[Sidenote: A GIANT TROUT]

Some three miles north of Albourne is Twineham, another village which,

situated only on a by-road midway between two lines of railway, has also

preserved its bloom. Here, at the end of the seventeenth and beginning

of the eighteenth centuries, at Hickstead Place, a beautiful Tudor

mansion that still stands, lived Richard Stapley, another of the Sussex

diarists whose MSS. have been selected for publication by the Sussex

Archaeological Society. I quote a few passages:--

"In ye month of November, 1692, there was a trout found in ye

Poyningswish, in Twineham, which was 29 inches long from ye top of

ye nose to ye tip of ye taile; and John fflint had him and eat him.

He was left in a low slank after a fflood, and ye water fell away

from him, and he died. The fish I saw at John fflint's house ye

Sunday after they had him: and at night they boiled him for supper,

but could not eat one halfe of him; and there was six of them at

supper; John fflint and his wife Jane, and four of their children;

and ye next day they all fell on him again, and compassed him."

Here we have the spectacle of a good man struggling with

accuracy:--"August 19th, 1698. Paid Mr. Stheward for Dr. Comber's

paraphrase on ye Common Prayer, 20_s._ and 6_d._ for carriage. I paid it

at ye end of ye kitchen table next ye chamber stairs door, and nobody

in ye room but he and I. No, it was ye end of ye table next ye parlour.

"April 26th, 1709. I bought a salmon-trout of William Lindfield of

Grubbs, in Bolney, which he caught ye night before in his net, by his

old orchard, which was wounded by an otter. The trout weighed 11 lbs.

and 1/2; and was 3 foot 2 inches long from end to end, and but 2 foot 9

inches between ye eye and ye forke." There is also a record of a salmon

trout being caught at Bolney early in the last century, which weighed

22lbs. and was sent to King George IV. at Brighton.

I must quote a prescription from the diary:--"To cure the

hoopingcough:--get 3 field mice, flaw them, draw them, and roast one of

them, and let the party afflicted eat it; dry the other two in the oven

until they crumble to a powder, and put a little of this powder in what

the patient drinks at night and in the morning." Mice played, and still

play in remote districts, a large part in the rural pharmacopeia. A

Sussex doctor once told me that he had directed the mother of a boy at

Portslade to put some ice in a bag and tie it on the boy's forehead.

When, the next day, the doctor asked after his patient, the mother

replied briskly:--"Oh, Tommy's better, but the mice are dead."

[Sidenote: OATMEAL PUDDING]

The Stapley family ate an oatmeal pudding made in the following

manner:--

Of oats decorticated take two pound,

And of new milk enough the same to dround;

Of raisins of the sun, ston'd, ounces eight;

Of currants, cleanly picked, an equal weight;

Of suet, finely sliced, an ounce at least;

And six eggs newly taken from the nest;

Season this mixture well with salt and spice;

Twill make a pudding far exceeding nice;

And you may safely feed on it like farmers.

For the receipt is learned Dr. Harmer's.

[Sidenote: THE GOOD HORSE'S REWARD]

Richard Stapley's diary was continued by his son Anthony and grandson

John. The most pleasing among the printed extracts is this:--"1736, May

the 21st. The white horse was buried in the saw-pit in the Laine's wood.

He was aged about thirty-five years, as far as I could find of people

that knew him foaled. He had been in his time as good a horse as ever

man was owner of, and he was buried in his skin being a good old

horse."

[Illustration: _Ditchling._]

CHAPTER XXI

DITCHLING

Stanmer Park and Dr. Johnson--The Roman way down Ditchling

Beacon--Sussex folk in London--Jacob's Post--The virtues of

gibbets--Mr. John Burgess's diary.

Another good walk from Brighton begins with a short railway journey to

Falmer on the Lewes line. Then strike into Stanmer Park, the seat of the

Earl of Chichester, a descendant of the famous Sussex Pelhams, with the

church and the little village of Stanmer on the far edge of it, and so

up through the hollows and valleys to Ditchling Beacon. Dr. Johnson's

saying of the Downs about Brighton, that "it was a country so truly

desolate that if one had a mind to hang oneself for desperation at being

obliged to live there, it would be difficult to find a tree on which to

fasten a rope," proves beyond question that his horse never took him

Stanmer way, for the park is richly wooded.

On Ditchling Beacon, one of the noblest of the Sussex hills and the

second if not the first in height of all the range (the surveys differ,

one giving the palm to Duncton) the Romans had a camp, and the village

of Ditchling may still be gained by the half-subterranean path that our

conquerors dug, so devised that a regiment might descend into the Weald

unseen.

[Sidenote: LONDON'S VASTNESS]

Ditchling is a quiet little village on high ground, where Alfred the

Great once had a park. The church is a very interesting and graceful

specimen of early English architecture, dating from the 13th century. A

hundred and more years ago water from a chalybeate spring on the common

was drunk by Sussex people for rheumatism and other ills; but the spring

has lost its fame. The village could not well be more out of the

movement, yet an old lady living in the neighbourhood who, when about to

visit London for the first time, was asked what she expected to find,

replied, "Well, I can't exactly tell, but I suppose something like the

more bustling part of Ditchling." A kindred story is told of a Sussex

man who, finding himself in London for the first time, exclaimed with

astonishment--"What a queer large place! Why, it ain't like Newick and

it ain't like Chailey."

[Illustration: _Old House at Ditchling._]

On Ditchling Common are the protected remains of a stake known as

Jacob's Post. A stranger requested to supply this piece of wood with the

origin of its label would probably adventure long before hitting upon

the right tack; for Jacob, whose name has in this familiar connection a

popular and almost an endearing sound, was Jacob Harris, a Jew pedlar of

astonishing turpitude, who, after murdering three persons at an inn on

Ditchling Common and plundering their house, was hanged at Horsham in

the year 1734, and afterwards suspended, as a lesson, to the gibbet, of

which this post--Jacob's Post--is the surviving relic.

[Sidenote: A CURE FOR TOOTHACHE]

All gibbets, it is said, are "good" for something, and a piece of

Jacob's Post carried on the person is sovran against toothache. A Sussex

archaeologist tells of an old lady, a resident on Ditchling Common for

more than eighty years, whose belief in the Post was so sound that her

pocket contained a splinter of it long after all her teeth had departed.

[Sidenote: JOHN BURGESS'S DIARY]

From extracts from the diary of Mr. John Burgess, tailor, sexton and

Particular Baptist, of Ditchling, which are given in the Sussex

Archaeological Collections, I quote here and there:--

"August 1st, 1785. There was a cricket match at Lingfield Common

between Lingfield in Surrey and all the county of Sussex, supposed

to be upwards of 2,000 people.

"June 29th, 1786. Went to Lewes with some wool to Mr. Chatfield,

fine wool at 8-5-0 per pack. Went to dinner with Mr. Chatfield. Had

boiled Beef, Leg of Lamb and plum Pudden. Stopped there all the

afternoon. Mr. Pullin was there; Mr. Trimby and the Curyer, &c., was

there. We had a good deal of religious conversation, particularly

Mr. Trimby.

"June 11th, 1787. Spent 3 or 4 hours with some friends in

Conversation upon Moral and religious Subjects; the inquiry was the

most easy and natural evedences of ye existence and attributes of ye

supream Being--in discussing upon the Subject we was nearly agreed

and propose meeting again every first monday after the fool Moon to

meet at 4 and break-up at 8.

"March 14th, 1788. Went to Fryersoake to a Bull Bait to Sell My

dog. I seld him for 1 guineay upon condition he was Hurt, but as he

received no Hurt I took him back again at the same price. We had a

good dinner; a round of Beef Boiled, a good piece roasted, a Lag of

Mutton and Ham of Pork and plum pudden, plenty of wine and punch.

"At Brightelmstone:--washed in ye sea."

CHAPTER XXII

CUCKFIELD

Hayward's Heath--Rookwood and the fatal tree--Timothy Burrell and

his account books--Old Sussex appetites--Plum-porridge--A luckless

lover--The original Merry Andrew--Ancient testators--Bolney's

bells--The splendour of the Slaugham Coverts--Hand Cross--Crawley

and the new discovery of walking--Lindfield--_Idlehurst_--Richard

Turner's epitaph--Ardingly.

Hayward's Heath, on the London line, would be our next centre were it

not so new and suburban. Fortunately Cuckfield, which has two coaching

inns and many of the signs of the leisurely past, is close by, in the

midst of very interesting country, with a church standing high on the

ridge to the south of the town, broadside to the Weald, its spire a

landmark for miles. Cuckfield Place (a house and park, according to

Shelley, which abounded in "bits of Mrs. Radcliffe") is described in

Harrison Ainsworth's _Rookwood_. It was in the avenue leading from the

gates to the house that that fatal tree stood, a limb of which fell as

the presage of the death of a member of the family. So runs the legend.

Knowledge of the tree is, however, disclaimed by the gatekeeper.

[Illustration: _Cuckfield Church._]

[Sidenote: THE COACHMAN'S PLANS]

Ockenden House, in Cuckfield, has been for many years in the possession

of the Burrell family, one of whom, Timothy Burrell, an ancestor of the

antiquary, left some interesting account books, which contain in

addition to figures many curious and sardonic entries and some ingenious

hieroglyphics. I quote here and there, from the Sussex Archaeological

Society's extracts, by way of illustrating the life of a Sussex squire

in those days, 1683-1714:--

1705. "Pay'd Gosmark for making cyder 1 day, whilst John Coachman was to

be drunk with the carrier's money, by agreement; and I pay'd 2_d._ to

the glasyer for mending John's casement broken at night by him when he

was drunk.

"1706. 25th March. Pd. John Coachman by Ned Virgo, that he may be drunk

all the Easter week, in part of his wages due, _L_1."

[Sidenote: ANCIENT APPETITES]

This was the fare provided on January 1, 1707, for thirteen guests:--

Plumm pottage. Plumm pottage.

Calves' head and bacon. Boiled beef, a clod.

Goose. Two baked puddings.

Pig. Three dishes of minced

Plumm pottage. pies.

Roast beef, sirloin. Two capons.

Veale, a loin. Two dishes of tarts.

Goose. Two pullets.

Plum porridge, it may interest some to know, was made thus: "Take of

beef-soup made of legs of beef, 12 quarts; if you wish it to be

particularly good, add a couple of tongues to be boiled therein. Put

fine bread, sliced, soaked, and crumbled; raisins of the sun, currants

and pruants two lbs. of each; lemons, nutmegs, mace and cloves are to be

boiled with it in a muslin bag; add a quart of red wine and let this be

followed, after half an hour's boiling, by a pint of sack. Put it into a

cool place and it will keep through Christmas."

Mr. Burrell giving a small dinner to four friends, offered them

Pease pottage.

2 carps. 2 tench. Roast leg of mutton.

Capon. Pullet. Apple pudding.

Fried oysters. Goos.

Baked pudding. Tarts. Minced pies.

It is perhaps not surprising that the host had occasionally to take the

waters of Ditchling, which are no longer drunk medicinally, or to dose

himself with hierae picrae.

One more dinner, this time for four guests, who presumably were more

worthy of attention:--

A soup take off.

Two large carps at the upper end.

Pidgeon pie, salad, veal ollaves,

Leg of mutton, and cutlets at the lower end.

Three rosed chickens.

Scotch pancakes, tarts, asparagus.

Three green gees at the lower end.

In the room of the chickens removed,

Four-souced Mackerel.

Rasins in cream at the upper end.

Calves' foot jelly, dried sweetmeats, calves' foot jelly.

Flummery, Savoy cakes.

Imperial cream at the lower end.

In October, 1709, Mr. Burrell writes in Latin: "From this time I have

resolved, as long as the dearth of provisions continues, to give to the

poor who apply for it at the door on Sundays, twelve pounds of beef

every week, on the 11th of February 4lbs. more, in all 16lbs., and a

bushel of wheat and half a bushel of barley in 4 weeks."

[Sidenote: MERRY ANDREW]

From Borde Hill to the north-east of Cuckfield, is supposed to have come

Andrew Boord, the original Merry Andrew. Among the later Boords who

lived there was George Boord, in whose copy of _Natura Brevium_ and

_Tenores Novelli_, bound together (given him by John Sackville of

Chiddingly Park) is written:--

Sidera non tot habet Celum, nec flumina pisces,

Quot scelera gerit femina mente dolos.

