast tract of

moor and preserve which, merging into Tilgate Forest, Balcombe Forest,

and Worth Forest, extends a large part of the way to East Grinstead.

Only on foot can we really explore this territory; and a compass as well

as a good map is needed if one is to walk with any decision, for there

are many conflicting tracks, and many points whence no broad outlook is

possible. Remembering old days in St. Leonard's Forest, I recall, in

general, the odoriferous damp open spaces of long grass, suddenly

lighted upon, over which silver-washed fritillaries flutter; and, in

particular, a deserted farm, in whose orchard (it must have been late

June) was a spreading tree of white-heart cherries in full bearing. One

may easily, even a countryman, I take it, live to a great age and never

have the chance of climbing into a white-heart cherry tree and eating

one's fill. Certainly I have never done it since; but that day gave me

an understanding of blackbirds' temptations that is still stronger than

the desire to pull a trigger. The reader must not imagine that St.

Leonard's Forest is rich in deserted farms with attractive orchards. I

have found no other, and indeed it is notably a place in which the

explorer should be accompanied by provisions.

[Sidenote: LEONARDSLEE]

To take train to Faygate and walk from that spot is the simplest way,

although more interesting is it perhaps to come to Faygate at the end of

the day, and, gaining permission to climb the Beacon Tower on the hill,

in the Holmbush estate, retrace one's steps in vision from its summit.

In this case one would walk from Horsham to Lower Beeding, then strike

north over Plummer's Plain. This route leads by Coolhurst and through

Manning Heath, just beyond which, by following the south, that runs for

a mile, one could see Nuthurst. Lower Beeding is not in itself

interesting; but close at hand is Leonardslee, the seat of Sir Edmund

Loder, which is one of the most satisfying estates in the county. North

and south runs a deep ravine, on the one side richly wooded, and on the

other, the west, planted with all acclimatisable varieties of Alpine

plants and flowering shrubs. The chain of ponds at the bottom of the

ravine forms one of the principal sources of the Adur. In an enclosure

among the woods the kangaroo has been acclimatised; and beavers are

given all law.

North of Plummer's Plain, in a hollow, are two immense ponds, Hammer

Pond and Hawkin's Pond, our first reminder that we are in the old iron

country. St. Leonard's Forest, and all the forests on this the forest

ridge of Sussex, were of course maintained to supply wood with which to

feed the furnaces of the iron masters--just as the overflow of these

ponds was trained to move the machinery of the hammers for the breaking

of the iron stone. The enormous consumption of wood in the iron

foundries was a calamity seriously viewed by many observers, among them

Michael Drayton, of the _Poly Olbion_, who was, however, distressed less

as a political economist than as the friend of the wood nymphs driven by

the encroaching and devastating foundrymen from their native sanctuaries

to the inhospitable Downs. Thus he writes, illustrating Lamb's criticism

of him that in this work he "has animated hills and streams with life

and passion above the dreams of old mythology":--

The daughters of the Weald

(That in their heavy breasts had long their griefs concealed),

Foreseeing their decay each hour so fast come on,

Under the axe's stroke, fetched many a grievous groan.

When as the anvil's weight, and hammer's dreadful sound,

Even rent the hollow woods and shook the queachy ground;

So that the trembling nymphs, oppressed through ghastly fear,

Ran madding to the downs, with loose dishevelled hair.

The Sylvans that about the neighbouring woods did dwell,

Both in the tufty frith and in the mossy fell,

Forsook their gloomy bowers, and wandered far abroad,

Expelled their quiet seats, and place of their abode,

When labouring carts they saw to hold their daily trade,

Where they in summer wont to sport them in the shade.

"Could we," say they, "suppose that any would us cherish

Which suffer every day the holiest things to perish?

Or to our daily want to minister supply?

These iron times breed none that mind posterity.

'Tis but in vain to tell what we before have been,

Or changes of the world that we in time have seen;

When, now devising how to spend our wealth with waste,

We to the savage swine let fall our larding mast,

But now, alas! ourselves we have not to sustain,

Nor can our tops suffice to shield our roots from rain.

Jove's oak, the warlike ash, veined elm, the softer beech,

Short hazel, maple plain, light asp, the bending wych,

Tough holly, and smooth birch, must altogether burn;

What should the builder serve, supplies the forger's turn,

When under public good, base private gain takes hold,

And we, poor woful woods, to ruin lastly sold."

