Not that the sea smuggler ran no risks. On the contrary, he was

continually in danger from revenue cutters and the coastguards' boats.

Bloody fights in the Channel were by no means rare. He was also often in

peril from the elements; his endurance was superb; he had to be a sailor

of genius, ready for every kind of emergency. But the land smuggler was

more vulnerable than the sea smuggler, his rewards were smaller, and his

operations were less simple. There is a vast difference between a dark

night at sea and a dark night on land. Once the night fell the sea was

the smuggler's own: he was invisible, inaudible. But the land was not

less the revenue officer's: the land smuggler had to show his signal

light, he had to roll casks over the beach, he had to carry them into

security. His horse's hoofs could not be stilled as oars are muffled,

his wheels bit noisily into the road, he was liable to be stopped at any

turn. And he ran these risks from the coast right into London. I doubt

if the land smuggler has had his due of praise. Sometimes the land

smuggler had to be land smuggler and sea smuggler too, for many of the

ships never troubled to make a landing at all. They sailed as near the

shore as might be and then sank the tubs, which were always lashed

together and kept on deck in readiness to be thrown overboard in case of

the approach of a cutter. The position of the mooring having been

conveyed to the confederates on shore, the vessel was at liberty to

return to France for another cargo, leaving the responsibility of

fishing up the tubs, and getting them to shore and away, wholly with the

land smuggler.

An old pamphlet, entitled, _The Trials of the Smugglers ... at the

Assizes held at East Grinstead, March 13, 14, 15, and 16, 1748-9_, gives

the following information about the duties and pay of the land smugglers

at that day:--"Each Man is allowed Half a Guinea a Time, and his

Expenses for Eating and Drinking, a Horse found him, and the Profits of

a Dollop of Tea, which is about 13 Pounds Weight, being the Half of a

Bag; which Profit, even from the most ordinary of their Teas, comes to

24 or 25 Shillings; and they always make one Journey, sometimes two, in

a Week." But these men would be underlings. There were, I take it, land

smugglers in control of the operations who shared on a more lordly scale

with their brethren in the boat.

[Sidenote: HALF-WAY HOUSES]

On all the routes employed by the land smugglers were certain cottages

and farm-houses where tubs might be hidden. Houses still abound supplied

with unexpected recesses and vast cellars where cargoes were stored on

their way to London. In many cases, in the old days, these houses were

"haunted," to put forth the legend of a ghost being the simplest way not

only of accounting for such nocturnal noises as might be occasioned by

the arrival or departure of smugglers and tubs, but also of keeping

inquisitive folks at bay. Only a little while ago, during alterations to

an old cottage high on the hills near my home in Kent, corroboration was

given to a legend crediting the place with being a smuggler's "half-way

house," by the builders' discovery of a cavern under the garden

communicating with the cellar. For the gaining of such fastnesses the

hollow ways of Sussex were maintained. Parson Darby's smuggling

successor, in Mr. Horace Hutchinson's Sussex romance, _A Friend of

Nelson_, thus described them to the hero of Withyham:--

"The sun strikes hot enough. Would you like to ride in the shade

awhile?"

"Immensely," I replied, "if I saw the shade."

"Keep after me, then," said he; "but the roan will. You need not

trouble!" In a moment, on his great big horse, he was forcing his

way down what had looked to me no more than a rabbit-run through

the roadside bushes. For a while I had noticed the road seemed

flanked by a mass of boskage below it on the right-hand side. Into

this, and downward, the man crammed his horse, squeezing his legs

into the horse's flank. I followed closely, and in a yard or two

found myself in a deep lane or cutting, very thickly overgrown, so

that only occasional gleams of sunshine crept in through the

leafage. We rode, as he had promised, in a most pleasant shade. The

floor of this lane or passage was not of the smoothest, and we went

at a foot's pace only, and in Indian file.

"What is the meaning of it all?" I asked him.

[Sidenote: THE HOLLOW WAYS]

"Well," said he, "you have heard, I suppose, of the 'hollow ways,'

as they are called, of Sussex. This is one. They were in their

origin lanes, I take it, and perhaps the only means of getting

about the country. The rains, in this sandy soil, washing down,

gradually deepened and deepened them. Folks grew to use the new

roads as they were made, leaving the lanes unheeded, to be

overgrown. Here and there certain base fellows of the lewder sort,

commonly called smugglers, may have deepened them further, and

improved on what Nature had begun so well, with the result that you

can ride many a mile, mole-like, if you know your way, from the sea

coast north'ard, never showing your face above ground at all. That

is what it means," he ended.

[Sidenote: "THE GENTLEMEN"]

Smuggling was in the blood of the Sussex people. As the Cornishman said

to Mr. Hawker, "Why should the King tax good liquor?" Why, indeed?

Everyone sided with the smugglers, both on the coast and inland. A

Burwash woman told Mr. Egerton that as a child, after saying her

prayers, she was put early to bed with the strict injunction, "Now,

mind, if the gentlemen come along, don't you look out of the window."

The gentlemen were the smugglers, and not to look at them was a form of

negative help, since he that has not seen a gentleman cannot identify

him. Another Burwash character said that his grandfather had fourteen

children, all of whom were "brought up to be smugglers." These would, of

course, be land smugglers--Burwash being on a highway convenient for the

gentlemen between the coast and the capital.

CHAPTER XXX

GLYNDE AND RINGMER

Mount Caburn--The lark's song--William Hay, the poet of

Caburn--Glynde church and Glynde place--John Ellman--The South Down

sheep--Arthur Young--Ringmer and William Penn--The Ringmer mud--The

ballad of "The Ride to Church"--Oxen on the Hills--The old Sussex

roads--Bad travelling--Ringmer and Gilbert White.

One of the pleasantest short walks from Lewes takes one over Mount

Caburn to Glynde, from Glynde to Ringmer, and from Ringmer over the

hills to Lewes again.

The path to Mount Caburn winds upward just beyond the turn of the road

to Glynde, under the Cliffe. Caburn is not one of the highest of the

Downs (a mere 490 feet, whereas Firle Beacon across the valley is

upwards of 700): but it is one of the friendliest of them, for on its

very summit is a deep grassy hollow (relic of ancient British

fortification) where on the windiest day one may rest in that perfect

peace that comes only after climbing. Caburn is not unique in this

respect; there is, for example, a similar hollow in the hill above

Kingly Vale; but Caburn has a deeper cavity than any other that I can

recall. On the roughest day, thus cupped, one may hear, almost see, the

gale go by overhead; and on such a mild spring day as that when I was

last there, towards the end of April, there is no such place in which to

lie and listen to the lark. If one were asked to name an employment

consistent with perfect idleness it would be difficult to suggest a

better than that of watching a lark melting out of sight into the sky,

and then finding it again. This you may do in Caburn's hollow as

nowhere else. The song of the lark thus followed by eye and ear--for

song and bird become one--passes naturally into the music of the

spheres: there exist in the universe only yourself and this cosmic

twitter.

The Lewes golfers, of both sexes, pursue their sport some way towards

Caburn, and in the valley below the volunteers fire at their butts; but

I doubt if the mountain proper will ever be tamed. Picnics are held on

the summit on fine summer days, but for the greater part of the year it

belongs to the horseman, the shepherd and the lark.

Mount Caburn gave its title to a poem by William Hay, of Glyndebourne

House, in 1730, which ends with these lines, in the manner of an

epitaph, upon their author:

Here liv'd the Man, who to these fair Retreats

First drew the Muses from their ancient Seats:

Tho' low his Thought, tho' impotent his Strain,

Yet let me never of his Song complain;

For this the fruitless Labour recommends,

He lov'd his native Country, and his Friends.

William Hay (1695-1755) was author also of a curious Essay on Deformity,

which Charles Lamb liked, and of several philosophical works, and was a

very diligent member of Parliament.

[Illustration: _Glynde._]

[Sidenote: GLYNDE]

Descending Caburn's eastern slope, and passing at the foot the mellowest

barn roof in the county, beautifully yellowed by weather and time, we

come to Glynde, remarkable among Sussex villages for a formal Grecian

church that might have been ravished from a Surrey Thames-side village

and set down here, so little resemblance has it to the indigenous Sussex

House of God. As a matter of fact it was built in 1765 by the Bishop of

Durham--the Bishop being Richard Trevor, of the family that then owned

Glynde Place; which is hard by the church, a fine Elizabethan mansion, a

little sombre, and very much in the manner of the great houses in the

late S. E. Waller's pictures, the very place for a clandestine interview

or midnight elopement. The present owner, a descendant of the Trevors

and of the famous John Hampden, enemy of the Star Chamber and ship

money, is Admiral Brand.