Dixit Boordus;

which Mr. Lower translates:

Quoth Boord, with stars the skies abound,

With fish the flowing waters;

But far more numerous I have found

The tricks of Eve's fair daughters.

This Boord would be a relative of the famous Andrew, priest, doctor and

satirist (1490-1549) who may indeed have been the author of the distich

above. It is certainly in his vein.

Andrew Boord gave up his vows as a Carthusian on account of their

"rugorosite," and became a doctor, travelling much on the Continent.

Several books are known to be his, chief among them the _Dyetary_ and

_Brevyary of Health_. He wrote also an _Itinerary of England_ and is

credited by some with the _Merrie Tales of the Mad Men of Gotham_. Lower

and Horsfield indeed hold that the Gotham intended was not the

Nottinghamshire village but Gotham near Pevensey, where Boord had

property. That he knew something of Sussex is shown by _Boord's Boke of

Knowledge_, where he mentions the old story, then a new one, that no

nightingale will sing in St. Leonard's Forest. It is the _Boke of

Knowledge_ that has for frontispiece the picture of a naked Englishman

with a pair of shears in one hand and a piece of cloth over the other

arm, saying:

I am an English man and naked I stand here,

Musing in my mund what rayment I shall were;

For now I wyll were this, and now I wyl were that;

Now I wyl were I cannot tel what.

We shall see Andrew again when we come to Pevensey.

[Sidenote: OLD WILLS]

A glimpse of the orderly mind of a pre-Reformation Cuckfield yeoman is

given in a will quoted recently in the _Sussex Daily News_, in an

interesting series of articles on the county under the title of

"Old-time Sussex":

"In the yere of our lorde god 1545. the 26 day of June, I, Thomas

Gaston, of the pish of Cukefelde, syke in body, hole, and of ppt

[perfect] memorie, ordene and make this my last will and test, in

manr. and forme folling.

Fyrst I bequethe my sowle to Almyghty god or [our] lady St. Mary

and all the holy company of heyvyng, my bodie to be buried in the

church yarde of Cukefeld.

It. (item) to the Mother Church of Chichester 4_d._

It. to the hye alter of Cuckfeld 4_d._

It. I will have at my buryall 5 masses. In lykewise at my monthes

mynd and also at my yerely mynd all the charge of the church set

apart I will have in meate and drynke and to pore people 10_s._ at

every tyme."

The high altar was frequently mentioned favourably in these old wills.

Another Cuckfield testator, in 1539, left to the high altar, "for tythes

and oblacions negligently forgotten, sixpence." The same student of the

_Calendar of Sussex Wills in the District Probate Registry at Lewes,

between 1541 and 1652_, which the British Record Society have just

published, copies the following passage from the will of Gerard Onstye,

in 1568: "To mary my daughter _L_20, the ffeatherbed that I lye upon the

bolsters and coverlete of tapestaye work with a blankett, 4 payres of

shetts that is to say four pares of the best flaxon and other 2 payre of

the best hempen the greate brasse potte that hir mother brought, the

best bord-clothe (table cloth?) a lynnen whelle (_i.e._, spinning-wheel)

that was hir mothers, the chaffing dish that hangeth in the parlor."

In those simple days everything was prized. In one of these Sussex

wills, in 1594, Richard Phearndeane, a labourer, left to his brother

Stephen his best dublett, his best jerkin and his best shoes, and to

Bernard Rosse his white dublett, his leathern dublett and his worst

breeches.

[Sidenote: THE BELLS OF BOLNEY]

Three miles west of Cuckfield is Bolney, just off the London road, a

village in the southern boundary of St. Leonard's Forest, the key to

some very rich country. Before the days of bicycles Bolney was

practically unknown, so retired is it. The church, which has a curious

pinnacled tower nearly 300 years old, is famous for its bells,

concerning whose melody Horsfield gives the following piece of counsel:

"Those who are fond of the silvery tones of bells, may enjoy them to

perfection, by placing themselves on the margin of a large pond, the

property of Mr. W. Marshall; the reverberation of the sound, coming off

the water, is peculiarly striking."

Sixty years ago this sheet of water had an additional attraction. Says

Mr. Knox, "During the months of May and June, 1843, an osprey was

observed to haunt the large ponds near Bolney. After securing a fish he

used to retire to an old tree on the more exposed bank to devour it, and

about the close of evening was in the habit of flying off towards the

north-west, sometimes carrying away a prize in his talons if his sport

had been unusually successful, as if he dreaded being disturbed at his

repast during the dangerous hours of twilight. Having been shot at

several times without effect, his visits to these ponds became gradually

less frequent, but the surrounding covers being unpreserved, and the

bird itself too wary to suffer a near approach, he escaped the fate of

many of his congeners, and even re-appeared with a companion early in

the following September, to whom he seemed to have imparted his salutary

dread of man--his mortal enemy--for during the short time they remained

there it was impossible to approach within gunshot of either of them."

The indirect road from Bolney to Hand Cross, through Warninglid and

Slaugham (parallel with the coaching road), is superb, taking us again

into the iron country and very near to Leonardslee, which we have

already seen.

[Sidenote: THE MAGNIFICENT COVERTS]

The glory of Slaugham Place is no more; but one visible sign of it is

preserved in Lewes, in the Town Hall, in the shape of its old staircase.

Slaugham Place was the seat of the Covert family, whose estates

extended, says tradition, "from Southwark to the Sea," and, says the

more exact Horsfield, from Crawley to Hangleton, above Brighton.

Slaugham Park used to cover 1200 acres, the church being within it.

Perhaps nowhere in Sussex is the change so complete as here, and within

recent times too, for Horsfield quotes, in 1835, the testimony of "an

aged person, whom the present rector buried about twenty-five years

back, who used to relate, that he remembered when the family at Slaugham

Park, or Place, consisted of seventy persons." Horsfield continues, in a

footnote (the natural receptacle of many of his most interesting

statements):--"The name of the aged person alluded to was Harding, who

died at nearly 100. According to his statement, the family were so

numerous, they kept constantly employed mechanics of every description,

who resided on the premises. A conduit, which supplied the mansion with

water, is now used by the inhabitants of the village. The kitchen

fireplace still remains, of immense size, with the irons that supported

the cooking apparatus. The arms of the Coverts, with many impalements

and quarterings, yet remain on the ruins. The principal entrance was

from the east, and the grand front to the north. The pillars at the

entrance, fluted, with seats on each side, are still there. According to

the statement of the above person, there was a chapel attached to the

mansion at the west part. The mill-pond flowed over nearly 40 acres,

according to a person's statement who occupied the mill many years." The

ruins, little changed since Horsfield wrote, stand in a beautiful

old-world garden, which the traveller must certainly endeavour to enter.

[Sidenote: THE BRIGHTON ROAD]

A mile north of Slaugham is Hand Cross, a Clapham Junction of highways,

whence Crawley is easily reached. Crawley, however, beyond a noble

church, has no interest, its distinction being that it is halfway

between London and Brighton on the high road--its distinction and its

misfortune. One would be hard put to it to think of a less desirable

existence than that of dwelling on a dusty road and continually seeing

people hurrying either from Brighton to London or from London to

Brighton. Coaches, phaetons, motor cars, bicycles, pass through Crawley

so numerously as almost to constitute one elongated vehicle, like the

moving platform at the last Paris Exhibition.

And not only travellers on wheels; for since the fashion for walking

came in, Crawley has had new excitements, or monotonies, in the shape of

walking stockbrokers, walking butchers, walking auctioneers' clerks,

walking Austrians pushing their families in wheelbarrows, walking

bricklayers carrying hods of bricks, walking acrobats on stilts--all

striving to get to Brighton within a certain time, and all accompanied

by judges, referees, and friends. At Hand Cross, lower on the road, the

numbers diminish; but every competitor seems to be able to reach

Crawley, perhaps because the railway station adjoins the high road. It

was not, for example, until he reached Crawley that the Austrian's

wheelbarrow broke down.

[Sidenote: LINDFIELD]

On the other side of the line, two miles north-east of Hayward's Heath,

is Lindfield, with its fine common of geese, its generous duck-pond, and

wide straggling street of old houses and new (too many new, to my mind),

rising easily to the graceful Early English church with its slender

shingled spire. Just beyond the church is one of the most beautiful of

timbered houses in Sussex, or indeed in England. When I first knew this

house it was a farm in the hands of a careless farmer; it has been

restored by its present owner with the most perfect understanding and

taste. For too long no one attempted to do as much for East Mascalls, a

timbered ruin lying low among the fields to the east of the village; but

quite recently it has been taken in hand.

[Illustration: _East Mascalls--before renovation._]

A quaint Lindfield epitaph may be mentioned: that of Richard Turner, who

died in 1768, aged twenty-one:--

Long was my pain, great was my grief,

Surgeons I'd many but no relief.

I trust through Christ to rise with the just:

My leg and thigh was buried first.

[Sidenote: "IDLEHURST"]

I must not betray secrets, but it might be remarked that that kindly yet

melancholy study of Wealden people and Wealden scenery, called

_Idlehurst_--the best book, I think, that has come out of Sussex in

recent years--may be read with some special appropriateness in this

neighbourhood.

North of Lindfield is Ardingly, now known chiefly in connection with the

large school which travellers on the line to Brighton see from the

carriage windows as they cross the viaduct over the Ouse. The village, a

mile north of the college, is famous as the birthplace of Thomas Box,

the first of the great wicket-keepers, who disdained gloves even to the

fastest bowling. The church has some very interesting brasses to members

of the Wakehurst and Culpeper families, who long held Wakehurst Place,

the Elizabethan mansion to the north of the village. Nicholas Culpeper

of the _Herbal_ was of the stock; but he must not be confounded with the

Nicholas Culpeper whose brass, together with that of his wife, ten sons

and eight daughters, is in the church, possibly the largest family on

record depicted in that metal. The church also has a handsome canopied

tomb, the occupant of which is unknown.

From Ardingly superb walks in the Sussex forest country may be taken.

CHAPTER XXIII

FOREST COUNTRY AGAIN

Balcombe--The iron furnace and the iron horse--Leonard Gale of

Tinsloe Forge--Mr. Wilfred Scawen Blunt of Crabbet--"The Old

Squire"--Frederick Locker-Lampson of Rowfant--The Rowfant

books--"To F. L."--The Rowfant titmice.

On leaving the train at Balcombe, one is quickly on the densely wooded

Forest Ridge of Sussex, here fenced and preserved, but farther east,

when it becomes Ashdown Forest, consisting of vast tracts of open

moorland and heather. Balcombe has a simple church, protected by a

screen of Scotch firs; its great merit is its position as the key to a

paradise for all who like woodland travel. From Balcombe to Worth is one

vast pheasant run, with here and there a keeper's cottage or a farm:

originally, of course, a series of plantations growing furnace wood for

the ironmasters. In Tilgate Forest, to the west of Balcombe Forest, are

two large sheets of water, once hammer-ponds, walking west from which,

towards Horsham, one may be said to traverse the Lake Country of Sussex.

A strange transformation, from Iron Black Country to Lake Country!--but

nature quickly recovers herself, and were the true Black Country's

furnaces extinguished, she would soon make even that grimy tract a haunt

of loveliness once more.

No longer are heard the sounds of the hammers, but Balcombe Forest,

Tilgate Forest, and Worth Forest have still a constant reminder of

machinery, for very few minutes pass from morning to night without the

rumble of a train on the main line to Brighton, which passes through

the very midst of this wild game region, and plunges into the earth

under the high ground of Balcombe Forest. I know of no place where the

trains emit such a volume of sound as in the valley of the Stanford

brook, just north of the tunnel.

The noise makes it impossible ever quite to lose the sense of modernity

in these woods, as one may on Shelley Plain, a few miles west, or at

Gill's Lap, in Ashdown Forest; unless, of course, one's imagination is

so complaisant as to believe it to proceed from the old iron furnaces.

This reminds me that Crabbet, just to the north of Worth (where church

and vicarage stand isolated on a sandy ridge on the edge of the Forest),

was the home of one of the most considerable of the Sussex ironmasters,

Leonard Gale of Tinsloe Forge, who bought Crabbet, park and house, in

1698--since "building," in his own words, is a "sweet impoverishing."