[Sidenote: GREAT GUNS]

We shall learn later more of this old Sussex industry, but here, in the

heart of St. Leonard's Forest, I might quote also what another old

author, with less invention, says of it. Under the heading of Sussex

manufactures, Thomas Fuller writes, in the _Worthies_, of great guns:--

"It is almost incredible how many are made of the Iron in this

County. Count _Gondomer_ well knew their goodness, when of King

James he so often begg'd the boon to transport them. A Monke of

Mentz (some three hundred years since) is generally reputed the

first Founder of them. Surely _ingenuity_ may seem _transpos'd_, and

to have _cross'd her hands_, when about the same time a Souldier

found out Printing; and it is questionable which of the two

Inventions hath done more good, or more harm. As for Guns, it cannot

be denied, that though most behold them as _Instruments of cruelty_;

partly, because subjecting _valour_ to _chance_; partly, because

_Guns give no quarter_ (which the Sword sometimes doth); yet it will

appear that, since their invention, Victory hath not stood so long a

Neuter, and hath been determined with the loss of fewer lives. Yet

do I not believe what Souldiers commonly say, 'that _he was curs'd

in his Mother's belly, who is kill'd with a Cannon_,' seeing many

prime persons have been slain thereby."

[Sidenote: SUSSEX IRON WORKS]

Cannon were not, of course, the only articles which the old Sussex

ironmasters contrived. The old railings around St. Paul's were cast in

Sussex; and iron fire-backs were turned out in great numbers. These are

still to be seen in a few of the older Sussex cottages in their original

position. Most curiosity dealers in the country have a few fire-backs on

sale. Iron tombstones one meets with too in a few of the churches and

churchyards in the iron district. There are several at Wadhurst, for

example.

[Sidenote: THE "LAND SERPENT"]

I have seen grass snakes in plenty in St. Leonard's Forest, and was once

there with a botanist who, the day being fine, killed a particularly

beautiful one; but the Forest is no longer famous, as once it was, for

really alarming reptiles. The year 1614 was the time. A rambler in the

neighbourhood, in August of that year, ran the risk of meeting something

worth running away from; just as John Steel, Christopher Holder, and a

widow woman did. Their story may be read in the Harleian Miscellany.

_True and Wonderful_ is the title of the narrative, _A Discourse

relating a strange and monstrous Serpent (or Dragon) lately discovered,

and yet living, to the great Annoyance and divers Slaughters both of Men

and Cattell, by his strong and violent Poyson: In Sussex, two Miles

from Horsam, in a Woode called St. Leonard's Forrest, and thirtie Miles

from London, this present Month of August, 1614. With the true

Generation of Serpents._ The discourse runs thus:--"In Sussex, there is

a pretty market-towne, called Horsam, neare unto it a forrest, called

St. Leonard's Forrest, and there, in a vast and unfrequented place,

heathie, vaultie, full of unwholesome shades, and over-growne hollowes,

where this serpent is thought to be bred; but, wheresoever bred,

certaine and too true it is, that there it yet lives. Within three or

four miles compasse, are its usual haunts, oftentimes at a place called

Faygate, and it hath been seene within halfe a mile of Horsam; a wonder,

no doubt, most terrible and noisome to the inhabitants thereabouts.

There is always in his tracke or path left a glutinous and slimie matter

(as by a small similitude we may perceive in a snaile's) which is very

corrupt and offensive to the scent; insomuch that they perceive the air

to be putrified withall, which must needes be very dangerous. For though

the corruption of it cannot strike the outward part of a man, unless

heated into his blood; yet by receiving it in at any of our breathing

organs (the mouth or nose) it is by authoritie of all authors, writing

in that kinde, mortall and deadlie, as one thus saith:

"_Noxia serpentum est admixto sanguine pestis._--LUCAN.

"This serpent (or dragon, as some call it) is reputed to be nine feete,

or rather more, in length, and shaped almost in the forme of an axeltree

of a cart; a quantitie of thickness in the middest, and somewhat smaller

at both endes. The former part, which he shootes forth as a necke, is

supposed to be an elle long; with a white ring, as it were, of scales

about it. The scales along his backe seem to be blackish, and so much as

is discovered under his bellie, appeareth to be red; for I speak of no

nearer description than of a reasonable ocular distance. For coming too

neare it, hath already beene too dearely payd for, as you shall heare

hereafter.

"It is likewise discovered to have large feete, but the eye may be

there deceived; for some suppose that serpents have no feete, but glide

upon certain ribbes and scales, which both defend them from the upper

part of their throat unto the lower part of their bellie, and also cause

them to move much the faster. For so this doth, and rids way (as we call

it) as fast as a man can run. He is of countenance very proud, and at

the sight or hearing of men or cattel, will raise his necke upright, and

seem to listen and looke about, with great arrogancy. There are likewise

on either side of him discovered, two great bunches so big as a large

foote-ball, and (as some thinke) will in time grow to wings; but God, I

hope, will (to defend the poor people in the neighbourhood) that he

shall be destroyed before he grow so fledge.