[Sidenote: JOHN ELLMAN]

Glynde's most famous inhabitant was John Ellman (1753-1832) the breeder

of sheep, who farmed here from 1780 to 1829 and was the village's kindly

autocrat and a true father to his men. The last of the patriarchs, as he

might be called, Ellman lodged all his unmarried labourers under his own

roof, giving them when they married enough grassland for a pig and a

cow, and a little more for cultivation. He built a school for the

children of his men, and permitted no licensed house to exist in

Glynde. Not that he objected to beer; on the contrary he considered it

the true beverage for farm labourers; but he preferred that they should

brew it at home. It was John Ellman who gave the South Down sheep its

fame and brought it to perfection.

[Sidenote: ARTHUR YOUNG]

The most interesting account of South Down sheep is to be found in

Arthur Young's _General View of the Agriculture of the County of

Sussex_, which is one of those books that, beginning their lives as

practical, instructive and somewhat dry manuals, mellow, as the years go

by, into human documents. Taken sentence by sentence Young has no charm,

but his book has in the mass quite a little of it, particularly if one

loves Sussex. He studied the country carefully, with special emphasis

upon the domain of the Earl of Egremont, an agricultural reformer of

much influence, whom we have met as a collector of pictures and the

friend of painters. For the Earl not only brought Turner into Sussex

with his brushes and palette, but introduced a plough from Suffolk and

devised a new light waggon. The other hero of Young's book is

necessarily John Ellman, whose flock at Glynde he subjected to close

examination. Thomas Ellman, of Shoreham, John's cousin, he also approved

as a breeder of sheep, but it is John that stood nighest the Earl of

Egremont on Young's ladder of approbation. John Ellman's sheep were

considered the first of their day, equally for their meat and their

wool. I will not quote from Young to any great extent, lest vegetarian

readers exclaim; but the following passage from his analysis of the

South Down type must be transplanted here for its pleasant carnal

vigour: "The shoulders are wide; they are round and straight in the

barrel; broad upon the loin and hips; shut well in the twist, which is a

projection of flesh in the inner part of the thigh that gives a fulness

when viewed behind, and makes a South Down leg of mutton remarkably

round and short, more so than in most other breeds."

[Sidenote: THE SOUTH DOWN SHEEP]

John Ellman by no means satisfied all his fellow breeders that he was

right. His neighbour at Glynde, Mr. Morris, differed from him in the

matter of crossing, and his cousin Thomas had other views on many points

touching the flock. In the following passage Arthur Young expresses the

extent to which individuality in sheep breeding may run:--"The South

Down farmers breed their sheep with faces and legs of a colour, just as

suits their fancy. One likes black, another sandy, a third speckled, and

one and all exclaim against white. This man concludes that legs and

faces with an inclination to white are infallible signs of tenderness,

and do not stand against the severity of the weather with the same

hardiness as the darker breed; and they allege that these sorts will

fall off in their flesh. A second will set the first right, and

pronounce that, in a lot of wethers, those that are soonest and most

fat, are white-faced; that they prove remarkable good milkers; but that

white is an indication of a tender breed. Another is of opinion that, by

breeding the lambs too black, the wool is injured, and likewise apt to

be tainted with black, and spotted, especially about the neck, and not

saleable. A fourth breeds with legs and faces as black as it is

possible; and he too is convinced that the healthiness is in proportion

to blackness; whilst another says, that if the South Down sheep were

suffered to run in a wild state, they would in a very few years become

absolutely black. All these are the opinions of eminent breeders: in

order to reconcile them, others breed for speckled faces; and it is the

prevailing colour."

It is told that when the Duke of Newcastle used to pass through Glynde,

on his way from Halland House, near East Hoathly, to Bishopstone, the

peal of welcome was rung on ploughshares, since there was but one bell.

Ringmer, which lies about two miles north of Glynde, is not in itself a

village of much beauty. Its distinction is to have provided William Penn

with a wife--Gulielma Springett, daughter of Sir William Springett, a

Puritan, whose bust is in the church and who died at the siege of

Arundel Castle. The great Quaker thus took to wife the daughter of a

soldier. When Gulielma Penn died, at the age of fifty, her husband wrote

of her: "She was a Publick, as well as Private Loss; for she was not

only an excellent Wife and Mother, but an Entire and Constant Friend, of

a more than common Capacity, and greater Modesty and Humility; yet most

equal and undaunted in Danger. Religious as well as Ingenuous, without

Affectation. An easie Mistress, and Good Neighbour, especially to the

Poor. Neither lavish nor penurious, but an Example of Industry as well

as of other Vertues: Therefore our great Loss tho' her own Eternal

Gain."

[Sidenote: GODLY WIVES]

In Ringmer Church, I might add, is a monument to Mrs. Jeffray (_nee_

Mayney), wife of Francis Jeffray of South Malling, with another

beautiful testimony to the character of a good wife:--

Wise, modest, more than can be marshall'd heere,

(Her many vertues would a volume fill)

For all heaven's gifts--in many single sett--

In Jeffray's _Maney_ altogether mett.

[Sidenote: A DETERMINED CHURCHWOMAN]

Ringmer was long famous for its mud and bad roads. Defoe (or another)

says in the _Tour through Great Britain_:--"I travelled through the

dirtiest, but, in many respects, the richest and most profitable country

in all that part of England. The timber I saw here was prodigious, as

well in quantity as in bigness; and seemed in some places to be suffered

to grow only because it was so far from any navigation, that it was not

worth cutting down and carrying away. In dry summers, indeed, a great

deal is conveyed to Maidstone and other places on the Medway; and

sometimes I have seen one tree on a carriage, which they call in Sussex

a tug, drawn by twenty-two oxen; and, even then, it is carried so little

a way, and thrown down, and left for other tugs to take up and carry on,

that sometimes it is two or three years before it gets to Chatham. For,

if once the rain comes on, it stirs no more that year, and sometimes a

whole summer is not dry enough to make the road passable. Here I had a

sight which, indeed, I never saw in any part of England before--namely,

that going to a church at a country village, not far from Lewes, I saw

an ancient lady, and a lady of very good quality, I assure you, drawn to

church in her coach by six oxen; nor was it done in frolick or humour,

but from sheer necessity, the way being so stiff and deep that no horses

could go in it." The old lady was not singular in her method of

attending service, for another writer records seeing Sir Herbert

Springett, father of Sir William, drawn to church by eight oxen: a

determination to get to his pew at any cost that led to the composition

of the following ballad, which is now printed for the first time:--

[Sidenote: THE RIDE TO CHURCH]

THE RIDE TO CHURCH.

"A true sonne of the Church of England."

_Epitaph on Sir Herbert Springett,

in Ringmer Church._

Let others sing the wild career

Of Turpin, Gilpin, Paul Revere.

A gentler pace is mine. But hear!

The raindrops fell, splash! thud! splash! thud!

Till half the country-side was flood,

And Ringmer was a waste of mud.

The sleepy Ouse had grown a sea,

Where here and there a drowning tree

Cast up its arms beseechingly;

And cattle that in fairer days

Beside its banks were wont to graze

Now viewed the scene in mild amaze,

And, huddled on an island mound,

Sent forth so dolorous a sound

As made the sadness more profound.

And then--at last--one Sunday broke

When villagers, delighted, woke

To find the sun had flung its cloak

Of leaden-coloured cloud aside.

All jubilant they watched him ride,

For see, the land was glorified:

The morning pulsed with youth and mirth,

It was as though upon the earth

A new and gladder age had birth.

The lark exulted in the blue,

Triumphantly the rooster crew,

The chimneys laughed, the sparks up-flew;

And rolling westward out of sight,

Like billows of majestic height,

The Downs, transfigured in the light,

Seemed such a garb of joy to wear,

So young and radiant an air,

God might but just have set them there.

* * * * *

Sir Herbert Springett, Ringmer's squire,

(No better man in all the shire)--

He too was filled with kindling fire,

Which, working in him, did incite

The worthy and capacious knight

To doughty deeds of appetite.

Sir Herbert's lady watched her lord

Range mightily about the board

Which she of her abundance stored,

(The Lady Barbara, for whom

The blossoms of the simple-room

Diffused their friendliest perfume,

Than who none quicklier heard the call

Of true distress, and left the Hall

Eager to do her gentle all,

When village patients needed aid.

And O the rich Marchpane she made!

And O the rare quince marmalade!)

Just as the squire was satisfied,

The noise of feet was heard outside;

A knock. "Come in!" Sir Herbert cried.

And lo! John Grigg in Sunday smock;

Begged pardon, pulled an oily lock;

Explained: "The mud's above the hough.

"No horse could draw 'ee sir," he said.

"Humph!" quoth the squire and scratched his head.

"Then yoke the oxen in instead."

(A lesser man would gladly turn

His chair to fire again, and learn

How fancifully logs can burn,

Grateful for such immunity

From parson. Not the squire; for see,

"True sonne of England's Church" was he.)

So, as he ordered, was it done.