[Sidenote: WORTH CHURCH]

But we must pause for a moment at Worth, because its church is

remarkable as being the largest in England to preserve its Saxon

foundations. Sussex, as we have seen, is rich in Saxon relics, but the

county has nothing more interesting than this. The church is cruciform,

as all churches should be, and there is a little east window in the

north transept through which, it is conjectured, arrows were intended to

be shot at marauding Danes; for an Englishman's church was once his

castle. Archaeologists familiar with Worth church have been known to pass

with disdain cathedrals for which the ordinary person cannot find too

many fine adjectives.

[Sidenote: MR. BLUNT'S BALLAD]

[Sidenote: THE OLD SQUIRE]

To regain Crabbet. The present owner, Mr. Wilfred Scawen Blunt, poet,

patriot, and breeder of Arab horses, who is a descendant of the Gales,

has a long poem entitled "Worth Forest," wherein old Leonard Gale is a

notable figure. Among other poems by the lord of Crabbet is the very

pleasantly English ballad of

THE OLD SQUIRE.

I like the hunting of the hare

Better than that of the fox;

I like the joyous morning air,

And the crowing of the cocks.

I like the calm of the early fields,

The ducks asleep by the lake,

The quiet hour which Nature yields

Before mankind is awake.

I like the pheasants and feeding things

Of the unsuspicious morn;

I like the flap of the wood-pigeon's wings

As she rises from the corn.

I like the blackbird's shriek, and his rush

From the turnips as I pass by,

And the partridge hiding her head in a bush,

For her young ones cannot fly.

I like these things, and I like to ride

When all the world is in bed,

To the top of the hill where the sky grows wide,

And where the sun grows red.

The beagles at my horse heels trot,

In silence after me;

There's Ruby, Roger, Diamond, Dot,

Old Slut and Margery,--

A score of names well used, and dear,

The names my childhood knew;

The horn, with which I rouse their cheer,

Is the horn my father blew.

I like the hunting of the hare

Better than that of the fox;

The new world still is all less fair

Than the old world it mocks.

I covet not a wider range

Than these dear manors give;

I take my pleasures without change,

And as I lived I live.

I leave my neighbours to their thought;

My choice it is, and pride,

On my own lands to find my sport,

In my own fields to ride.

The hare herself no better loves

The field where she was bred,

Than I the habit of these groves,

My own inherited.

I know my quarries every one,

The meuse where she sits low;

The road she chose to-day was run

A hundred years ago.

The lags, the gills, the forest ways;

The hedgerows one and all,

These are the kingdoms of my chase,

And bounded by my wall.

Nor has the world a better thing,

Though one should search it round,

Than thus to live one's own sole king,

Upon one's own sole ground.

I like the hunting of the hare;

It brings me day by day,

The memory of old days as fair,

With dead men past away.

To these, as homeward still I ply,

And pass the churchyard gate,

Where all are laid as I must lie,

I stop and raise my hat.

I like the hunting of the hare;

New sports I hold in scorn.

I like to be as my fathers were,

In the days e'er I was born.

[Sidenote: THE ROWFANT BOOKS]

We are indeed just now in a bookish and poetical district, for a little

more than a mile to the east of Crabbet, in a beautiful Tudor house in a

hollow close to the station, lived Frederick Locker-Lampson, the London

lyricist; and here are treasured the famous Rowfant books and

manuscripts which he brought together--the subject of graceful verses

by many of his friends. Not the least charming of these tributes

(printed in the _Rowfant Catalogue_ in 1886) are Mr. Andrew Lang's

lines:

TO F. L.

I mind that Forest Shepherd's saw,

For, when men preached of Heaven, quoth he;

"It's a' that's bricht, and a' that's braw,

But Bourhope's guid eneuch for me!"

Beneath the green deep-bosomed hills

That guard Saint Mary's Loch it lies,

The silence of the pasture fills

That shepherd's homely paradise.

Enough for him his mountain lake,

His glen the hern went singing through,

And Rowfant, when the thrushes wake,

May well seem good enough for YOU.

For all is old, and tried, and dear,

And all is fair, and round about

The brook that murmurs from the mere

Is dimpled with the rising trout.

But when the skies of shorter days

Are dark and all the "ways are mire,"

How bright upon your books the blaze

Gleams from the cheerful study fire.

On quartos where our fathers read,

Enthralled, the Book of Shakespeare's play,

On all that Poe could dream of dread,

And all that Herrick sang of gay!

Fair first editions, duly prized,

Above them all, methinks, I rate

The tome where Walton's hand revised

His wonderful receipts for bait!

Happy, who rich in toys like these

Forgets a weary nation's ills,

Who from his study window sees

The circle of the Sussex hills.

[Sidenote: THE RESOLUTE TITMICE]

Rowfant was once the scene of one of the most determined struggles in

history. The contestants were a series of Titmice and the G.P.O., and

the account of the war may be read in the Natural History Museum at

South Kensington:--"In 1888, a pair of the Great Titmouse (_Parus

major_) began to build their nest in the post-box which stood in the

road at Rowfant, and into which letters, &c., were posted and taken out

by the door daily. One of the birds was killed by a boy, and the nest

was not finished. In 1889, a pair completed the nest, laid seven eggs,

and began to sit; but one day, when an unusual number of post-cards were

dropped into, and nearly filled, the box, the birds deserted the nest,

which was afterwards removed with the eggs. In 1890, a pair built a new

nest and laid seven eggs, and reared a brood of five young, although the

letters posted were often found lying on the back of the sitting bird,

which never left the nest when the door of the box was opened to take

out the letters. The birds went in and out by the slit."

CHAPTER XXIV

EAST GRINSTEAD

Sackville College--John Mason Neale--_Theodosius; or, The Force of

Love_, at the East Grinstead Theatre--Three martyrs--Brambletye

House--Forest Row--The garden of the author of _The English Flower

Garden_--Diamond Jubilee clock-faces--"Big-on-Little" and the

reverend and irreverend commentator.

East Grinstead, the capital of north-east Sussex, is interesting chiefly

for Sackville College, that haunt of ancient peace of which John Mason

Neale, poet, enthusiast, divine, historian, and romance-writer for

children, was for many years the distinguished Warden. Nothing can

exceed the quiet restfulness of the quadrangle. The college gives

shelter to five brethren and six sisters (one of whom shows the visitor

over the building), and to a warden and two assistants. Happy

collegians, to have so fair a haven in which to pass the evening of

life. East Grinstead otherwise has not much beauty, its commanding

pinnacled church tower being more impressive from a distance, and its

chief street mingling too much that is new with its few old timbered

facades, charming though these are.

[Illustration: _The Judge's Houses, East Grinstead._]

The town, when it would be frivolous, to-day depends upon the occasional

visits of travelling entertainers; but in the eighteenth century East

Grinstead had a theatre of its own, in the main street, a play-bill of

which, for May, 1758, is given in Boaden's _Life of Mrs. Siddons_. It

states that "Theodosius; or, the Force of Love," is to be played, for

the benefit of Mrs. P. Varanes by Mr. P., "who will strive as far as

possible to support the character of this fiery Persian Prince, in which

he was so much admired and applauded at Hastings, Arundel, Petworth,

Midhurst, Lewes, &c." The attraction of the next announcement is the

precise converse: "Theodosius, by a young gentleman from the University

of Oxford, who never appeared on any stage."

[Sidenote: NOBILITY AND THE ALTAR]

The play-bill continues with a delicate hint: "Nothing in Italy can

exceed the altar in the first scene of the play. Nevertheless, should

any of the nobility or gentry wish to see it ornamented with flowers,

the bearer will bring away as many as they choose to favour him with."

Finally: "N.B.--The great yard dog that made so much noise on Thursday

night during the last act of King Richard the Third, will be sent to a

neighbour's over the way."

The Sussex Martyrs, to whom a memorial, as we shall see, has recently

been raised above Lewes, are usually associated with that town; but on

July 18, 1556, Thomas Dungate, John Forman, and Anne, or Mother, Tree,

were burned for conscience' sake at East Grinstead.

Between East Grinstead and Forest Row, on the east, just under the hill

and close to the railway, are the remains of Brambletye House, a rather

florid ruin, once the seat of the great Sussex family of Lewknor. In its

heyday Brambletye must have been a very fine place. Horace Smith's

romance which bears its name, and for which Horsfield, in his _History

of Sussex_, predicted a career commensurable with that of the Waverley

novels, is now, I fear, justly forgotten. The slopes of Forest Row,

which was of old a settlement of hunting lodges belonging to the great

lords who took their pleasure in Ashdown Forest, are now bright with new

villas. From Forest Row, Wych Cross and Ashdown Forest are easily

gained; but of this open region of dark heather more in a later chapter.

Between Kingscote and West Hoathly, a short distance to the south-west

of East Grinstead, is another "tye"--Gravetye, a tudor mansion in a deep

hollow, the home of Mr. William Robinson, the author of _The English

Flower Garden_. Last April, the stonework, of which there is much, was a

mass of the most wonderful purple aubretia, and the wild garden between

the house and the water a paradise of daffodils.

The church of West Hoathly (called West Ho-ly), which stands high on the

hill to the south, has a slender shingled spire that may be seen from

long distances. The tower has, however, been injured by the very ugly

new clock that has been lately fixed in a position doubtless the most

convenient but doubtless also the least comely. To nail to such a

delicate structure as West Hoathly church the kind of dial that one

expects to see outside a railway station is a curious lapse of taste.

Hever church, in Kent, has a similar blemish, probably dating from one

of the recent Jubilee celebrations, which left few loyal villages the

richer by a beautiful memorial. Surely it should be possible to obtain

an appropriate clock-face for such churches as these.

West Hoathly has some iron tombstones, such as used to be cast in the

old furnace days, which are not uncommon in these parts. Opposite the

church is a building of great antiquity, which has been allowed to

forget its honourable age.

[Sidenote: "BIG-ON-LITTLE"]

We are now on the fringe of the Sussex rock country, to which we come

again in earnest when we reach Maresfield, and of which Tunbridge Wells

is the capital. But not even Tunbridge Wells with its famous toad has

anything to offer more remarkable than West Hoathly's "Big-on-Little,"

in the Rockhurst estate. I am tempted to quote two descriptions of the

rock, from two very different points of view. An antiquary writing in

the eighteenth century (quoted by Horsfield) thus begins his

account:--"About half a mile west of West Hoadley church there is a high

ridge covered with wood; the edge of this is a craggy cliff, composed of

enormous blocks of sand stone. The soil hath been entirely washed from

off them, and in many places, from the interstices by which they are

divided, one perceives these crags with bare broad white foreheads, and,

as it were, overlooking the wood, which clothes the valley at their

feet. In going to the place, I passed across this deep valley, and was

led by a narrow foot-path almost trackless up to the cliff, which seems

as one advances to hang over one's head. The mind in this passage is

prepared with all the suspended feelings of awe and reverence, and as

one approaches this particular rock, standing with its stupendous bulk

poised, seemingly in a miraculous manner and point, one is struck with

amazement. The recess in which it stands hath, behind this rock, and the

rocks which surround it, a withdrawn and recluse passage which the eye

cannot look into but with an idea of its coming from some more secret

and holy adyt. All these circumstances, in an age of tutored

superstition, would give, even to the finest minds, the impressions that

lead to idolatry."

[Sidenote: COBBETT AGAIN]

And this is Cobbett's description, in the _Rural Rides_:--"At the place,

of which I am now speaking, that is to say, by the side of this pleasant

road to Brighton, and between Turner's Hill and Lindfield, there is a

rock, which they call '_Big upon Little_,' that is to say, a rock upon

another, having nothing else to rest upon, and the top one being longer

and wider than the top of the one it lies on. This big rock is no

trifling concern, being as big, perhaps, as a not very small house. How,

then, _came_ this big upon little? What lifted up the big? It balances

itself naturally enough; but what tossed it up? I do not like to _pay_ a

parson for teaching me, while I have '_God's own Word_' to teach me; but

if any parson will tell me _how_ big _came_ upon little, I do not know

that I shall grudge him a trifle. And if he cannot tell me this; if he

say, All that we have to do is to _admire_ and _adore_; then I tell him,

that I can admire and adore without his _aid_, and that I will keep my

money in my pocket." That is pure Cobbett.

[Sidenote: WEST HOATHLY]

West Hoathly is in the midst of some of the best of the inland country

of Sussex and an excellent centre for the walker. Several places that we

have already seen are within easy distance, such as Horsted Keynes,

Worth and Worth Forest and Balcombe and Balcombe Forest.