"He will cast his venome about four rodde from him, as by woefull

experience it was proved on the bodies of a man and a woman comming that

way, who afterwards were found dead, being poysoned and very much

swelled, but not prayed upon. Likewise a man going to chase it, and as

he imagined, to destroy it with two mastive dogs, as yet not knowing the

great danger of it, his dogs were both killed, and he himselfe glad to

returne with hast to preserve his own life. Yet this is to be noted,

that the dogs were not prayed upon, but slaine and left whole: for his

food is thought to be, for the most part, in a conie-warren, which he

much frequents; and it is found much scanted and impaired in the

encrease it had woont to afford.

[Sidenote: SIGNED AND WITNESSED]

"These persons, whose names are hereunder printed, have seene this

serpent, beside divers others, as the carrier of Horsam, who lieth at

the White Horse in Southwarke, and who can certifie the truth of all

that has been here related.

John Steele.

Christopher Holder.

And a Widow Woman

dwelling nere Faygate."

It would be very interesting to know what John Steele, Christopher

Holder, and the widow woman really saw. Such a story must have had a

basis of some kind. A printed narrative such as this would hardly have

proceeded from a clear sky.

St. Leonard's Forest has another familiar; for there the headless

horseman rides, not on his own horse, but on yours, seated on the

crupper with his ghostly arms encircling your waist. His name is

Powlett, but I know no more, except that his presence is an additional

reason why one should explore the forest on foot.

[Sidenote: SUSSEX NIGHTINGALES]

Sussex, especially near the coast, is naturally a good nightingale

country. Many of the birds, pausing there after their long journey at

the end of April, do not fly farther, but make their home where they

first alight. I know of one meadow and copse under the north escarpment

of the Downs where three nightingales singing in rivalry in a triangle

(the perfect condition) can be counted upon in May, by night, and often

by day too, as surely as the rising and setting of the sun. But in St.

Leonard's Forest the nightingale never sings. American visitors who, as

Mr. John Burroughs once did, come to England in the spring to hear the

nightingale, must remember this.

CHAPTER XIV

WEST GRINSTEAD, COWFOLD AND HENFIELD

"The Rape of the Lock"--Knepp castle--The Cowfold

brass--Carthusians in Sussex--The Oakendene cricketers--Fourteen

Golden Orioles on Henfield common--A Henfield botanist--Dr. Thomas

Stapleton's merits--A good epitaph--Sussex humour.

West Grinstead is perhaps the most remarkable of the villages on the

line from Horsham to Steyning, by reason of its association with

literature, _The Rape of the Lock_ having been to a large extent

composed beneath a tree in the park. Yet as one walks through this broad

expanse of brake-fern, among which the deer are grazing, with the line

of the Downs, culminating in Chanctonbury Ring, in view, it requires a

severe effort to bring the mind to the consideration of Belinda's loss

and all the surrounding drama of the toilet and the card table. If there

is one thing that would not come naturally to the memory in West

Grinstead park, it is the poetry of Pope.

The present house, the seat of the Burrells, was built in 1806. It was

in the preceding mansion that John Caryll, Pope's friend, made his home,

moving hither from West Harting, as we have seen. Caryll suggested to

Pope the subject of _The Rape of the Lock_, the hero of which was his

cousin, Lord Petre. The line:--

This verse to Caryll, Muse, is due,

is the poet's testimony and thanks. John Gay, who found life a jest, has

also walked amid the West Grinstead bracken.

West Grinstead church is isolated in the fields, a curiously pretty and

cheerful building, with a very charming porch and a modest shingled

spire rising from its midst. Brasses to members of the Halsham family

are within, and a monument to Captain Powlett, whose unquiet ghost,

hunting without a head, we have just met. Hard by the church is one of

the most attractive and substantial of the smaller manor houses of

Sussex, square and venerable and well-roofed with Horsham stone.

A mile to the west, in a meadow by the Worthing road, stands the forlorn

fragment of the keep which is all that remains of the Norman stronghold

of Knepp. For its other stones you must seek the highways, the

road-menders having claimed them a hundred years ago. William de Braose,

whom we shall meet at Bramber, built it; King John more than once was

entertained in it; and now it is a ruin. Yet if Knepp no longer has its

castle, it has its lake--the largest in the county, a hundred acres in

extent, a beautiful sheet of water the overflow of which feeds the Adur.

Within a quarter of a mile of the ruin is the new Knepp Castle, which

was built by Sir Charles Merrik Burrell, son of Sir William Burrell, the

antiquary, whose materials for a history of Sussex on a grand scale,

collected by him for many years, are now in the British Museum. But

Knepp Castle, the new, with all its Holbeins, was destroyed by fire this

1904.