The oxen came forth one by one,

Their wide horns glinting in the sun,

And to the coach were yoked. Then--dressed,

As squires should be, in glorious best,

With wonderful brocaded vest,--

Out came Sir Herbert, took his seat,

Waved "Barbara, farewell, my Sweet!"

And off they started, all complete.

Although they drew so light a load

(For them!) so heavy was the road,

John Grigg was busy with his goad.

The cottagers in high delight

Ran out to see the startling sight

And make obeisance to the knight,

While floated through the liquid air,

And o'er the sunlit meadows fair,

The throbbing belfry's call to prayer.

At last, and after many a lurch

That shook Sir Herbert in his perch,

John Grigg drew up before the church;

Moreover not a minute late.

The villagers around the gate

Were filled with wonder at his state,

And, promptly, though 'twas sabbath tide,

"Three cheers for squire--Hooray!" they cried....

Such was Sir Herbert Springett's ride.

* * * * *

Sad is the sequel, sad but true--

For while in sermon-time a few

Deep snores resounded from the pew

Reserved for squire, by others there

The tenth commandment (men declare)

Was being broken past repair:

For, thinking how they had to roam

Through weary wastes of sodden loam

Ere they could win to fire and home,

In spite of parson's fervid knocks

Upon his cushion orthodox,

They "coveted their neighbour's ox."

[Sidenote: OXEN OF THE HILLS]

Oxen are now rarely seen on the Sussex roads, but on the hill sides a

few of the farmers still plough with them; and may it be long before the

old custom is abandoned! There is no pleasanter or more peaceful sight

than--looking up--that of a wide-horned team of black oxen, smoking a

little in the morning air, drawing the plough through the earth, while

the ploughman whistles, and the ox-herd, goad in hand, utters his Saxon

grunts of incitement or reproof. The black oxen of the hills are of

Welsh stock, the true Sussex ox being red. The "kews," as their shoes

are called, may still be seen on the walls of a smithy here and there.

Shoeing oxen is no joke, since to protect the smith from their horns

they have to be thrown down; their necks are held by a pitchfork, and

their feet tied together.

Sussex roads were terrible until comparatively recent times. An old

rhyme credits "Sowseks" with "dirt and myre," and Dr. Burton, the author

of the _Iter Sussexiensis_, humorously found in it a reason why Sussex

people and beasts had such long legs. "Come now, my friend," he wrote,

in Greek, "I will set before you a sort of problem in Aristotle's

fashion:--Why is it that the oxen, the swine, the women, and all other

animals, are so long legged in Sussex? May it be from the difficulty of

pulling the feet out of so much mud by the strength of the ankle, that

the muscles get stretched, as it were, and the bones lengthened?"

[Sidenote: ROUGH ROADS]

When, in 1703, the King of Spain visited the Duke of Somerset at

Petworth he had the greatest difficulty in getting here. One of his

attendants has put on record the perils of the journey:--"We set out at

six o'clock in the morning (at Portsmouth) to go to Petworth, and did

not get out of the coaches, save only when we were overturned or stuck

fast in the mire, till we arrived at our journey's end. 'Twas hard

service for the prince to sit fourteen hours in the coach that day,

without eating anything, and passing through the worst ways that I ever

saw in my life: we were thrown but once indeed in going, but both our

coach which was leading, and his highness's body coach, would have

suffered very often, if the nimble boors of Sussex had not frequently

poised it, or supported it with their shoulders, from Godalming almost

to Petworth; and the nearer we approached the duke's, the more

inaccessible it seemed to be. The last nine miles of the way cost six

hours time to conquer."

To return to Ringmer, it was there that Gilbert White studied the

tortoise (see Letter xiii of _The Natural History of Selborne_). The

house where he stayed still stands, and the rookery still exists. "These

rooks," wrote the naturalist, "retire every morning all the winter from

this rookery, where they only call by the way, as they are going to

roost in deep woods; at the dawn of day they always revisit their

nest-trees, and are preceded a few minutes by a flight of daws, that

act, as it were, as their harbingers." An intermediate owner of the

house where Gilbert White resided, which then belonged to his aunt

Rebecca Snooke, ordered all nightingales to be shot, on the ground that

they kept him awake.

[Sidenote: PLASHETTS]

While at Ringmer, if a glimpse of very rich park land is needed, it

would be worth while to walk three miles north to Plashetts, which

combines a vast tract of wood with a small park notable at once for its

trees, its brake fern, its lakes, and its water fowl. But if one would

gain it by rail, Isfield is the station.

CHAPTER XXXI

UCKFIELD AND BUXTED

The Crowborough district--Isfield--Another model

wife--Framfield--The poet Realf--Uckfield--The Maresfield

rocks--Puritan names in Sussex--Buxted park--Heron's Ghyll--A

perfect church.

Uckfield, on the line from Lewes to Tunbridge Wells, is our true

starting point for the high sandy and rocky district of Crowborough,

Rotherfield and Mayfield; but we must visit on the way Isfield, a very

pretty village on the Ouse and its Iron River tributary. Isfield is

remarkable for the remains of Isfield Place, once the home of the

Shurleys (connected only by marriage with the Shirleys of Wiston). The

house can never have been so fine as Slaugham Place, but it is evident

that abundance also reigned here, as there. Over the main door was the

motto "Non minor est virtus quam querere parta tueri," which Horsfield

whimsically translates "Catch is a good dog, but Holdfast is a better."

In the Shurley chapel, one of the sweetest spots in Sussex, are brasses

and monuments to the family, notably the canopied altar tomb to Sir John

Shurley, who died in 1631, his two wives (Jane Shirley of Wiston and

Dorothy Bowyer, _nee_ Goring, of Cuckfield) and nine children, who kneel

prettily in a row at the foot. Of these children it is said in the

inscription that some "were called into Heaven and the others into

several marriages of good quality"; while of Dorothy Shurley it is

prettily recorded (this, as we have seen, being a district rich in

exemplary wives) that she had "a merite beyond most of her time, ...

her pitty was the clothing of the poore ... and all her minutes were but

steppes to heaven." Our county has many fine monuments, but I think

that, this is the most charming of all.

[Sidenote: FRAMFIELD]

At Framfield, two miles east of Uckfield, which we may take here, we

again enter the iron country, and for the first time see Sussex hops,

which are grown largely to the north and east of this neighbourhood.

[Illustration: _Framfield._]

[Sidenote: RICHARD REALF]

Framfield has a Tudor church and no particular interest. In 1792 eleven

out of fifteen persons in Framfield, whose united ages amounted to one

thousand and thirty-four years, offered, through the county paper, to

play a cricket match with an equal number of the same age from any part

of Sussex; but I do not find any record of the result. Nor can I find

that any one at Framfield is proud of the fact that here, in 1834, was

born Richard Realf, the orator and poet, son of Sussex peasants. In

England his name is scarcely known; and in America, where his work was

done, it is not common knowledge that he was by birth and parentage

English. Realf was the friend of man, liberty and John Brown; he fought

against slavery in the war, and helped the cause with some noble verses;

and he died miserably by his own hand in 1878, leaving these lines

beside his body:--

"De mortuis nil nisi bonum." When

For me this end has come and I am dead,

And the little voluble, chattering daws of men

Peck at me curiously, let it then be said

By some one brave enough to speak the truth:

Here lies a great soul killed by cruel wrong.

Down all the balmy days of his fresh youth

To his bleak, desolate noon, with sword and song,

And speech that rushed up hotly from the heart,

He wrought for liberty, till his own wound

(He had been stabbed), concealed with painful art

Through wasting years, mastered him, and he swooned,

And sank there where you see him lying now

With the word "Failure" written on his brow.

But say that he succeeded. If he missed

World's honors, and world's plaudits, and the wage

Of the world's deft lacqueys, still his lips were kissed

Daily by those high angels who assuage

The thirstings of the poets--for he was

Born unto singing--and a burthen lay

Mightily on him, and he moaned because

He could not rightly utter to the day

What God taught in the night. Sometimes, nathless,

Power fell upon him, and bright tongues of flame,

And blessings reached him from poor souls in stress;

And benedictions from black pits of shame,

And little children's love, and old men's prayers,

And a Great Hand that led him unawares.

So he died rich. And if his eyes were blurred

With big films--silence! he is in his grave.

Greatly he suffered; greatly, too, he erred;

Yet broke his heart in trying to be brave.

Nor did he wait till Freedom had become

The popular shibboleth of courtier's lips;

He smote for her when God Himself seemed dumb

And all His arching skies were in eclipse.

He was a-weary, but he fought his fight,

And stood for simple manhood; and was joyed

To see the august broadening of the light

And new earths heaving heavenward from the void.

He loved his fellows, and their love was sweet--

Plant daisies at his head and at his feet.