CHAPTER XXV

HORSTED KEYNES TO LEWES

The origin of "Keynes"--The Rev. Giles Moore's expenditure--Advice

as to tithes--Lord Sheffield and cricket--The grave of Edward

Gibbon--Fletching and English History--Newick and Chailey--The

Battle of Lewes--John Dudeney and John Kimber--Leonard Mascall and

the first English carp--Advice to fruit-growers--Malling Deanery

and the assassins of Becket.

The very pretty church of Horsted Keynes, which in its lowly position is

the very antithesis of West Hoathly's hill-surmounting spire, is famous

for the small recumbent figure of a knight in armour, with a lion at his

feet, possibly a member of the Keynes family that gives its name to this

Horsted (thus distinguishing it from Little Horsted, a few miles distant

in the East): Keynes being an anglicisation of de Cahanges, a family

which sent a representative to assist in the Norman Conquest.

[Sidenote: ANCIENT ECONOMICS]

Horsted Keynes, which is situated in very pleasant country, once took

its spiritual instruction from the lips of the Rev. Giles Moore,

extracts from whose journals and account books, 1656-1679, have been

printed by the S.A.S. I quote a few passages:

"I gave my wyfe 15_s._ to lay out at St. James faire at Lindfield, all

which shee spent except 2_s._ 6_d._ which she never returned mee.

"16th Sept. I bought of Edward Barrett at Lewis a clock, for which I

payed _L_2 10, and for a new jack, at the same time, made and brought

home, _L_1 5. For two prolongers [_i.e._ save-alls] and an extinguisher

2_d._, and a payr of bellowes 5_s._"

7th May, 1656.--"I bought of William Clowson, upholsterer and itinerant,

living over against the Crosse at Chichester, but who comes about the

country with his pack on horseback:--

A fine large coverlett with birds and bucks _L_2 10 0

A sett of striped curtains and valance 1 8 0

A coarse 8 qr coverlett 1 2 0

Two middle blankets 1 4 0

One beasil or Holland tyke or bolster 1 13 6

"My mayde being sicke, I paid for opening her veine 4_d._, to the widow

Rugglesford for looking to her, I gave 1_s._; and to Old Bess, for

tending on her 3 days and 2 nights, I gave 1_s._; in all 2_s._

4_d._--this I gave her.

"Lent to my brother Luxford at the Widow Newports, never more to be

seene! 1_s._"

In 1658.--"To Wm Batchelor for bleeding mee in bed 2_s._ 6_d._, and for

barbouring mee 1_s._" A year later:--"I agreed with Mr. Batchelor of

Lindfield to barbour mee, and I am to pay him 16_s._ a yeare, beginning

from Lady Day."

In 1671.--"I bargained with Edward Waters that he should have 18_s._ in

money for the trimming of mee by the year, and deducting 1_s._ 6_d._ for

his tythes."

23rd April, 1660.--"This being King Charles II. coronation I gave my

namesake Moore's daughter then marryed 10_s._ and the fiddlers 6_d._

"I payed the Widow Potter of Hoadleigh for knitting mee one payr of

worsted stockings 2_s._ 6_d._; for spinning 2 lb of wool 14_d._, and for

carding it 2_d._

"To the collections made at 3 several sacraments I gave 3 several

sixpences."

12th May, 1673.--"I went to London, spending there, going and coming, as

_alibi apparet in particularibus_, 13_s._ 8_d._; I bought for Ann Brett

a gold ring, this being the posy, 'When this you see, remember mee,' and

at the same time I bought Patrick's _Pilgrim_, 5_s._; _The

Reasonableness of Scripture_, by Sir Chas. Wolseley, 2_s._ 6_d._; and a

Comedy called _Epsom Wells_."

Mr. Moore, having suffered in his tithes, left the following "necessary

caution" for his successor:--"Never compound with any parishioner till

you have first viewed theire lande and seen what corne they have upon it

that yeare, and may have the next."

[Sidenote: SHEFFIELD PARK]

The next station on this quiet little cross-country line to Lewes, is

Sheffield Park, the seat of Lord Sheffield. The present peer, one of the

patrons of modern Sussex cricket, took a famous team to Australia in

1891-2, and it was on his yacht that in 1894 cricket was played in the

Ice Fiord at Spitzbergen under the midnight sun, when Alfred Shaw

captured forty wickets in less than three-quarters of an hour.

Australian teams visiting England used to open their season with a match

at Sheffield Park, which contains one of the best private grounds in the

country; but the old custom has, I fancy, lapsed. In the long winter of

1890-1 several cricket matches on the ice were played on one of the

lakes in the park, with well-known Sussex players on both sides.

Sheffield Park is associated in literature with the name of Edward

Gibbon, the historian, who spent much time there in the company of his

friend, John Baker Holroyd, the first earl. Gibbon's remains lie in

Fletching church, close by. There also lies Peter Dynot, a glover of

Fletching, who assisted Jack Cade, the Sussex rebel, whom we meet later,

in 1450; while (more history) it was in the woods around Fletching

church that Simon de Montfort encamped before he climbed the hills, as

we are about to see, and fought and won the Battle of Lewes, in 1264.

The line passes next between Newick, on the east, and Chailey on the

west. Fate seems to have decided that these villages shall always be

bracketed in men's minds, like Beaumont and Fletcher, or Winchelsea and

Rye: one certainly more often hears of "Newick and Chailey" than of

either separately. Chailey has a wide breezy common from which the line

of Downs between Ditchling Beacon and Lewes can be seen perhaps to their

best advantage. Immediately to the south, and just to the west of

Blackcap, the hill with a crest of trees, is Plumpton Plain, six hundred

feet high, where the Barons formed their ranks to meet the third Harry

in the Battle of Lewes, the actual fighting being on Mount Harry, the

hill on Blackcap's east. A cross to mark the struggle, cut into the turf

of the Plain, is still occasionally visible. More noticeable is the "V"

in spruce firs planted on the escarpment to commemorate the Jubilee of

1887.

[Sidenote: THE SHEPHERD MATHEMATICIAN]

Plumpton, which is now known chiefly for its steeplechases, has had in

its day at least two interesting inhabitants. One was John Dudeney,

shepherd, mathematician, and schoolmaster, born here in 1782, who, as a

youth, when tending his sheep on Newmarket Hill, dug a study and library

in the chalk, and there kept his books and papers. He taught himself

mathematics and languages, even Hebrew, and ultimately became a

schoolmaster at Lewes. In his thorough adherence to learning Dudeney was

the completest contrast to John Kimber of Chailey, a wealthy farmer with

a consuming but unintelligent love of books, who was once, says

Horsfield, seen bringing home Macklin's Bible, a costly work in six

volumes in a sack laid across the back of a cart horse. According to the

excellent habit of the old Sussex farmers, Mr. Kimber's body was borne

to the grave in one of his wagons, drawn by his best team.

[Sidenote: FANTASTIC FRUITS]

Plumpton Place once had a moat, in which, legend has it, the first carp

swam that came into England. The house then belonged to Leonard Mascall,

whom Fuller in the _Worthies_ erroneously ascribes to Plumsted. In

Fuller's own words, which no one could better: "Leonard Mascall, of

Plumsted in this county, being much delighted in Gardening, man's

Original vocation, was the first who brought over into England, from

beyond the seas, _Carps_ and _Pippins_; the one, well-cook'd, delicious,

the other cordial and restorative. For the proof hereof, we have his own

word and witness; and did it, it seems, about the Fifth year of the

reign of King _Henry_ the Eighth, Anno Dom. 1514. The time of his death

is to me unknown." The credit of introducing carps and pippins has,

however, been denied to Mascall, who died in 1589 at Farnham Royal in

Buckinghamshire, where he was buried; but we know him beyond question to

have been an ingenious experimentalist in horticulture. He wrote and

translated several books, among them a treatise on the orchard by a monk

of the Abbey of St. Vincent in France: _A Book of the Arte of and Manner

howe to plant and graffe all sortes of trees, howe to set stones, and

sowe Pepines to make wylde trees to graffe on_, 1572. I take a few

passages from a later edition of this work:

TO COLOUR APPLES.

To have coloured Apples with what colour ye shall think good ye shall

bore or slope a hole with an Auger in the biggest part of the body of

the tree, unto the midst thereof, or thereabouts, and then look what

colour ye will have them of. First ye shall take water and mingle your

colour therewith, then stop it up again with a short pin made of the

same wood or tree, then wax it round about. Ye may mingle with the said

colour what spice ye list, to make them taste thereafter. Thus may ye

change the colour and taste of any Apple.... This must be done before

the Spring do come....

TO MAKE APPLES FALL FROM THE TREE.

If ye put fiery coles under an Apple tree, and then cast off the powder

of Brimstone therein, and the fume thereof ascend up, and touch an Apple

that is wet, that Apple shall fall incontinant.

TO DESTROY PISMIERS OR ANTS ABOUT A TREE.

Ye shall take of the saw-dust of Oke-wood oney, and straw that al about

the tree root, and the next raine that doth come, all the Pismiers or

Ants shall die there. For Earewigges, shooes stopt with hay, and hanged

on the tree one night, they come all in.

FOR TO HAVE RATH MEDLARS TWO MONTHS BEFORE OTHERS.

For to have Medlars two months sooner than others and the one shall be

better far than the other, ye shall graffe them upon a gooseberry tree,

and also a franke mulberry tree, and before ye do graffe them, ye shall

wet them in hay, and then graffe them.

[Sidenote: MALLING DEANERY]

To return to the line, for the excursion to Plumpton has taken us far

from the original route, the next station to Newick and Chailey is

Barcombe Mills, a watery village on the Ouse. The river valley contracts

as Lewes is reached, with Malling Hill on the east and Offham Hill on

the west: both taking their names from two of the quaint little hamlets

by which Lewes is surrounded. It was at Mailing Deanery that the

assassins of Thomas a Becket sought shelter on their flight from

Canterbury. The legend records how, when they laid their armour on the

Deanery table, that noble piece of furniture rose and flung the accursed

accoutrements to the ground.

On Malling Hill is the residence of a Lewes lady whose charitable

impulses have taken a direction not common among those who suffer for

others. She receives into her stable old and overworked horses, thus

ensuring for them a sleek and peaceful dotage enlivened by sugar and

carrots, and marked by the kindest consideration. The pyramidal grave

(as of a Saxon chief) of one of these dependants may be seen from the

road.

[Illustration: _On the Ouse above Lewes._]

CHAPTER XXVI

LEWES

The Museum of Sussex--The riches of Lewes--Her leisure and

antiquity--A plea from _Idlehurst_--Old Lewes disabilities--The

Norman Conquest--Lewes Castle--Sussex curiosities--Lewes among her

hills--The Battle of Lewes--The Cluniac Priory--Repellers of the

French--A comprehender of Earthquakes--The author of _The Rights of

Man_--A game of bowls--"Clio" Rickman and Thomas Tipper--Famous

Lewes men--The Fifth of November--The Sussex martyrs.

Apart from the circumstance that the curiosities collected by the

county's Archaeological Society are preserved in the castle, Lewes is the

museum of Sussex; for she has managed to compress into small compass

more objects of antiquarian interest than any town I know. Chichester,

which is compact enough, sprawls by comparison.

The traveller arriving by train no sooner alights from his carriage than

he is on the site of the kitchens of the Cluniac Priory of St. Pancras,

some of the walls of which almost scrape the train on its way to

Brighton. That a priory eight hundred years old must be disturbed before

a railway station can be built is a melancholy circumstance; but in the

present case the vandalism had its compensation in the discovery by the

excavating navvies of the coffins of William de Warenne and his wife

Gundrada (the Conqueror's daughter), the founders of the priory, which

otherwise would probably have been lost evermore.

The castle, which dominates the oldest part of the town, is but a few

minutes' stiff climb from the station; Lewes's several ancient churches

are within hailing distance of each other; the field of her battle,

where Simon de Montfort defeated Henry III., is in view from her

north-west slopes; while the new martyrs' memorial on the turf above the

precipitous escarpment of the Cliffe (once the scene of a fatal

avalanche) reminds one of what horrors were possible in the name of

religion in these streets less than four hundred years ago.

[Sidenote: THE RICHES OF LEWES]

Here are riches enough; yet Lewes adds to such mementoes of an historic

past two gaols--one civil and one naval--a racecourse, and a river, and

she is an assize town to boot. Once, indeed, Lewes was still better off,

for she had a theatre, which for some years was under the management of

Jack Palmer, of whom Charles Lamb wrote with such gusto. Added to these

possessions, she has, in Keere Street, the narrowest and steepest

thoroughfare down which a king (George IV.) ever drove a coach and four,

and a row of comfortable and serene residences (on the way to St. Ann's)

more luxuriantly and beautifully covered with leaves than any I ever

saw. (Much of Lewes in September is scarlet with Virginia creeper.)