[Sidenote: THE NELOND BRASS]

[Sidenote: THE COWL IN SUSSEX]

To the east of the line lies Cowfold, balancing West Grinstead, a

village ranged on either side of a broad road. It is famous chiefly for

possessing, in its very pretty church, the Nelond brass, being the

effigy of Thomas Nelond, Prior of Lewes, who died in 1433. Few brasses

are finer or larger; in length it is nearly ten feet, its state is

practically perfect, and pilgrims come from all quarters to rub it. John

Nelond, in the dress of a Cluniac monk, stands with folded hands beneath

an arch, protected by the Virgin and Child, St. Pancras, and St. Thomas

a Becket. This splendid relic would, perhaps, were ours an ideal

community, be handed over to the keeping of the Carthusian monks near

by, in the Monastery of St. Hugh, the commanding building to the south

of Cowfold, whose spire is to the Weald what that of Chichester

Cathedral is to the plain between the Downs and the sea, and whose

Angelus may be heard, on favourable evenings, for many miles. The

Carthusian monks of St. Hugh's lend a very foreign air to the village

when they walk through it. Visitors are encouraged to call at the

porter's gate and explore this huge settlement--often in the very

competent care of an Irish brother; while to suffer an accident anywhere

in the neighbourhood is to be certain of a cordial glass of the

monastery's own Chartreuse.

It was at Brook Hill, just to the north of Cowfold, that William Borrer,

the ornithologist and the author of _The Birds of Sussex_, lived and

made many of his interesting observations.

Near Cowfold is Oakendene, a stronghold of cricket at the beginning of

the last century. William Wood was the greatest of the Oakendene men. He

was the best bowler in Sussex, the art having been acquired as he walked

about his farm with his dog, when he would bowl at whatever he saw and

the dog would retrieve the ball. Borrer of Ditchling, Marchant of Hurst,

Voice of Hand Cross, and Vallance of Brighton, also belonged to the

Oakendene club. Borrer and Vallance played for Brighton against

Marylebone, at Lord's, in 1792, and, when all the betting was against

them, including gold rings and watches, won the match in the second

innings by making respectively 60 and 68 not out. Another player in that

match was Jutten, the fast bowler, who when things were going against

him bowled at his man and so won by fear what he could not compass by

skill. There are too many Juttens on village greens.

Five miles south of Cowfold is Henfield, separated from Steyning, in the

south-west, by the low-lying meadows through which the Adur runs and

which in winter are too often a sheet of water.

Henfield consists of the usual street, and a quiet, retired common,

flat and marshy, with a flock of geese, some Scotch firs, and a fine

view of Wolstonbury rising in the east. It was on Henfield common that

Mr. Borrer once saw fourteen Golden Orioles on a thorn bush. Adventures

are to the adventurous, birds to the ornithologist; most of us have

never succeeded in seeing even one Oriole.

[Sidenote: STAPLETON'S MERITS]

William Borrer, the botanist, uncle of the ornithologist, was born in

Henfield and is buried there. In his Henfield garden, in 1860, as many

as 6,600 varieties of plants were growing. Beyond a small memoir on

Lichens, written in conjunction with Dawson Turner, he left no book.

Another illustrious son of Henfield was Dr. Thomas Stapleton, once Canon

of Chichester and one of the founders of the Catholic College of Douay,

of whom it was written, somewhat ambiguously, that he "was a man of mild

demeanour and unsuspected integrity." Fuller has him characteristically

touched off in the _Worthies_:--"He was bred in New Colledge in Oxford,

and then by the Bishop (Christopherson, as I take it) made Cannon of

Chichester, which he quickly quitted in the first of Queen _Elizabeth_.

Flying beyond the Seas, he first fixed at _Douay_, and there commendably

performed the office of _Catechist_, which he discharged to his

commendation.

"Reader, pardon an Excursion caused by just _Grief_ and _Anger_. Many,

counting themselves Protestants in England, do slight and neglect that

_Ordinance_ of _God_, by which their Religion was _set up_, and _gave

Credit_ to it in the first _Reformation_; I mean, CATECHISING. Did not

our _Saviour_ say even to Saint _Peter_ himself, 'Feed my Lambs, feed my

Sheep'? And why _Lambs_ first? 1. Because they were _Lambs_ before they

were _Sheep_. 2. Because, if they be not fed whilst _Lambs_ they could

never be _Sheep_. 3. Because _Sheep_ can in some sort feed themselves;

but _Lambs_ (such their tenderness) must either be _fed_ or _famished_.

Our Stapleton was excellent at this _Lamb-feeding_."

An epitaph in Henfield Church is worth copying for its quaint mixture

of mythology and theology. It bears upon the death of a lad, Meneleb

Raynsford, aged nine, who died in 1627:--

Great Jove hath lost his Gannymede, I know,

Which made him seek another here below--

And finding none--not one--like unto this,

Hath ta'en him hence into eternal bliss.

Cease, then, for thy dear Meneleb to weep,

God's darling was too good for thee to keep:

But rather joy in this great favour given,

A child on earth is made a saint in heaven.