Uckfield's main street is divided sharply into two periods--from the

station to the road leading to the church all is new; beyond, all is

old. The town is not interesting in itself, but it commands good

country, and has a good inn, the Maiden's Head. It is also a good

specimen of the quieter market-town of the past--with a brewery (hiding

behind a wonderful tree braced with kindly iron bands), a water mill

(down by the railway), and several solid comfortable houses for the

doctor and the lawyer and the brewer and the parson, with ample gardens

behind them.

Uckfield was once the home of Jeremiah Markland, the great classic, who

acted as tutor here to Edward Clarke, son of the famous William Clarke,

rector of Buxted, and father of Edward Daniel Clarke, the traveller. It

is agreeable to remember that Fanny Burney passed through the town with

Mrs. Thrale in 1779, although she found nothing to interest her.

[Sidenote: THE UCKFIELD ROCKS]

Uckfield is the southern boundary of the rock district of which we saw

something at West Hoathly, and it is famous for the sandstone cliffs in

the grounds of High Rocks, an estate on the south of the town. The

unthinking untidiness and active penknives of the holiday makers made it

recently necessary for the grounds to be closed to strangers. Close by,

however, just off the road from Uckfield to Maresfield, is a rocky tract

that is free to all. It consists of about an acre of grey, sandy

boulders, some rising to a height of twenty feet or so, which remind one

a little of the _rochers_ in the Forest of Fontainebleau, although on a

smaller scale. All are worn with the feet of adventurous boys enjoying

one of the best natural playgrounds in the county. Here blackberries

come to rich perfection, the sun's ripening warmth being thrown back

from the hot sand.

When I first knew Maresfield church, many years ago, its aged vicar

rolled out "Thou shalt do no mur-r-r-der" with an accusing timbre that

seemed to bring the sin home to all of us. He had also so peculiar a way

of pronouncing "Albert," that his prayer for our rulers seemed to make

an invidious distinction, and ask a blessing, not for all, but for all

but Edward, Prince of Wales.

[Sidenote: PURITAN NAMES]

Some of the oddest of the composite pietistic names that broke out over

England during the Puritan revolution are to be found in Sussex

registers. In 1632, Master Performe-thy-vowes Seers of Maresfield

married Thomasine Edwards. His full name was too much for the village,

and four years later is found an entry recording the burial of "Vowes

Seers" pure and simple. The searcher of parish registers from whose

articles in the _Sussex Daily News_ I have already quoted, has also

found that Heathfield had many Puritan names, among them "Replenished,"

which was given to the daughter of Robert Pryor in 1600. There was also

a Heathfield damsel known as "More-Fruits." Mr. Lower prints the

following names from a Sussex jury list in the seventeenth century:

Redeemed Compton of Battel, Stand-fast-on-high Stringer of Crowhurst,

Weep-not Billing of Lewes, Called Lower of Warbleton, Elected Mitchell

of Heathfield, Renewed Wisberry of Hailsham, Fly-fornication Richardson

of Waldron, The-Peace-of-God Knight of Burwash,

Fight-the-good-fight-of-Faith White of Ewhurst, and Kill-sin Pemble of

Withyham. Also a Master More-Fruits Fowler of East Hoathly, for it seems

that in such names there was no sex.

Among the curious Sussex surnames found by the student of the county

archives who is quoted above are the following:--

Pitchfork Sweetname Lies

Devil Slybody Hogsflesh

Leper Fidge Backfield

Handshut Beatup Breathing

Juglery Rougehead Whiskey

Hollowbone Punch Wildgoose

Stillborne Padge Ann.

Almost every name here would have pleased Dickens, while some might have

been invented by him, notably Fidge and Padge. One can almost see Mr.

Fidge and Mr. Padge drolling it in his pages.

[Sidenote: BUXTED DEER]

From the Maresfield rocks Buxted is easily reached, about a mile due

east; but a far prettier approach is through Buxted Park, which is

gained by a footpath out of Uckfield's main street. The charm of Buxted

is its deer. Sussex, as we have seen, is rich in parks containing deer,

but I know of none other where one may be so certain of coming close to

these beautiful creatures. Nor can I recall any other deer that are so

exquisitely dappled; but that may be because the Buxted deer were the

first I ever saw, thirty years ago, and we like to think the first the

best. Certainly they are the friendliest, or least timid. The act of

going to church is invested at Buxted with an almost unique attraction,

since the deer lie hard by the path. Indeed, the last time I went to

church at Buxted I never passed through the door at all, but sat on a

gravestone throughout the service and watched the herd in its graceful

restlessness. That was twelve years ago. The other day I watched them

again and could see no change. Some of the stags were still as of old

almost bowed beneath their antlers, although one at any rate was free,

for a keeper who passed carried a pair of horns in his hand.

[Illustration: _In Buxted Park._]

[Sidenote: RALPH HOGGE]

The old house at the beginning of the footpath to the church, with a hog

in bas-relief on its facade, is known as the Hog House, and is said to

have been the residence of Ralph Hogge. Who was Ralph Hogge? Who is

Hiram Maxim? Who was Krupp? Who was Nordenfelt? It was Ralph Hogge,

iron-master, who in the year 1543 made the first English metal cannon.

So at any rate say tradition and Holinshed. Buxted is otherwise most

pacific of villages, sleepy and undiscovered. In the early years of the

last century it boasted the possession of a labourer with a memory of

amazing tenacity, one George Watson, who, otherwise almost imbecile, was

unable to forget anything he had once seen, or any figure repeated to

him.

On the road between Maresfield and Crowborough is Heron's Ghyll, the

residence of Mr. Fitzalan Hope. It stands to the east of the road, in

one of those hollow sites that alone won the word "eligible" from a

Tudor builder. Hard by the road is the perfect little Early English

Roman Catholic church which Mr. Hope built in 1897, a miracle, in these

hurried florid days, of honest work and simple modest beauty. The church

being Roman Catholic one may with confidence turn aside to rest a little

in its cool seclusion, relieved of the irritating search for the sexton

of the national establishment, and freed from his haunting presence and

suggestion that the labourer is worthy of more than his hire.

[Sidenote: CLOSED CHURCHES]

While on this subject I might remark that a county vicar describing the

antiquities of his neighbourhood in one of the Sussex Archaeological

Society's volumes, writes magnanimously: "A debt of gratitude is

certainly due to our Roman Catholic predecessors (whatever error might

mix itself with their piety and charity) for erecting such noble

edifices, in a style of strength to endure for a late posterity." It

seems to me that a very simple way of discharging a portion of this debt

would be to imitate the excellent habit of leaving the church doors wide

open, as practised by those Roman Catholic predecessors. My own impulse

to enter many of the Sussex churches has been principally antiquarian or

aesthetic, but to rest amid their gray coolnesses is a legitimate desire

which should be fostered rather than discouraged, particularly as it is

under such conditions that the soul even of the stranger whose motive is

curiosity is often comforted. The arguments in favour of keeping

churches closed are unknown to me. Doubtless they are numerous and

ingenious, but, doubtless equally, a locked church is a confession of

failure; while to urge that one has but to ask for the key to be able

to enter a church is no true reply, since hospitality, whether to the

body or the soul, loses in sweetness and effect as it loses in

spontaneity.

[Sidenote: TO CROWBOROUGH]

From Heron's Ghyll to Crowborough is a steady climb for three miles,

with the heathery wastes of Ashdown Forest on the left and the hilly

district around Mayfield on the right.

CHAPTER XXXII

CROWBOROUGH AND MAYFIELD

Crowborough the suburban--Rotherfield's three rivers--The extra

ribs--Wild flowers and railway companies--The perfect hill--An arid

district--St. Dunstan and the Devil--Why Tunbridge Wells waters are

chalybeate--St. Dunstan's feats--An unencouraging _memento

mori_--Mayfield church--Mayfield street--The diary of Mr. Walter

Gale, schoolmaster.

In the spring of this year (1903) the walls and fences of Crowborough

were covered with the placards of a firm of estate agents describing the

neighbourhood (in the manner of the great George Robins) as "Scotland in

Sussex." The simile may be true of the Ashdown Forest side of the Beacon

(although involving an unnecessary confusion of terms), but "Hampstead

in Sussex" would be a more accurate description of Crowborough proper.

Never was a fine remote hill so be-villa'd. The east slope is all

scaffold-poles and heaps of bricks, new churches and chapels are

sprouting, and the many hoardings announce that Follies, Pierrots, or

conjurors are continually imminent. Crowborough itself has shops that

would not disgrace Croydon, and a hotel where a Lord Mayor might feel at

home. Houses in their own grounds are commoner than cottages, and near

the summit the pegs of surveyors and the name-boards of avenues yet to

be built testify to the charms which our Saxon Caledonia has already

exerted.

But to say this is not to say all. Crowborough may be populous and

over-built; but it is still a glorious eminence, the healthiest and most

bracing inland village in the county, and the key to its best moorland

country. Since Crowborough's normal visitor either plays golf or is

contented with a very modest radius, the more adventurous walker may

quickly be in the solitudes.