[Illustration: _High Street, Southover._]

[Sidenote: "BRIGHTHELMSTONE, NEAR LEWES"]

[Sidenote: JOHN HALSHAM'S DREAM]

Although less than half an hour from Brighton by train, and an hour by

road, Lewes is yet a full quarter of a century behind it. She would do

well jealously to maintain this interval. Lewes was old and grey before

Brighton was thought of (indeed, it was, as we have seen, a Lewes man

that discovered Brighton--Dr. Russell, who lies in his grave in South

Malling church); let her cling to her seniority. As a town "in the

movement," as a contemporary of the "Queen of Watering Places," she

would cut a poor figure. But it is amusing to think of the old address

of a visitor to Brighton, "at Brighthelmstone, near Lewes," and to read

the county paper, _The Sussex Weekly Advertiser; or, Lewes Journal_, of

a century ago, with its columns of Lewes news and paragraphs of Brighton

correspondence. Lewes will cease to have charm the moment she

modernises. In the words of the author of _Idlehurst_, as he looked down

on the huddling little settlement from the Cliffe Hill: "Let us keep a

country town or two as preserves for clean atmospheres of body and soul,

for the almost lost secret of sitting still.... I find myself tangled

in half-dreams of a devolution by which, when national amity shall have

become mentionable besides personal pence, London shall attract to

herself all the small vice, as she does already most of the great, from

the country, all the thrusters after gain, the vulgar, heavy-fingered

intellects, the Progressive spouters, the Bileses, the speculating

brigandage, and shall give us back from the foggy world of clubs and

cab-ranks and geniuses, the poets and painters, all the nice and witty

and pretty people, to make towns such as this, conserved and purified,

into country-side Athenses; to form distinct schools of letters and art,

individual growths, not that universal Cockney mind, smoke-ingrained,

stage-ridden, convention-throttled, which now masquerades under the

forms of every clime and dialect within reach of a tourist ticket."

The customs of Lewes at the end of the Saxon rule and the beginning of

the Norman, as recorded in the pages of the Domesday Book, show that

residence in the town in those days was not unmixed delight, except,

perhaps, for murderers, for whom much seems to have been done. Thus: "If

the king wished to send an armament to guard the seas, without his

personal attendance, twenty shillings were collected from all the

inhabitants, without exception or respect to particular tenure, and

these were paid to the men-at-arms in the ships.

"The seller of a horse, within the borough, pays one penny to the mayor

(sheriff?) and the purchaser another; of an ox, a half-penny; of a man,

fourpence, in whatsoever place he may be brought within the rape.

"A murderer forfeits seven shillings and fourpence; a ravisher forfeits

eight shillings and fourpence; an adulterer eight shillings and

fourpence; an adultress the same. The king has the adulterer, the bishop

the adulteress."

[Sidenote: THE PROVIDENT DE WARENNES]

With the Conquest new life came into the town, as into South Sussex

generally. The rule of the de Braoses, who dominated so much of the

country through which we have been passing, is here no more, the great

lord of this district being William de Warenne, who had claims upon

William the Conqueror, not only for services rendered in the Conquest

but as a son-in-law. When, therefore, the contest was over, some of the

richest prizes fell to Earl de Warenne. Among them was the township of

Lewes, whose situation so pleased the Earl that he decided to make his

home there. His first action, then, was to graft upon the existing

fortress a new stronghold, the remains of which still stand.

Ten years after the victory at Hastings the memory of the blood of the

sturdy Saxons whom he had hacked down at Battle began so to weigh upon

de Warenne's conscience that he set out with Gundrada upon an expiatory

pilgrimage to Rome. Sheltering on the way in the monastery of St. Per,

at Cluny, they were so hospitably received that on returning to Lewes

William and Gundrada built a Priory, partly as a form of gratitude, and

partly as a safeguard for the life to come. In 1078, it was formally

founded on a magnificent scale. Thus Lewes obtained her castle and her

priory, both now in ruins, in the one of which William de Warenne might

sin with a clear mind, knowing that just below him, on the edge of the

water-brooks, was (in the other) so tangible an expiation.

The date of the formation of the priory spoils the pleasant legend which

tells how Harold, only badly wounded, was carried hither from Battle,

and how, recovering, he lived quietly with the brothers until his

natural death some years later. A variant of the same story takes the

English king to a cell near St. John's-under-the-Castle, also in Lewes,

and establishes him there as an anchorite. But (although, as we shall

see when we come to Battle, the facts were otherwise) all true

Englishmen prefer to think of Harold fighting in the midst of his army,

killed by a chance arrow shot into the zenith, and lying there until the

eyes of Editha of the Swan-neck lighted upon his dear corpse amid the

hundreds of the slain.

[Sidenote: THE CASTLE'S CURIOSITIES]

The de Warennes held Lewes Castle until the fourteenth century; the

Sussex Archaeological Society now have it in their fostering care.

Architecturally it is of no great interest, although it was once unique

in England by the possession of two keeps; nor has it romantic

associations, like Kenilworth or even Carisbrooke. The crumbling masonry

was assisted in its decay by no siege or bombardment; the castle has

been never the scene of human struggle. Visitors, therefore, must take

pleasure chiefly in the curiosities collected in the museum and in the

views from the roof. A few little rooms hold the treasures amassed by

the Archaeological Society; amassed, it may be said, with little

difficulty, for the soil of the district is fertile in relics. From

Ringmer come rusty shield bosses and the mouldering skull of an

Anglo-Saxon; from the old Lewes gaol come a lock and a key strong enough

to hold Jack Sheppard; and from Horsham Gaol a complete set of fetters

for ankles and wrists, once used to cramp the movements of female

malefactors. Here, in a case, is a tiny bronze thimble that tipped the

pretty finger of a Roman seamstress--one only among scores of tokens of

the Roman occupation of the county. Flint arrow heads and celts in

profusion take us back to remoter times. A Pyecombe crook hangs on one

wall, and relics of the Sussex ironworks are plentiful. The highest room

contains rubbings of our best brasses. Outside is an early Sussex

plough. In a corner is a beadle's staff that once struck terror into the

hearts of Sabbath-breaking boys; and near one of the windows is a little

brass crucifix from St. Pancras' Priory. But nothing, the custodian

tells me, so pleases visitors to this very catholic collection as the

mummied hand of a murderess.

[Sidenote: THE BATTLE OF LEWES]

Looking down and around from the roof of the keep, you are immediately

struck by the wide shallow hollow in which Lewes lies. It is something

the shape of a dairy basin, the gap to the north-west, between Malling

Hill and Offham, serving for the lip. Nothing could be flatter than the

smiling meadows, streaked with tiny streams, stretching between Lewes

and the coast line to the south-east (with the exception of one

symmetrical hillock just out of the town). Among them curls the lazy

Ouse; just beneath you Lewes sleeps, red-roofed as an Italian town,

sending up no hum of activity, listless and immovable save for a few

spirals of silent smoke. The surrounding hills are very fine: Firle

Beacon in the far east; Mount Caburn, a noble cone, in the near east;

Mount Harry to the west, on whose slopes Henry III., assisted by the

fiery Prince Edward, fought the Barons. So fiery, indeed, was this lad

that he forgot all about his father, and gave chase to a small

detachment of the enemy, catching them up, and hewing them down with the

keenest enjoyment, while the unhappy Henry was being completely worsted

by de Montfort. It was a bloody battle, made up, as old Fabian wrote, of

embittered men, with hearts full of hatred, "eyther desyrous to bring

the other out of lyfe." Great fun was made by the humorists of the time,

after the battle, over the fact that Richard, King of the Romans,

Henry's brother, was captured in a windmill in which he had taken

refuge. This mill stood near the site of the Black Horse inn. In _The

Barons' Wars_, by Mr. Blaauw, the Sussex antiquary, the whole story is

told.

Lewes has played but a small part in history since that battle; but, as

we saw when we were at Rottingdean, it was one of her Cluniac priors

that repulsed the French in 1377, and her son, Sir Nicholas Pelham, who

performed a similar service in 1545, at Seaford. As the verses on his

monument in St. Michael's Church run:--

What time the French sought to have sackt Sea-Foord,

This Pelham did repel-em back aboord.

[Illustration: _Ann of Cleves' House, Southover._]

[Sidenote: THE CLUNIAC PRIORY]

The Cluniac priory of St. Pancras was dissolved by Henry VIII. in 1537,

Thomas Cromwell, that execrable vandal, not only abolishing the monks

but destroying the buildings, which covered, with their gardens and fish

ponds, forty acres. The ruins that remain give some idea of the extent

of this wonderful priory, another relic being the adjacent mound on

which the Calvary stood, probably constructed of the earth removed for

the purpose from the Dripping Pan, as the hollow circular space is

called where Lewes now plays cricket. One very pretty possession of the

monks was allowed to stand until quite recent times--the Columbarium,

which was as large as a church and contained homes for 3,228 birds. It

has now vanished; but an idea of what it was may be gained from the

pigeon house at Alciston, a few miles distant, which belonged to Battle

Abbey.

The priory's possessions were granted to Cromwell by Henry VIII., who,

tradition asserts (somewhat directly in the face of historical

evidence), murdered one of his wives on a winding stair in the building,

and may therefore have been glad to see its demolition. Which wife it

was, is not stated, but when Cromwell went the way of all this king's

favourites, the property was transferred to Ann of Cleves, who is

supposed to have lived in the most picturesque of the old houses on the

right hand side of Southover's street as you leave Lewes for the Ouse

valley.

Southover church, in itself a beautiful structure of the grave red type,

with a square ivied tower and the most delicate vane in Sussex, is

rendered the more interesting by the possession of the leaden caskets of

William de Warenne and Gundrada and the superb tomb removed from Isfield

church and very ingeniously restored. These relics repose in a charming

little chapel built in their honour.

[Sidenote: TOM PAINE]

A notable man who had association with Lewes was Tom Paine, author of

_The Rights of Man_. He settled there as an exciseman in 1768, married

Elizabeth Ollive of the same town at St. Michael's Church in 1771, and

succeeded to her father's business as a tobacconist and grocer. Paine

was more successful as a debater than a business man. As a member of the

White Hart evening club he was more often than any other the winner of

the Headstrong Book--an old Greek Homer despatched the next morning to

the most obstinate haranguer of the preceding night. It was at Lewes

that Tom Paine's thoughts were first turned to the question of

government. He used thus to tell the story. One evening after playing

bowls, all the party retired to drink punch; when, in the conversation

that ensued, Mr. Verril (it should be Verrall) "observed, alluding to

the wars of Frederick, that the King of Prussia was the best fellow in

the world for a king, he had so much of the devil in him. This, striking

me with great force, occasioned the reflection, that if it were

necessary for a king to have so much of the devil in him, kings might

very beneficially be dispensed with."

I thought of that historic game of bowls as I watched four Lewes

gentlemen playing this otherwise discreetest of games in the meadow by

the castle gate on a fine September evening. Surely (after the historic

Plymouth Hoe) a lawn in the shadow of a Norman castle is the ideal spot

for this leisurely but exciting pastime. The four Lewes gentlemen played

uncommonly well, with bowls of peculiar splendour in which a setting of

silver glistened as they sped over the turf. After each game one little

boy bearing a cloth wiped the bowls while another registered the score.

And now I feel that no one can really be said to have seen Lewes unless

he has watched the progress of such a game: it remains in my mind as

intimate a part of the town and the town's spirit as the ruins of the

Priory, or Keere Street, or the Castle itself.

The house of Tom Paine, just off the High Street, almost opposite the

circular tower of St. Michael's, has a tablet commemorating its

illustrious owner. It also has a very curious red carved demon which

otherwise distinguishes it. Lewes was not always proud of Tom Paine; but

Cuckfield went farther. In 1793, I learn from the _Sussex Advertiser_

for that year, Cuckfield emphasised its loyalty to the constitution by

singing "God save the King" in the streets and burning Paine in effigy.

[Sidenote: "CLIO" RICKMAN]

Mention of Tom Paine naturally calls to mind his friend and biographer

(and my thrice great uncle), Thomas "Clio" Rickman, the Citizen of the

World, who was born at Lewes in 1760. Rickman began life as a Quaker,

and therefore without his pagan middle name, which he first adopted as

the signature to epigrams and scraps of verse in the local paper, and

afterwards incorporated in his signature. Rickman's connection with Tom

Paine and his own revolutionary habits were a source of distress to his

Quaker relatives at Lewes, so much so that there is a story in the

family of the Citizen being refused admission to a house in the

neighbourhood where he had eight impressionable nieces, and, when he

would visit their father, being entertained instead at the Bear. His

Bible, with sceptical marginal notes, is still preserved, with the bad

pages pasted together by a subsequent owner.

After roving about in Spain and other countries he settled as a

bookseller in London, and it was in his house and at his table that _The

Rights of Man_ was written. "This table," says an article on Rickman in

the _Wonderful Museum_, "is prized by him very highly at this time; and

no doubt will be deemed a rich relic by some of our irreligious

connoisseurs." It was shown at the Tom Paine exhibition a few years ago.

Rickman escaped prosecution, but he once had his papers seized.

[Sidenote: TIPPER'S EPITAPH]

According to his portrait Clio wore a hat like a beehive, and he

invented a trumpet to increase the sound of a signal gun. His verse is

exceedingly poor, his finest poetical achievement being the epitaph on

Thomas Tipper in Newhaven churchyard. Tipper was the brewer of the ale

that was known as "Newhaven Tipper"; but he was other things too:

Honest he was, ingenuous, blunt and kind,

And dared what few dare do, to speak his mind.

Philosophy and history well he knew,

Was versed in Physic and in surgery too,

The best old Stingo he both brewed and sold,

Nor did one knavish act to get his gold.

He played through life a varied comic part,

And knew immortal Hudibras by heart.

Charles Lamb greatly admired the end of this epitaph. Clio Rickman died

in 1834.

Among other men of note who have lived in Lewes or have had association

with it, was John Evelyn the diarist, who had some of his education at

Southover grammar school: Mark Antony Lower, the Sussex antiquary, to

whom all writers on the county are indebted; the Rev. T. W. Horsfield,

the historian of Sussex, without whose work we should also often be in

difficulties; and the Rev. Gideon Mantell, the Sussex geologist, whose

collection of Sussex fossils is preserved in the British Museum.

In St. Ann's church on the hill lie the bones of a remarkable man who

died at Lewes (in the tenth climacteric) in 1613--no less a person than

Thomas Twyne, M.D. In addition to the principles of physic he

"comprehended earthquakes" and wrote a book about them. He also wrote a

survey of the world. I quote Horsfield's translation of the florid Latin

inscription to his memory: "Hippocrates saw Twyne lifeless and his bones

slightly covered with earth. Some of his sacred dust (says he) will be

of use to me in removing diseases; for the dead, when converted into

medicine, will expel human maladies, and ashes prevail against ashes.

Now the physician is absent, disease extends itself on every side, and

exults its enemy is no more. Alas! here lies our preserver Twyne; the

flower and ornament of his age. Sussex deprived of her physician,

languished, and is ready to sink along with him. Believe me, no future

age will produce so good a physician and so renowned a man as this has.

He died at Lewes in 1613, on the 1st of August, in the tenth

climacteric, (viz. 70)."

[Sidenote: DR. JOHNSON AT LEWES]

Dr. Johnson was once in Lewes, on a day's visit to the Shelleys, at the

house which bears their name at the south end of the town. One of the

little girls becoming rather a nuisance with her questions, the Doctor

lifted her into a cherry tree and walked off. At dinner, some time

later, the child was missed, and a search party was about to set out

when the Doctor exclaimed, "Oh, I left her in a tree!" For many years

the tree was known as "Dr. Johnson's cherry tree."

[Illustration: _St. Ann's Church, Southover._]

[Sidenote: THE FIFTH]

Lewes is ordinarily still and leisurely, with no bustle in her steep

streets save on market days: an abode of rest and unhastening feet. But

on one night of the year she lays aside her grey mantle and her quiet

tones and emerges a Bacchante robed in flame. Lewes on the 5th of

November is an incredible sight; probably no other town in the United

Kingdom offers such a contrast to its ordinary life. I have never heard

that Lewes is notably Protestant on other days in the year, that any

intolerance is meted out to Roman Catholics on November 4th or November

6th; but on November 5th she appears to believe that the honour of the

reformed church is wholly in her hands, and that unless her voice is

heard declaiming against the tyrannies and treacheries of Rome all the

spiritual labours of the eighth Henry will have been in vain.

No fewer than eight Bonfire Societies flourish in the town, all in a

strong financial position. Each of these has its bonfire blazing or

smouldering at a street corner, from dusk to midnight, and each, at a

certain stage in the evening, forms into procession, and approaching its

own fire by devious routes, burns an effigy of the Pope, together with

whatever miscreant most fills the public eye at the moment--such as

General Booth or Mr. Kruger, both of whom I have seen incinerated amid

cheers and detonations.

[Sidenote: LEWES ROUSERS]

The figures are not lightly cast upon the flames, but are conducted

thither ceremoniously, the "Bishop" of the society having first passed

sentence upon them in a speech bristling with local allusions. These

speeches serve the function of a _revue_ of the year and are sometimes

quite clever, but it is not until they are printed in the next morning's

paper that one can take their many points. The principal among the many

distractions is the "rouser," a squib peculiar to Lewes, to which the

bonfire boys (who are, by the way, in great part boys only in name, like

the postboys of the past and the cowboys of the present) have given

laborious nights throughout the preceding October. The rouser is much

larger and heavier than the ordinary squib; it is propelled through the

air like a rocket by the force of its escaping sparks; and it bursts

with a terrible report. In order to protect themselves from the ravages

of the rouser the people in the streets wear spectacles of wire netting,

while the householders board up their windows and lay damp straw on

their gratings. Ordinary squibs and crackers are also continuously

ignited, while now and then one of the sky rockets discharged in flights

from a procession, elects to take a horizontal course, and hurtles

head-high down the crowded street.

So the carnival proceeds until midnight, when the firemen, who have

been on the alert all the evening, extinguish the fires. The Bonfire

Societies subsequently collect information as to any damage done and

make it good: a wise course, to which they owe in part the sanction to

renew the orgie next year. Other towns in Sussex keep up the glorious

Fifth with some spirit, but nowhere in England is there anything to

compare with the thoroughness of Lewes.

[Illustration: _The Ouse at South Street, Lewes._]

[Sidenote: THE LEWES MARTYRS]

[Sidenote: RICHARD WOODMAN]

To some extent Lewes may consider that she has reason for the display,

for on June 22, 1557, ten men and women were tied to the stake and

burned to death in the High Street for professing a faith obnoxious to

Queen Mary. Chief of these courageous enthusiasts were Richard Woodman

and Derrick Carver. Woodman, a native of Buxted, had settled at

Warbleton, where he was a prosperous iron master. All went well until

Mary's accession to the throne, when the rector of Warbleton, who had

been a Protestant under Edward VI., turned, in Foxe's words, "head to

tayle" and preached "clean contrary to that which he had before taught."

Woodman's protests carried him to imprisonment and the stake.

Altogether, Lewes saw the death of sixteen martyrs.

[Illustration: _The Ouse at Piddinghoe._]

CHAPTER XXVII

THE OUSE VALLEY

The two Ouses--Three round towers--Thirsty

labourers--Telscombe--The hills and the sea--Mrs. Marriott Watson's

Down poem--Newhaven--A Sussex miller--Seaford's past--A politic

smuggler--Electioneering ingenuity--Bishopstone.

The road from Lewes to the sea runs along the edge of the Ouse levels,

just under the bare hills, passing through villages that are little more

than homesteads of the sheep-farmers, albeit each has its church--Iford,

Rodmell, Southease, Piddinghoe--and so to Newhaven, the county's only

harbour of any importance since the sea silted up the Shoreham bar. You

may be as much out of the world in one of these minute villages as

anywhere twice the distance from London; and the Downs above them are

practically virgin soil. The Brighton horseman or walker takes as a rule

a line either to Lewes or to Newhaven, rarely adventuring in the

direction of Iford Hill, Highdole Hill, or Telscombe village, which

nestles three hundred feet high, over Piddinghoe. By day the waggons ply

steadily between Lewes and the port, but other travellers are few. Once

evening falls the world is your own, with nothing but the bleat of sheep

and the roar of the French boat trains to recall life and civilisation.

[Sidenote: THE OUSE VALLEY]

The air of this valley is singularly clear, producing on fine days a

blue effect that is, I believe, peculiar to the district. In the

sketches of a Brighton painter in water colours, Mr. Clem Lambert, who

has worked much at Rodmell, the spirit of the river valleys of Sussex is

reproduced with extraordinary fidelity and the minimum loss of

freshness.

[Illustration: _Rodmell._]

Horsfield, rather than have no poetical blossom to deck his page at the

mention of the Lewes river, quotes a passage from "The Task":

Here Ouse, slow winding through a level plain

Of spacious meads, with cattle sprinkled o'er,

Conducts the eye along his sinuous course

Delighted.

Dr. Johnson's remark that one green field is like another green field,

might, one sees, be extended to rivers, for Cowper was, of course,

describing the Ouse at Olney.

The first village out of Lewes on the Newhaven road is Kingston (one of

three Sussex villages of this name), on the side of the hill, once the

property of Sir Philip Sidney. Next is Iford, with straw blowing free

and cows in its meadows; next Rodmell, whence Whiteway Bottom and Breaky

Bottom lead to the highlands above: next Southease, where the only

bridge over the Ouse between Lewes and Newhaven is to be crossed: a

little village famous for a round church tower, of which Sussex knows

but three, one other at St. Michael's, Lewes, and one at Piddinghoe, the

next village.

[Sidenote: SOUTHEASE THIRST]

The Southease rustics were once of independent mind, as may be gathered

from the following extract from the "Manorial Customs of

Southease-with-Heighton, near Lewes," in 1623: "Every reaper must have

allowed him, at the cost of the lord or his farmer, one drinkinge in the

morninge of bread and cheese, and a dinner at noone consistinge of

rostmeate and other good victualls, meete for men and women in harvest

time; and two drinkinges in the afternoone, one in the middest of their

afternoone's work and the other at the ende of their day's work, and

drinke alwayes duringe their work as neede shall require."

[Sidenote: PIDD'NHOO]

Telscombe, the capital of these lonely Downs and as good an objective as

the walker who sets out from Brighton, Rottingdean, or Lewes to climb

hills can ask, is a charming little shy hamlet which nothing can harm,

snugly reposing in its combe, above Piddinghoe. Piddinghoe (pronounced

Pidd'nhoo) is a compact village at the foot of the hill; but it has

suffered in picturesqueness and character by its proximity to the

commercial enterprise of Newhaven. Hussey, in his _Notes on the Churches

of ... Sussex_, suggests that a field north of the village was once the

site of a considerable Roman villa. A local sarcasm credits Piddinghoe

people with the habit of shoeing their magpies.

[Illustration: _Piddinghoe._]

The Downs when we saw them first, between Midhurst and Chichester,

formed an inland chain parallel with the shore: here, and eastward as

far as Beachy Head, where they suddenly cease, their southern slopes are

washed by the Channel. This companionship of the sea lends them an

additional wildness: sea mists now and then envelop them in a cloud; sea

birds rise and fall above their cliffs; the roar or sigh of the waves

mingles with the cries of sheep; the salt savour of the sea is borne on

the wind over the crisp turf. It was, I fancy, among the Downs in this

part of Sussex that Mrs. Marriott-Watson wrote the intimately

understanding lines which I take the liberty of quoting:

[Sidenote: A HILL POEM]

ON THE DOWNS.

Broad and bare to the skies

The great Down-country lies,

Green in the glance of the sun,

Fresh with the clean salt air;

Screaming the gulls rise from the fresh-turned mould,

Where the round bosom of the wind-swept wold

Slopes to the valley fair.

Where the pale stubble shines with golden gleam

The silver ploughshare cleaves its hard-won way

Behind the patient team,

The slow black oxen toiling through the day

Tireless, impassive still,

From dawning dusk and chill

To twilight grey.

Far off the pearly sheep

Along the upland steep

Follow their shepherd from the wattled fold,

With tinkling bell-notes falling sweet and cold

As a stream's cadence, while a skylark sings

High in the blue, with eager outstretched wings,

Till the strong passion of his joy be told.