In the little stone house below the forge Richard Jefferies lived for

some months at the end of his life.

[Sidenote: ROTHERFIELD]

Crowborough is crowned by a red hotel which can never pass into the

landscape; Rotherfield, its companion hill on the east, on the other

side of the Jarvis Brook valley, is surmounted by a beautiful church

with a tall shingled spire, that must have belonged to the scene from

the first. This spire darts up from the edge of the forest ridge like a

Pharos for the Weald of Kent. The church was dedicated to St. Denis of

Paris by a Saxon chieftain who was cured of his ills by a pilgrimage to

the Saint's monastery. That was in 792. In the present church, which

retains the dedication, is an ancient mural painting representing the

martyrdom of St. Lawrence. There is also a Burne-Jones window.

Were it not for Rotherfield both Sussex and Kent would lack some of

their waterways, for the Rother and the Ouse rise here, and also the

Medway. A local saying credits the women of Rotherfield with two ribs

more than the men, to account for their superior height.

Under a hedge half-way between Rotherfield and Jarvis Brook grow the

largest cowslips in Sussex, as large as cowslips may be without changing

their sex. But this is all cowslip country--from the field of Rother to

the field of Uck. And it is the land of the purple orchis too, the

finest blooms of which are to be found on the road between Rotherfield

and Mayfield; but you must scale a fence to get them, because (like all

the best wild flowers) they belong to the railway.

Between Rotherfield and Mayfield is a little hill, trim and conical as

though Miss Greenaway had designed it, and perfect in deportment, for it

has (as all little conical hills should have) a white windmill on its

top. Around the mill is a circular track for carts, which runs nearer

the sails than any track I remember ever to have dared to walk on.

Standing by this mill one opens many miles of Kent and Surrey: due north

the range of chalk Downs on which is the Pilgrim's Way, between Merstham

and Westerham, and in front of that Toy's Hill and Ide Hill and their

sandy companions, on the north edge of the Weald.

Mayfield is a city on a hill on the skirts of the hot hop district of

which Burwash is the Sussex centre. To walk about it even in April is no

exhilaration; but in August one thinks of Sahara. I lived in Mayfield

one August and could barely keep awake; and we used to look across at

the rolling chalk Downs in the south, between Ditchling and Lewes, and

long for their cool, wind-swept heights. They can be hot too, but chalk

is never so hot as sand, and a steady climb to a summit, over turf

odorous of wild thyme, is restful beside the eternal hills and valleys

of the hop district.

[Sidenote: SAINT DUNSTAN]

Mayfield has the best street and the best architecture of any of these

highland villages. Also it has the distinction of having done most for

mankind, since without Mayfield there would have been no water to cure

jaded London ladies and gentlemen at Tunbridge Wells. According to

Eadmer, who wrote one of the lives of Dunstan, that Saint, when

Archbishop of Canterbury, built a wooden church at Mayfield and lived in

a cell hard by. St. Dunstan, who was an expert goldsmith, was one day

making a chalice (or, as another version of the legend says, a

horseshoe) when the Devil appeared before him. Instantly recognising his

enemy, and being aware that with such a foe prompt measures alone are

useful, St. Dunstan at once pulled his nose with the tongs, which

chanced happily to be red hot. Wrenching himself free, the Devil leaped

at one bound from Mayfield to Tunbridge Wells, where, plunging his nose

into the spring at the foot of the Pantiles, he "imparted to the water

its chalybeate qualities," and thus made the fortune of the town as a

health resort. To St. Dunstan therefore, indirectly, are all drinkers of

these wells indebted. For other drinkers he introduced or invented the

practice of fixing pins in the sides of drinking cups, in order that a

thirsty man might see how he was progressing and a bibulous man be

checked.

[Sidenote: MAYFIELD]

When consecrating his little church at Mayfield St. Dunstan discovered

it to be a little out of the true position, east and west. He therefore

applied his shoulder and rectified the error.

The remains of Mayfield Palace, the old abode of the Archbishops of

Canterbury, join the church. After it had passed into the hands of the

crown--for Cranmer made a bargain with the King by which Mayfield was

exchanged for other property--Sir Thomas Gresham lived here, and Queen

Elizabeth has dined under its roof. The Palace is to be seen only

occasionally, for it is now a convent, Mayfield being another of the

county's many Roman Catholic outposts. In the great dining-room are the

tongs which St. Dunstan used.

The church, dedicated to Mayfield's heroic saint, has one of the broader

shingled spires of Sussex, as distinguished from the slender spires of

which Rotherfield is a good example. Standing high, it may be seen from

long distances. The tower is the original Early English structure. Four

more of the old Sussex iron tomb slabs may be seen at Mayfield. In the

churchyard, says Mr. Lower, was once an inscription with this

uncomplimentary first line:--

O reader, if that thou canst read,

It continued:--

Look down upon this stone;

Death is the man, do you what you can,

That never spareth none!

In Mayfield's street even the new houses have caught comeliness from

their venerable neighbours. It undulates from gable to gable, and has

two good inns. The old timbered house in the middle of the east side is

that to which Richard Jefferies refers without enthusiasm in the passage

which I quote in a later chapter from his essay on Buckhurst Park. In

Louis Jennings' _Field Paths and Green Lanes_ the house comes in for

eulogy.

Vicar of Mayfield in 1361 and following years was John Wickliffe, who

has too often been confused with his great contemporary and namesake,

the reformer. And the village claims as a son Thomas May (1595-1650),

playwright, translator of Lucan's "Pharsalia," secretary to Parliament

and friend of Ben Jonson.

In the Sussex Archaeological Collections is printed the journal of Walter

Gale, schoolmaster at Mayfield in the latter half of the eighteenth

century, from which a few extracts may be given:

"1750. I found the greatest part of the school in a flow, by reason of

the snow and rain coming through the leads. The following extempore

verse I set for a copy:--

Abandon every evil thought

For they to judgment will be brought.

In passing the Star I met with Mr. Eastwood; we went in and spent 2_d._

apiece.

[Sidenote: PRESAGES OF DEATH]

"I went to Mr. Sawyer's.... One of his daughters said that she expected

a change in the weather as she had last night dreamt of a deceased

person." The editor remarks that this superstition still lingers (or did

fifty years ago) in the Weald of Sussex. Walter Gale adds:--"I told them

in discourse that on Thursday last the town clock was heard to strike 3

in the afternoon twice, once before the chimes went, and a 2nd time

pretty nearly a 1/4 of an hour after.... The strikes at the 2nd striking

seemed to sound very dull and mournfully; this, together with the

crickets coming to the house at Laughton just at our coming away, I look

upon to be sure presages of my sister's death."

A year later:--"My mother, to my great unhappiness, died in the 83rd

year of her age, agreeable to the testimony I had of a death in our

family on the 10th of May last."

"Mr. Rogers came to the school, and brought with him the four volumes of

_Pamela_, for which I paed him 4_s._ 6_d._, and bespoke Duck's _Poems_

for Mr. Kine, and a _Caution to Swearers_ for myself.

"Sunday. I went to church at Hothley. Text from St. Matthew 'Take no

thought, saying, What shall we eat, and what shall we drink, or

wherewithal shall we be clothed,' and I went to Jones', where I spent

2_d._, and there came Thomas Cornwall, and treated me with a pint of

twopenny.

"Mr. James Kine came; we smoaked a pipe together and we went and took a

survey of the fair; we went to a legerdemain show, which we saw with

tolerable approbation.

"May 28th. Gave attendance at a cricket-match, played between the

gamesters at Burwash and Mayfield to the advantage of the latter."

[Sidenote: OLD KENT]

A series of quarrels with old Kent occupy much of the diary. Old Kent,

it seems, used to enter the school house and vilify the master, not, I

imagine, without cause. Thus:--"He again called me upstart, runagate,

beggarly dog, clinched his fist in my face, and made a motion to strike

me, and declared he would break my head. He did not strike me, but

withdrew in a wonderful heat, and ended all with his general maxim, 'The

greater scholler, the greater rogue!'"

Mr. Gale was removed from the school in 1771 for neglecting his duties.

CHAPTER XXXIII

HEATHFIELD AND THE "LIES."

The two Heathfields--Heathfield Park--"Hefful" Fair and the

spring--The death of Jack Cade--Warbleton's martyr--Three "lies"

and all true--An ecclesiastical confection--The bloodthirsty

Colonel Lunsford--Halland--Tarble Down--Breeches Wood--Mr. Thomas

Turner's diary--Laughton--Chiddingly's inhospitable fane--The

Jefferay cheese--A devoted campanologist--Hellingly--Hailsham.

There are two Heathfields: the old village, with its pleasant Sussex

church and ancient cottages close to the park gates; and the new brick

and slate town that has gathered round the station and the natural

gas-works. The park lies between the two, remarkable among Sussex parks

for the variety of its trees and the unusual proportion of them. The

spacious lawns which are characteristic of the parks in the south, here,

on Heathfield's sandy undulations, give place to heather, fern and

trees. I never remember to have seen a richer contrast of greens than in

early spring, looking west from the house, between the masses of dark

evergreens that had borne the rigours of the winter and the young leaves

just breaking through. Heathfield's park is, I think, the loveliest in

Sussex, lying as it does on a southern slope, with its opulence of

foliage, its many rushing burns (the source of the Cuckmere), its hidden

ravines and deep silent tarns, and its wonderful view of the Downs and

the sea. The park once belonged to the Dacres of Hurstmonceaux, whom we

are about to meet. Traces of the original house, dating probably from

Henry VII.'s reign, are still to be seen in the basement. Upon this

foundation was imposed a new building towards the end of the seventeenth

century. The park was then known as Bailey Park. A century later, George

Augustus Eliott (afterwards Lord Heathfield), the hero of Gibraltar, and

earlier of Cuba, acquired it with his Havana prize money. After Lord

Heathfield died, in 1790, the park became the property of Francis

Newbery, son of the bookseller of St. Paul's Churchyard. The present

owner, Mr. Alexander, has added greatly to the house.

[Sidenote: GIBRALTAR TOWER]

Gibraltar Tower, on the highest point of the park, was built by Newbery

in honour of his predecessor. From its summit a vast prospect is

visible, and forty churches, it is said, may be counted. I saw but few

of these. In the east, similarly elevated, is seen the Brightling

Needle. Mr. Alexander has gathered together in the tower a number of

souvenirs of old English life which make it a Lewes Castle museum in

little. Here are stocks, horn glasses, drinking vessels, rushlight

holders, leather bottels, and one of those quaint wooden machines for

teaching babies to walk. An old manuscript history of the tower, in Mr.

Alexander's possession, contains at least one passage that is perhaps

worth noting, as it may help to clear up any confusion that exists in

connection with Lord Heathfield's marriage. "The lady to whom his

lordship meant to be united," says the historian, "and who would

certainly have been his wife had not death stepped in, is the sister of

a lady of whom his lordship was extremely fond, but she, dying about ten

years ago, he transferred his affections to the other, who is about

thirty-five years of age."

A Heathfield worthy of a hundred years ago was Sylvan Harmer, chiefly a

stone cutter (he cut the stone for the tower), but also the modeller in

clay of some very ingenious and pretty bas-relief designs for funeral

urns, notably a group known as Charity.

[Sidenote: JACK CADE]

The following scene from _The Second Part of Henry VI._ although

Shakespeare places it in Kent, belongs to a little hamlet known as Cade

Street, close to Heathfield:--

Scene X.--Kent. IDEN'S _Garden._

_Enter_ CADE.

_Cade._ Fie on ambition! fie on myself; that have a sword, and yet

am ready to famish! These five days have I hid me in these woods,

and durst not peep out, for all the country is laid for me; but now

am I so hungry, that if I might have a lease of my life for a

thousand years, I could stay no longer. Wherefore, on a brick-wall

have I climbed into this garden, to see if I can eat grass, or pick

a sallet another while, which is not amiss to cool a man's stomach

this hot weather. And, I think, this word sallet was born to do me

good: for, many a time, but for a sallet, my brain-pan had been

cleft with a brown bill; and, many a time, when I have been dry,

and bravely marching, it hath served me instead of a quart-pot to

drink in; and now the word sallet must serve me to feed on.

_Enter_ IDEN, _with Servants, behind._

_Iden._ Lord! who would live turmoiled in the court,

And may enjoy such quiet walks as these!

This small inheritance, my father left me,

Contenteth me, and worth a monarchy.

I seek not to wax great by others' waning;

Or gather wealth I care not with what envy:

Sufficeth that I have maintains my state,

And sends the poor well pleased from my gate.

_Cade._ Here's the lord of the soil come to seize me for a stray,

for entering his fee-simple without leave. Ah, villain, thou wilt

betray me, and get a thousand crowns of the king by carrying my

head to him; but I'll make thee eat iron like an ostrich, and

swallow my sword like a great pin, ere thou and I part.

_Iden._ Why, rude companion, whatsoe'er thou be,

I know thee not; why then should I betray thee?

Is't not enough, to break into my garden,

And like a thief to come to rob my grounds,

Climbing my walls in spite of me, the owner,

But thou wilt brave me with these saucy terms?

_Cade._ Brave thee? ay, by the best blood that ever was broached,

and beard thee too. Look on me well: I have eat no meat these five

days; yet, come thou and thy five men; and if I do not leave you

all as dead as a door-nail, I pray God I may never eat grass more.

_Iden._ Nay, it shall ne'er be said, while England stands,

That Alexander Iden, an esquire of Kent,

Took odds to combat a poor famished man.

Oppose thy steadfast-gazing eyes to mine,

See if thou canst outface me with thy looks:

Set limb to limb, and thou art far the lesser;

Thy hand is but a finger to my fist;

Thy leg a stick, compared with this truncheon;

My foot shall fight with all the strength thou hast;

And if mine arm be heaved in the air,

Thy grave is digged already in the earth.

As for words, whose greatness answers words,

Let this my sword report what speech forbears.

_Cade._ By my valour, the most complete champion that ever I

heard.--Steel, if thou turn the edge, or cut not out the

burly-boned clown in chines of beef ere thou sleep in thy sheath, I

beseech Jove on my knees, thou mayest be turned to hobnails. [_They

fight._ CADE _falls_.] O! I am slain. Famine, and no other, hath

slain me: let ten thousand devils come against me, and give me but

the ten meals I have lost, and I'd defy them all. Wither, garden;

and be henceforth a burying-place to all that do dwell in this

house, because the unconquered soul of Cade is fled.

_Iden._ Is't Cade that I have slain, that monstrous traitor?

Sword, I will hallow thee for this thy deed,

And hang thee o'er my tomb, when I am dead:

Ne'er shall this blood be wiped from thy point,

But thou shalt wear it as a herald's coat,

To emblaze the honour that thy master got.

_Cade._ Iden, farewell; and be proud of thy victory. Tell Kent from

me, she hath lost her best man, and exhort all the world to be

cowards; for I, that never feared any, am vanquished by famine, not

by valour.

[_Dies._

[Sidenote: THE DEATH OF CADE]

That was on July 12, 1450. Cade did not die at once, but on the way to

London, whither he was conveyed in a cart. On the 16th his body was

drawn and quartered and dragged through London on a hurdle. One quarter

was then sent to Blackheath; the other three to Norwich, Gloucester and

Salisbury. Cade's head was set up on London Bridge. Iden was knighted. A

pillar was erected at Cade Street by Newbery on the piece of land that

he possessed nearest to the probable scene of the event. "Near this spot

was slain the notorious rebel Jack Cade, by Alexander Iden, Esq.," is

the inscription.

Slaughter Common, near Heathfield, is said to be the scene of a more

wholesale carnage, Heathfield people claiming that there Caedwalla in

635 fought the Saxons and killed Eadwine, king of Northumbria. Sylvan

Harmer, in his manuscript history of Heathfield, is determined that

Heathfield shall have the credit of the fray, but, as a matter of fact,

if Slaughter Common really took its name from a battle it was a very

different one, for Caedwalla and Eadwine met, not at Heathfield, but

Hatfield Chase, near Doncaster.

[Sidenote: HEFFUL CUCKOO FAIR]

It is at Hefful Cuckoo fair on April 14--Hefful being Sussex for

Heathfield--that, tradition states, the old woman lets the cuckoo out of

her basket and starts him on his course through the summer months. A

local story tells of a Heathfield man who had a quarrel with his wife

and left for Ditchling. After some days he returned, remarking, "I've

had enough of furrin parts--nothing like old England yet."

If any one, walking from Heathfield towards Burwash, is astonished to

find a "Railway Inn," let him spend no time in seeking a station, for

there is none within some miles. This inn was once "The Labour in Vain,"

with a signboard representing two men hard at work scrubbing a nigger

till the white should gleam through. Then came a scheme to run a line to

Eastbourne, midway between the present Heathfield line and the Burwash

line, and enterprise dictated the changing of the sign to one more in

keeping with the times. The railway project was abandoned but the inn

retains its new style.

Warbleton, a village in the iron country, two miles south of Heathfield,

is famous for its association with Richard Woodman, the Sussex martyr,

who is mentioned in an earlier chapter. His house and foundry were hard

by the churchyard. The wonderful door in the church tower, a miracle of

intricate bolts and massive strength, has been attributed to Woodman's

mechanical skill; and the theory has been put forward that he made this

door for his own strong room, and it was afterwards moved to the church.