But when the day grows old,

And night cometh fold on fold,

Dulling the western gold,

Blackening bush and tree,

Veiling the ranks of cloud,

In their pallid pomp and proud

That hasten home from the sea,

Listen--now and again if the night be still enow,

You may hear the distant sea range to and fro

Tearing the shingly bourne of his bounden track,

Moaning with hate as he fails and falleth back;

The Downs are peopled then;

Fugitive, low-browed men

Start from the slopes around

Over the murky ground

Crouching they run with rough-wrought bow and spear,

Now seen, now hid, they rise and disappear,

Lost in the gloom again.

Soft on the dew-fall damp

Scarce sounds the measured tramp

Of bronze-mailed sentinels,

Dark on the darkened fells

Guarding the camp.

The Roman watch-fires glow

Red on the dusk; and harsh

Cries a heron flitting slow

Over the valley marsh

Where the sea-mist gathers low.

Closer, and closer yet

Draweth the night's dim net

Hiding the troubled dead:

No more to see or know

But a black waste lying below,

And a glimmering blank o'erhead.

Of Newhaven there is little to say, except that in rough weather the

traveller from France is very glad to reach it, and on a fine day the

traveller from England is happy to leave it behind. In the churchyard is

a monument in memory of the officers and crew of the _Brazen_, which

went down off the town in 1800, and lost all hands save one.

[Sidenote: A SUSSEX MILLER]

On the way to Seaford, which is nearly three miles east, sheltering

under its white headland (a preliminary sketch, as one might say, for

Beachy Head), we pass the Bishopstone tide mills, once the property of a

sturdy and prosperous Sussex autocrat named William Catt, the grower of

the best pears in the county, and the first to welcome Louis Philippe

(whom he had advised on milling in France) when he landed at Newhaven in

exile. A good story told of William Catt, by Mr. Lower, in his _Worthies

of Sussex_, illustrates not only the character of that sagacious and

kindly martinet, but also of the Sussex peasant in its mingled

independence and dependence, frankness and caution. Mr. Catt, having

unbent among his retainers at a harvest supper, one of them, a little

emboldened perhaps by draughts of Newhaven "tipper," thus addressed his

master. "Give us yer hand, sir, I love ye, I love ye," but, he added,

"I'm danged if I beant afeared of ye, though."

[Illustration: _Southover Grange._]

There was a hermitage on the cliff at Seaford some centuries ago. In

1372 the hermit's name was Peter, and we find him receiving letters of

protection for the unusual term of five years. In the vestry of the

church is an old monument bearing the riddling inscription: "... Also,

near this place lie two mothers, three grandmothers, four aunts, four

sisters, four daughters, four grand-daughters, three cousins--but VI

persons." A record in the Seaford archives runs thus: "Dec. 24, 1652.

Then were all accounts taken and all made even, from the beginning of

ye world, of the former Bayliffes unto the present time, and there

remained ... ye sum of twelve pounds, sixteen shillings, seven pence."

[Sidenote: THE PRICE OF TWO VOTES]

Millburgh House, Seaford, was of old called Corsica Hall, having been

built (originally at Wellingham, near Lewes, and then moved) by a

smuggler named Whitfield, who was outlawed for illicit traffic in

Corsican wine. He obtained the removal of his outlawry by presenting

George II. with a selection of his choicest vintages. Another agreeable

story of local corruption is told concerning Seaford's old

electioneering days. It was in 1798, during the candidature of Sir

Godfrey Webster of Battle Abbey. Sir Godfrey was one day addressed by

Mrs. S---- (nothing but Horsfield's delicacy keeps her name from fame) in

the following terms: "Mr. S----, sir, will vote, of course, as he

pleases--I have nothing to do or to say about him; but there is my

gardener and my coachman, both of whom will, I am sure, be entirely

guided by me. Now, they are both family men, Sir Godfrey, and I wish to

do the best I can to serve them. Now, I know you are in great doubt, and

that two sure votes are of great value: I'll tell you what you shall do.

You shall give me _L_200; nobody will know any thing about it; there will

be no danger--no bribery, Sir Godfrey, at all. I will desire the men to

go and vote for you and Colonel Tarleton, and it will all be right, and

no harm done. The bargain," adds Horsfield, "was struck--the money

paid--the votes given as promised; and the election over, the old lady

gave the two men _L_30 a piece, and pocketed the rest for the good of her

country."

[Sidenote: SEAFORD TO LEWES]

Seaford's neighbouring village, Bishopstone, in addition to its tide

mills--the only tide mills in Sussex excepting that at Sidlesham, now

disused--possessed once the oldest windmill in the county. In the very

charming little church is buried James Hurdis, author of _The Village

Curate_, whom we shall meet again at Burwash. From Bishopstone we may

return to Lewes either by the road through South Heighton, Tarring

Neville, Itford Farm, and Beddingham, or cross the river again at

Southease, and retrace our earlier steps through Rodmell and Iford. That

is the quicker way. The road through Beddingham is longer, and

interesting rather for the hills above it than for anything upon it. To

these hills we come in the next chapter.

[Illustration: _Near Tarring Neville._]

CHAPTER XXVIII

ALFRISTON

Three routes to Alfriston--West Firle--The Gages--A "Noble

Dame"--Sussex pronunciation and doggedness--The Selmeston

smugglers--Alfriston's ancient inn--The middle ages and P....

P....--Alfriston church--A miracle and a sign--An Alfriston

scholar--Dr. Benbrigg--The smallest church in Sussex--Alfriston as

a centre--A digression on walking--"A Song against

Speed"--Alciston--A Berwick genius--The Long Man of Wilmington.

Alfriston may be reached from Lewes by rail, taking train to Berwick; by

road, under the hills; or on foot or horse-back, over the hills. By

road, you pass first through Beddingham, a small village, where, it is

said, was once a monastery; then, by a southern _detour_, to West Firle,

a charming little village with a great park, which bears the same

relation to Firle Beacon that Wiston Park does to Chanctonbury Ring. The

tower in the east serves to provide a good view of the Weald for those

who do not care to climb the beacon's seven hundred feet and get a

better. The little church is rich in interesting memorials of the Gages,

who have been the lords of Firle for many a long year.

In the house is a portrait of Sir John Gage, the trusted friend of Henry

VIII., Edward VI., and Mary, and, as Constable of the Tower, the gaoler

(but a very kind one) of both Lady Jane Grey and the Princess Elizabeth,

afterwards Good Queen Bess. In Harrison Ainsworth's romance _The

Constable of the Tower_ Sir John Gage is much seen. Sir John was

succeeded at Firle by his son Sir Edward, who, as High Sheriff of

Sussex, was one of the judges of the Sussex martyrs, but who, even Foxe

admits, exercised courtesy to them. Sir Edward's son, Sir John Gage, was

the second husband of the Lady Penelope D'Arcy, Mr. Hardy's heroine,

whose portrait we saw at Parham: who, being courted as a girl by Sir

George Trenchard, Sir John Gage, and Sir William Hervey, promised she

would marry all in turn, and did so. Sir George left her a widow at

seventeen; to Sir John Gage she bore nine children.

Returning from Firle to the high road, we come next, by following for a

little a left turn, to Selmeston, the village where Mr. W. D. Parish,

the rector for very many years, collected most of the entertaining

examples of the Sussex dialect with which I have made so free in a later

chapter. The church is very simple and well-cared for, with some pretty

south windows. The small memorial tablets of brass which have been let

into the floor symmetrically among the tiles seem to me a happier means

of commemoration than mural tablets,--at least for a modest building

such as this.

[Sidenote: VAGARIES OF PRONUNCIATION]

In losing your way in this neighbourhood do not ask the passer-by for

Selmeston, but for Simson; for Selmeston, pronounced as spelt, does not

exist. Sussex men are curiously intolerant of the phonetics of

orthography. Brighthelmstone was called Brighton from the first,

although only in the last century was the spelling modified to agree

with the sound. Chalvington (the name of a village north of Selmeston)

is a pretty word, but Sussex declines to call it other than Chawton.

Firle becomes Furrel; Lewes is almost Lose, but not quite; Heathfield is

Hefful. It is characteristic of a Sussex man that he always knows best;

though all the masters of all the colleges should assemble about him and

speak reasoningly of Selmeston he would leave the congress as

incorrigible and self-satisfied a Simsonian as ever.

Many years ago Selmeston churchyard possessed an empty tomb, in which

the smugglers were wont to store their goods until a favourable time

came to set them on the road. Any objections that those in authority

might have had were silenced by an occasional tub. But of this more in

the next chapter.

[Sidenote: ALFRISTON]

And so we come to Alfriston; but, as I said, the right way was over the

hills, ascending them either at Itford (crossing the Ouse at Southease)

or by that remarkable combe, one of the finest in Sussex, with an avenue

leading to it, which is gained from a lane south of Beddingham. Firle

Beacon's lofty summit is half-way between Beddingham and Alfriston, and

from this height, with its magnificent view of the Weald, we descend

steadily to the Cuckmere valley, of which Alfriston is the capital.

Alfriston, which is now only a village street, shares with Chichester

the distinction of possessing a market cross. Alfriston's specimen is,

however, sadly mutilated, a mere relic, whereas Chichester's is being

made more splendid as I write. Alfriston also has one of the oldest inns

in the county--the "Star"--(finer far in its way than any of

Chichester's seventy and more); but Ainsworth was wrong in sending

Charles II. thither, in _Ovingdean Grange_. It is one of the inns that

the Merry Monarch never saw. The "Star" was once a sanctuary, within the

jurisdiction of the Abbot of Battle, for persons flying from justice;

and it is pleasant to sit in the large room upstairs, over the street,

and think of fugitives pattering up the valley, with fearful backward

glances, and hammering at the old door. One Birrel, in the reign of

Henry VIII., having stolen a horse at Lydd, in Kent, took refuge here.

The inn in those days was intended chiefly for the refreshment of

mendicant friars.

In 1767 the landlord was, according to a private letter, "as great a

curiosity as the house." I wish we had some information about him, for

the house is quaint and curious indeed, with its red lion sentinel at

the side (figure-head from a Dutch wreck in Cuckmere Haven), and its

carvings inside and out. The old and the new mingled very oddly when I

was lately at Alfriston. Hearing a familiar sound, as of a battledore

and a ball, in one of the rooms, I opened the door and discovered the

landlord and a groom from the racing stables near by in the throes of

the most modern of games, amid surroundings absolutely mediaeval.

[Sidenote: THE CATHEDRAL OF THE DOWNS]

The size of the grave and commanding church, which has been called the

cathedral of the South Downs, alone proves that Alfriston was once a

vastly more important place than it now is. Legend says that the

foundations were first cut in the meadow known as Savyne Croft. There

day after day the builders laid their stones, arriving each morning to

find them removed to the Tye, the field where the church now stands. At

last the meaning of the miracle entered their heads, and the church was

erected on the new site. Its shape was determined by the slumbers of

four oxen, who were observed by the architect to be sleeping in the form

of a cross. Poynings church, under the Dyke Hill, near Brighton, was

built, it has been conjectured, by the same architect. Within the

cathedral of the South Downs, which is a fourteenth century building, is

a superb east window, but it has no coloured glass. The register,

beginning with 1504, is perhaps the oldest in England. Hard by the

church is the simple little clergy house--unique in England, I

believe--dating from pre-Reformation times. It has lately been very

carefully restored.

Alfriston once had a scholar in the person of Thomas Chowne, of Frog

Firle, the old house on the road to Seaford, about a mile beyond the

village. Chowne, who died in 1639, and was buried at Alfriston, is thus

touched off by Fuller:--"Thomas Chune, Esquire, living at Alfriston in

this County, set forth a small Manuall, intituled _Collectiones

Theologicarum Conclusionum_. Indeed, many have much opposed it (as what

book meeteth not with opposition?); though such as dislike must commend

the brevity and clearness of his Positions. For mine own part, I am glad

to see a Lay-Gentleman so able and industrious." Chowne's great great

grandson, an antiquary, one night left some books too near his library

fire; they ignited, and Frog Firle Place was in large part destroyed. It

is now only a fragment of what it was, and is known as Burnt House.

[Sidenote: AN ALFRISTON DOCTOR]

An intermediate dweller at Frog Firle was one Robert Andrews, who, when

unwell, seems to have been attended by William Benbrigg. Miss Florence

A. Pagden, in her agreeable little history of Alfriston, from which I

have been glad to borrow, prints two of Mr. Benbrigg's letters of kindly

but vague advice to his patient. Here is one:--

"MR. ANDREWS,

"I have sent you some things which you may take in the manner

following, viz.:--of that in the bottle marked with a + you may

take of the quantity of a spoonfull or so, now and then, and at

night take some of those pills, drinking a little warm beer after

it, and in the morning take 2 spoonfulls of that in ------

bottle fasting an hour after it, and then you may eat something,

you may take also of the first, and every night a pill, and in the

morning. I hope this will do you good, which is the desire of him

who is your loving friend,

"WM. BENBRIGG."

Alfriston once had a race meeting of its own--the course is still to be

seen on the southern slope of Firle Beacon--and it also fostered cricket

in the early days. A famous single-wicket match was contested here in

1787, between four men whose united ages amounted to 297 years. History

records that the game was played with "great spirit and activity." Mr.

Lower records, in 1870, that the largest pear and the largest apple ever

known in England were both grown at Alfriston, but possibly the record

has since been broken.

The smallest church in Sussex is however still to Alfriston's credit,

for Lullington church, on the hill side, just across the river and the

fields to the east of Alfriston church, may be considered to belong to

Alfriston without any violence to its independence. As a matter of fact,

the church was once bigger, the chancel alone now standing. What

Charles Lamb says of Hollington church in Chapter XXXVI. of this book,

would be more fitting of Lullington.

[Sidenote: HILL WALKS]

We have come to Alfriston from Lewes, proposing to return there; but it

might well be made a centre, so much fine hill country does it command.

Alfriston to Seaford direct, over the hills and back of the cliffs and

the Cuckmere valley; Alfriston to Eastbourne, crossing the Cuckmere at

Litlington, and beginning the ascent of the hills at West Dean;

Alfriston to Lewes over Firle Beacon; Alfriston to Newhaven direct;

Alfriston to Jevington and Willingdon;--all these routes cover good Down

country, making the best of primitive rambles by day and bringing one at

evening back to the "Star," this mediaeval inn in the best of primitive

villages. Few persons, however, are left who will climb hills--even

grass hills--if they can help it; hence this counsel is likely to lead

to no overcrowding of Fore Down, The Camp, Five Lords Burgh, South Hill,

or Firle Beacon.

I might here, perhaps, be allowed to insert some verses upon the new

locomotion, since they bear upon this question of walking in remote

places, and were composed to some extent in Sussex byways in the spring

of 1903:--

[Sidenote: A SONG AGAINST SPEED]

A SONG AGAINST SPEED.

Of speed the savour and the sting,

None but the weak deride;

But ah, the joy of lingering

About the country side!

The swiftest wheel, the conquering run,

We count no privilege

Beside acquiring, in the sun,

The secret of the hedge.

Where is the poet fired to sing

The snail's discreet degrees,

A rhapsody of sauntering,

A gloria of ease;

Proclaiming their's the baser part

Who consciously forswear

The delicate and gentle art

Of never getting there?

_To get there first!_--'tis time to ring

The knell of such an aim;

_To be the swiftest!_--riches bring

So easily that fame.

_To shine, a highway meteor,

Devourer of the map!_--

A vulgar bliss to choose before

Repose in Nature's lap!

Consider too how small a thing

The highest speed you gain:

A bee can frolic on the wing

Around the fastest train.

Think of the swallow in the air,

The salmon in the stream,

And cease to boast the records rare

Of paraffin and steam.

Most, most of all when comes the Spring,

Again to lay (as now)

Her hand benign and quickening

On meadow, hill and bough,

Should speed's enchantment lose its power,

For "None who would exceed

[The Mother speaks] a mile an hour,

My heart aright can read."

The turnpike from the car to fling,

As from a yacht the sea,

Is doubtless as inspiriting

As aught on land can be;

I grant the glory, the romance,

But look behind the veil--

Suppose that while the motor pants

You miss the nightingale!

[Sidenote: ALCISTON]

To return to Alfriston, there are two brief excursions (possible in the

vehicles that are glanced at in the foregoing verses) which ought to be

described here: to Alciston and to Wilmington. Alciston is a little

hamlet under the east slope of Firle Beacon, practically no more than a

farm house, a church, and dependant cottages. It is on a road that leads

only to itself and "to the Hill" (as the sign-boards say hereabout); it

is perhaps as nearly forgotten as any village in the county; and yet I

know of no village with more unobtrusive charm. The church, which has no

vicar of its own, being served from Selmeston, a mile away, stands high

amid its graves, the whole churchyard having been heaped up and

ramparted much as a castle is. In the hollow to the west of the church

is part of the farmyard: a pond, a vast barn with one of the noblest red

roofs in these parts, and the ruins of a stone pigeon house of great age

and solidity, buttressed and built as if for a siege, in curious

contrast to the gentle, pretty purpose for which it was intended.

Between the church and the hill, and almost adjoining it, is the

farmhouse, where the church keys are kept--a relic of Alciston Grange

(once the property of Battle Abbey)--with odds and ends of its past life

still visible, and a flourishing fig-tree at the back, heavy with fruit

when I saw it under a September sun. The front of the house looks due

east, across a valley of corn, to Berwick church, on a corresponding

mound, and beyond Berwick to the Downs above Wilmington. And at the foot

of the garden, on the top of the grey wall above the moat, is a long,

narrow terrace of turf, commanding this eastern view--a terrace meet for

Benedick and Beatrice to pace, exchanging raillery.

In Berwick church, by the way, is a memorial to George Hall, a former

rector, of whom it is said that his name "speaks all learning humane and

divine," and that his memory is "precious both to the Muses and the

Graces." The Reverend George Hall's works seem, however, to have

vanished.

[Sidenote: THE LONG MAN]

Wilmington, north-east of Alfriston, occupies a corresponding position

to that of Alciston in the north-west; but having a "lion" in the shape

of the Long Man it has lost its virginal bloom. Wilmington is providing

tea and ginger beer while Alciston nurses its unsullied inaccessibility.

The Long Man is a rude figure cut in the turf by the monks of the

Benedictine priory that once flourished here, the ruins of which are now

incorporated (like Alciston Grange) in a farm house on the east of the

village. At least, it is thought by some antiquaries that the effigy is

the work of the monks; others pronounce it druidical. The most alluring

of several theories, indeed, would have the figure to represent Pol or

Balder, the Sun God, pushing aside the doors of darkness--Polegate (or

Bolsgate) near by being brought in as evidence.

CHAPTER XXIX

SMUGGLING

The Cuckmere Valley--Alfriston smuggling foreordained--Desperado

and benefactor--A witty minister--Hawker of Morwenstowe--The church

and run spirits--The two smugglers, the sea smuggler and the land

smuggler--The half-way house--The hollow ways of Sussex--Mr. Horace

Hutchinson quoted--Burwash as a smuggler's cradle.

Alfriston's place in history was won by its smugglers. All Sussex

smuggled more or less; but smuggling may be said to have been

Alfriston's industry. Cuckmere Haven, close by, offered unique

advantages: it was retired, the coast was unpopulated, the roadway

inland started immediately from the beach, the valley was in friendly

hands, the paths and contours of the hills were not easily learned by

revenue men. Nature from the first clearly intended that Alfriston men

should be too much for the excise; smuggling was predestined. Farmers,

shepherds, ostlers, what you will that is respectable, these Alfriston

men might be by day and when the moon was bright; but when the "darks"

came round they were smugglers every one.

[Sidenote: MR. BETTS'S READINESS]

Chief of what was known nearly a hundred years ago as the "Alfriston

Gang" was Stanton Collins, who lived at Market Cross House. Collins

employed his men not only in assisting him in smuggling, but for other

purposes removed from that calling by a wide gulf. Thus when Mr. Betts,

the minister of the Lady Huntingdon chapel at Alfriston, was

high-handedly suspended by the chief trustee of the chapel, on account

of his opposition to that gentleman's proposed union with his deceased

wife's sister, it was Collins's gang who invaded the chapel, ejected the

new minister, replaced Mr. Betts in the pulpit, and mounted guard round

it while he continued the service. Mr. Betts was equal to the occasion:

he gave out the hymn "God moves in a mysterious way."

Collins terrorised the country-side for some years (except upon the

score of personal bravery and humorous audacity, I doubt if his place is

quite on the golden roll of smugglers) and was at length brought within

the power of the law for sheep-stealing, and sentenced to seven years.

The last of his gang, Bob Hall, died in the workhouse at Eastbourne in

1895, aged ninety-four.

[Sidenote: THE CHURCH COMPLAISANT]

Sussex may always be proud of her best smugglers. There were brutal

scoundrels among them, such as the men that murdered Chater and were

executed at Chichester in 1748 (the report may be read in Mr. H. L.

Stephen's _State Trials_, vol. iv.); but the ordinary smuggler was often

a fine rebellious fellow, courageous, resourceful, and gifted with a

certain grim humour that led him, as we have seen, to hide his tubs as

often in the belfry or the churchyard as anywhere else, and enough

knowledge of character to tell him when he might secure the silence of

the vicar with an oblatory keg. The Sussex clergy seemed to have needed

very little encouragement to omit smuggling from the decalogue. It is, I

think, the late Mr. Coker Egerton, of Burwash, who tells of a Sussex

parson feigning illness a whole Sunday on hearing suddenly in the

morning that a cargo, hard pressed by the revenue, had in despair been

lodged among his pews. But the classical passage on this subject comes

from Cornwall, from the pen of R. S. Hawker, the vicar of Morwenstowe

and the author of "The Song of the Western Men." He was not himself a

smuggler, but his parishioners had no scruples, and his heart was with

the braver side of the business:--

It was full sea in the evening of an autumn day when a traveller

arrived where the road ran along by a sandy beach just above

high-water mark. The stranger, who was a native of some inland

town, and utterly unacquainted with Cornwall and its ways, had

reached the brink of the tide just as a "landing" was coming off.

It was a scene not only to instruct a townsman, but also to dazzle

and surprise. At sea, just beyond the billows, lay the vessel, well

moored with anchors at stem and stern. Between the ship and the

shore boats, laden to the gunwale, passed to and fro. Crowds

assembled on the beach to help the cargo ashore. On the one hand a

boisterous group surrounded a keg with the head knocked in, for

simplicity of access to the good cognac, into which they dipped

whatsoever vessel came first to hand; one man had filled his shoe.

On the other side they fought and wrestled, cursed and swore.

Horrified at what he saw, the stranger lost all self-command, and,

oblivious of personal danger, he began to shout, "What a horrible

sight! Have you no shame? Is there no magistrate at hand? Cannot

any justice of the peace be found in this fearful country?"

"No; thanks be to God," answered a hoarse, gruff voice. "None

within eight miles."

"Well, then," screamed the stranger, "is there no clergyman

hereabout? Does no minister of the parish live among you on this

coast?"

"Aye! to be sure there is," said the same deep voice.

"Well, how far off does he live? Where is he?"

"That's he, sir, yonder, with the lanthorn." And sure enough there

he stood, on a rock, and poured, with pastoral diligence, 'the

light of other days' on a busy congregation.

The clergy, however, did not always know how useful they were. The Rev.

Webster Whistler, of Hastings, records that he was awakened one night to

receive a votive cask of brandy as his share of the spoil which, to his

surprise, his church tower had been harbouring. A commoner method was to

leave the gift--the tithe--silently on the doorstep. Revenue officers

have perhaps been placated in the same way.

Smuggling, in the old use of the word, is no more. The surreptitious

introduction into this country of German cigars, eau de Cologne, and

Tauchnitz novels, does not merit the term. A revised tariff having

removed the necessity for smuggling, the game is over; for that is the

reason of the disappearance of the smuggler rather than any increased

vigilance on the part of the coastguard. The records of smuggling show

that the difficulties offered to the profession by the Government were

difficulties that existed merely to be overcome. Perhaps fiscal reform

may restore the old pastime.

[Sidenote: THE LAND SMUGGLER]

The word smuggler arouses in the mind the figure of a bold and desperate

mariner searching the coast for a signal that all is safe to land his

cargo. But as a matter of fact the men who ran the greatest risks were

not the marine smugglers at all, but the land smugglers who received the

tubs on the shore and conveyed them to a hiding place preparatory to the

journey to London, whither the major part was perilously taken. Such

were the Alfriston smugglers. These were the men who fought the revenue

officers and had the hair's-breadth escapes. These were the men whose

houses were watched, whose every movement was suspected, who needed to

be wily as the serpent and to know the country inch by inch.