Another story says that he was imprisoned in the church tower before

being taken for trial. Warbleton has the following terse and confident

epitaph upon Ann North, wife of the vicar, who died in 1780:--

Through death's rough waves her bark serenely trod,

Her pilot Jesus, and her harbour God.

From Horeham Road station, next Heathfield on the way to Hailsham, we

can walk across the country to East Hoathly, and thence to Chiddingly

and Hellingly, where we come to the railway again. ("East Hoathly,

Chiddingly and Hellingly," says a local witticism: "three lies and all

true.") East Hoathly stands high in not very interesting country, nor is

it now a very interesting village. But it is remarkable for an admirably

conducted inn and a church unique (in my experience of old churches) in

its interior for a prettiness that is little short of aggressive.

Whatever paint and mosaic can do to remove plain white surfaces has been

done here, and the windows are gay with new glass. Were the building a

new one, say at Surbiton, the effect would be harmonious; but in an old

village in Sussex it seems a mistake.

[Sidenote: THE CHILD-EATER]

Colonel Thomas Lunsford, of Whyly (now no more), near East Hoathly, a

cavalier and friend of Charles I., was notoriously a consumer of the

flesh of babes. How he won such a reputation is not known, but it never

left him. _Hudibras_ mentions his tastes; in one ballad of the time he

figures as Lunsford that "eateth of children," and in another, recording

his supposed death, he is found with "a child's arm in his pocket."

After a stormy but courageous career he died in 1691, innocent of

cannibalism. It was this Lunsford who fired at his relative, Sir

Nicholas Pelham of Halland, as he was one day entering East Hoathly

church. The huge bullet, the outcome of a long feud, missed Nicholas and

lodged in the church door, where it remained for many years. It cost

Lunsford _L_8,000 and outlawry.

Halland, one of the seats of the Pelhams, about a mile from the

village, was just above Terrible Down, a tract of wild land, on which,

according to local tradition, a battle was once fought so fiercely that

the soldiers were up to their knees in blood. In the neighbourhood it

is, of course, called Tarble Down. Local tradition also states of a

certain piece of woodland attached to the glebe of this parish, called

Breeches Wood, that it owes its name to the circumstance that an East

Hoathly lady, noticing the vicar's breeches to be in need of mending,

presented to him and his successors the wood in question as an endowment

to ensure the perpetual repair of those garments.

Halland House no longer exists, but in the days of the great Duke of

Newcastle, who died in 1768, it was famous for its hospitality and

splendour. We meet with traces of its influence in the frequent

inebriation, after visits there, of Mr. Thomas Turner, a mercer and

general dealer of East Hoathly, who kept a diary from 1764, recording

some of his lapses and other experiences. A few passages from the

extracts quoted in the Sussex Archaeological Collections may be given:

"My wife read to me that moving scene of the funeral of Miss Clarissa

Harlow. Oh, may the Supreme Being give me grace to lead my life in such

a manner as my exit may in some measure be like that divine creature's.

"This morn my wife and I had words about her going to Lewes to-morrow.

Oh, what happiness must there be in the married state, when there is a

sincere regard on both sides, and each partie truly satisfied with each

other's merits. But it is impossible for tongue or pen to express the

uneasiness that attends the contrary.

"Sunday, August 28th, 1756, Thos. Davey, at our house in the evening, to

whom I read five of Tillotson's Sermons.

"Sunday, October 28th, Thos. Davey came in the evening to whom I read

six of Tillotson's sermons.

"This day went to Mrs. Porter's to inform them the livery lace was not

come, when I think Mrs. Porter treated me with as much imperious and

scornful usage as if she had been, what I think she is, more of a Turk

and Infidel than a Christian, and I an abject slave.

"I went down to Mrs. Porter's and acquainted her that I would not get

her gown before Monday, who received me with all the affability,

courtesy, and good humour imaginable. Oh! what a pleasure would it be to

serve them was they always in such a temper; it would even induce me,

almost, to forget to take a just profit.

[Sidenote: POTATIONS]

"We supped at Mr. Fuller's and spent the evening with a great deal of

mirth, till between one and two. Tho. Fuller brought my wife home upon

his back. I cannot say I came home sober, though I was far from being

bad company.

"The curate of Laughton came to the shop in the forenoon, and he having

bought some things of me (and I could wish he had paid for them) dined

with me, and also staid in the afternoon till he got in liquor, and

being so complaisant as to keep him company, I was quite drunk. How do I

detest myself for being so foolish!

"In the even, read the twelfth and last book of Milton's _Paradise

Lost_, which I have now read twice through.

"Mr. Banister having lately taken from the smugglers a freight of

brandy, entertained Mr. Carman, Mr. Fuller, and myself, in the even,

with a bowl of punch."

Although the Pelhams owned Halland, their principal seat was at

Laughton, two or three miles to the south. Of that splendid Tudor

mansion little now remains but one brick tower. In the vault of the

church, which has been much restored, no fewer than forty Pelhams

repose.

Chiddingly church presents the completest contrast to East Hoathly's

over-decorated yet accessible fane that could be imagined. Its door is

not only kept shut, but a special form of locked bar seems to have been

invented for it, and on the day that I was last there the churchyard

gate was padlocked too. The spire of white stone (visible for many

miles)--a change from the customary oak shingling of Sussex--has been

bound with iron chains that suggest the possibility of imminent

dissolution, while within, the building is gloomy and time-stained. If

at East Hoathly the church gives the impression of a too complacent

prosperity, here we have precisely the reverse. The state of the

Jefferay monument behind a row of rude railings is in keeping.

[Sidenote: THE PROUD JEFFERAYS]

In the Jefferay monument, by the way, the statues at either side stand

on two circular tablets, which are not unlike the yellow cheeses of

Alkmaar. It was possibly this circumstance that led to the myth that the

Jefferays, too proud to walk on the ground, had on Sundays a series of

cheeses ranged between their house and the church, on which to step.

Their house was Chiddingly Place, built by Sir John Jefferay, who died

in 1577. Remains of this great mansion are still to be seen. It was

during Sir John's time that Chiddingly had a vicar, William Titelton,

sufficiently flexible to retain the living under Henry VIII., Edward

VI., Mary, and Elizabeth.

Here, in the eighteenth century, lived one William Elphick, a devotee of

bell-ringing, who computed that altogether he had rung Chiddingly's

triple bell for 8,766 hours (which is six hours more than a year), and

who travelled upwards of ten thousand miles to ring the bells of other

churches.

Mark Antony Lower, most interesting of the Sussex archaeologists, to whom

these pages have been much indebted, was born at Chiddingly in 1813.

Mr. Egerton in his _Sussex Folk and Sussex Ways_ tells a story of a

couple down Chiddingly way who agreed upon a very satisfactory system of

danger signals when things were not quite well with either of them.

Whenever the husband came home a little "contrary" he wore his hat on

the back of his head, and then she never said a word; and if she came in

a little cross and crooked she threw her shawl over her left shoulder,

and then he never said a word.

[Sidenote: CZAR AND QUAKER]

A little to the east of Hellingly is Amberstone, the scene, in 1814, of

a pretty occurrence. Alexander, the Czar of all the Russias, travelling

from Brighton to Dover with his sister, the Duchess of Oldenburgh, saw

Nathaniel and Mary Rickman of Amberstone standing by their gate. From

their dress he knew them to be Quakers, a sect in which he was much

interested. The carriage was therefore stopped, and the Czar and his

sister entered the house; they were taken all over it, praised its

neatness, ate some lunch, and parted with the kindest expressions of

goodwill, the Czar shaking hands with the Quaker and the Duchess kissing

the Quakeress.

A few minutes on the rail bring us to Hailsham, an old market town,

whose church, standing on the ridge which borders Pevensey Level on the

west, is capped with pinnacles like that of East Grinstead. Walking a

few yards beyond the church one comes to the edge of the high ground,

with nothing before one but miles and miles of the meadow-land of this

Dutch region, green and moist and dotted with cattle.

Hailsham's principal value to the traveller is that it is the station

for Hurstmonceux; whither, however, we are to journey by another route.

Otherwise the town exists principally in order that bullocks and sheep

may change hands once a week. Hailsham's cattle market covers three

acres, and on market days the wayfarers in the streets need the agility

of a picador.

We ought, however, to see Michelham Priory while we are here. It lies

two miles to the west of Hailsham, in the Cuckmere valley--now a

beautifully-placed farmhouse, but once a house of Augustinian Canons

founded in the reign of Henry III. Here one may see the old monkish fish

stews, so useful on Fridays, in perfection. The moat, where fish were

probably also caught, is still as it was, and the fine old

three-storied gateway and the mill belonging to the monks stand to this

day. The priory, although much in ruins, is very interesting, and well

worth seeing and exploring with a reconstructive eye.

[Sidenote: THE TWO DICKERS]

A little further west is the Dicker--or rather the two Dickers, Upper

Dicker and Lower Dicker, large commons between Arlington in the south

and Chiddingly in the north. Here are some of the many pottery works for

which Sussex is famous.

[Illustration: _Beachy Head._]

CHAPTER XXXIV

EASTBOURNE

Select Eastbourne. The "English Salvator Rosa"--Sops and Ale--Beau

Chef--"The Breeze on Beachy Head"--Shakespeare and the Cliff--"To a

Seamew"--The new lighthouse--Parson Darby and his cave--East Dean's

bells--The Two Sisters--Friston's Selwyn monument--West Dean.

Eastbourne is the most select, or least democratic, of the Sussex

watering places. Fashion does not resort thither as to Brighton in the

season, but the crowds of excursionists that pour into Brighton and

Hastings are comparatively unknown at Eastbourne; which is in a sense a

private settlement, under the patronage of the Duke of Devonshire.

Hastings is of the people; Brighton has a character almost continental;

Eastbourne is select. Lawn tennis and golf are its staple products, one

played on the very beautiful links behind the town hard by Compton

Place, the residence of the Duke; the other in Devonshire Park. It is

also an admirable town for horsemanship.

[Sidenote: THE ENGLISH SALVATOR ROSA]

Eastbourne has had small share in public affairs, but in 1741 John

Hamilton Mortimer, the painter, sometimes called the Salvator Rosa of

England, was born there. From a memoir of him which Horsfield prints, I

take passages: "Bred on the sea-coast, and amid a daring and rugged race

of hereditary smugglers, it had pleased his young imagination to walk on

the shore when the sea was agitated by storms--to seek out the most

sequestered places among the woods and rocks, and frequently, and not

without danger, to witness the intrepidity of the contraband

adventurers, who, in spite of storms and armed excisemen, pursued their

precarious trade at all hazards. In this way he had, from boyhood,

become familiar with what amateurs of art call 'Salvator Rosa-looking

scenes'; he loved to depict the sea chafing and foaming, and fit 'to

swallow navigation up'--ships in peril, and pinnaces sinking--banditti

plundering, or reposing in caverns--and all such situations as are

familiar to pirates on water, and outlaws on land....

"Of his eccentricities while labouring under the delusion that he could

not well be a genius without being unsober and wild, one specimen may

suffice. He was employed by Lord Melbourne to paint a ceiling at his

seat of Brocket Hall, Herts; and taking advantage of permission to angle

in the fish-pond, he rose from a carousal at midnight, and seeking a

net, and calling on an assistant painter for help, dragged the preserve,

and left the whole fish gasping on the bank in rows. Nor was this the

worst; when reproved mildly, and with smiles, by Lady Melbourne, he had

the audacity to declare, that her beauty had so bewitched him that he

knew not what he was about. To plunder the fish-pond and be impertinent

to the lady was not the way to obtain patronage. The impudent painter

collected his pencils together, and returned to London to enjoy his

inelegant pleasures and ignoble company."

Horsfield states that "a custom far more honoured by the breach than the

observance heretofore existed in the manor of Eastbourne; in compliance

with which, after any lady, or respectable farmer or tradesman's wife,

was delivered of a child, certain quantities of food and of beer were

placed in a room adjacent to the sacred edifice; when, after the second

lesson was concluded, the whole agricultural portion of the worshippers

marched out of church, and devoured what was prepared for them. This was

called _Sops and Ale_."

[Sidenote: EASTBOURNE RUG]

John Taylor the water Poet, whom we saw, at Goring, the prey of fleas

and the Law, made another journey into the county between August 9th and

September 3rd, 1653, and as was usual with him wrote about it in

doggerel verse. At Eastbourne he found a brew called Eastbourne Rug:--

No cold can ever pierce his flesh or skin

Of him who is well lin'd with Rug within;

Rug is a lord beyond the Rules of Law,

It conquers hunger in a greedy maw,

And, in a word, of all drinks potable,

Rug is most puissant, potent, notable.

Rug was the Capital Commander there,

And his Lieutenant-General was strong beer.

Possibly it was in order to contest the supremacy of Rug (which one may

ask for in Eastbourne to-day in vain) that Newhaven Tipper sprang into

being.

The Martello towers, which Pitt built during the Napoleonic scare at the

beginning of last century, begin at Eastbourne, where the cliffs cease,

and continue along the coast into Kent. They were erected probably quite

as much to assist in allaying public fear by a tangible and visible

symbol of defence as from any idea that they would be a real service in

the event of invasion. Many of them have now disappeared.

[Sidenote: BEACHY HEAD]

Eastbourne's glory is Beachy Head, the last of the Downs, which stop

dead at the town and never reappear in Sussex again. The range takes a

sudden turn to the south at Folkington, whence it rolls straight for

the sea, Beachy Head being the ultimate eminence. (The name Beachy has,

by the way, nothing to do with the beach: it is derived probably from

the Normans' description--"beau chef.") About Beachy Head one has the

South Downs in perfection: the best turf, the best prospect, the best

loneliness, and the best air. Richard Jefferies, in his fine essay, "The

Breeze on Beachy Head," has a rapturous word to say of this air (poor

Jefferies, destined to do so much for the health of others and so little

for his own!).--"But the glory of these glorious Downs is the breeze.

The air in the valleys immediately beneath them is pure and pleasant;

but the least climb, even a hundred feet, puts you on a plane with the

atmosphere itself, uninterrupted by so much as the tree-tops. It is air

without admixture. If it comes from the south, the waves refine it; if

inland, the wheat and flowers and grass distil it. The great headland

and the whole rib of the promontory is wind-swept and washed with air;

the billows of the atmosphere roll over it.

"The sun searches out every crevice amongst the grass, nor is there the

smallest fragment of surface which is not sweetened by air and light.

Underneath the chalk itself is pure, and the turf thus washed by wind

and rain, sun-dried and dew-scented, is a couch prepared with thyme to

rest on. Discover some excuse to be up there always, to search for stray

mushrooms--they will be stray, for the crop is gathered extremely early

in the morning--or to make a list of flowers and grasses; to do

anything, and, if not, go always without any pretext. Lands of gold have

been found, and lands of spices and precious merchandise: but this is

the land of health."

Seated near the edge of the cliff one realises, as it is possible

nowhere else to realise, except perhaps at Dover, the truth of Edgar's

description of the headland in _King Lear_. It seems difficult to think

of Shakespeare exploring these or any Downs, and yet the scene must have

been in his own experience; nothing but actual sight could have given

him the line about the crows and choughs:

Come on, sir; here's the place:--stand still.--How fearful

And dizzy 't is, to cast one's eyes so low!

The crows and choughs, that wing the midway air,

Show scarce so gross as beetles: half way down

Hangs one that gathers samphire--dreadful trade!

Methinks he seems no bigger than his head:

The fishermen, that walk upon the beach,

Appear like mice; and yond tall anchoring bark,

Diminish'd to her cock; her cock, a buoy

Almost too small for sight: the murmuring surge,

That on the unnumber'd idle pebbles chafes,

Cannot be heard so high.--I'll look no more,

Lest my brain turn, and the deficient sight

Topple down headlong.

[Sidenote: "TO A SEAMEW"]

Choughs are rare at Beachy Head, but jackdaws and gulls are in great and

noisy profusion; and this reminds me that it was on Beachy Head in

September, 1886, that the inspiration of one of the most beautiful

bird-poems in our language came to its author--the ode "To a Seamew" of

Mr. Swinburne. I quote five of its haunting stanzas:

We, sons and sires of seamen,

Whose home is all the sea,

What place man may, we claim it;

But thine----whose thought may name it?

Free birds live higher than freemen,

And gladlier ye than we----

We, sons and sires of seamen,

Whose home is all the sea.

For you the storm sounds only

More notes of more delight

Than earth's in sunniest weather:

When heaven and sea together

Join strengths against the lonely

Lost bark borne down by night,

For you the storm sounds only

More notes of more delight.

* * * * *

The lark knows no such rapture,

Such joy no nightingale,

As sways the songless measure,

Wherein thy wings take pleasure:

Thy love may no man capture,

Thy pride may no man quail;

The lark knows no such rapture,

Such joy no nightingale.

And we, whom dreams embolden,

We can but creep and sing

And watch through heaven's waste hollow

The flight no sight may follow

To the utter bourne beholden

Of none that lack thy wing:

And we, whom dreams embolden,

We can but creep and sing.

* * * * *

Ah, well were I for ever,

Wouldst thou change lives with me,

And take my song's wild honey,

And give me back thy sunny

Wide eyes that weary never,

And wings that search the sea;

Ah, well were I for ever,

Wouldst thou change lives with me.

[Sidenote: PARSON DARBY]

The old lighthouse on Beachy Head, the Belle Tout, which first flung its

beams abroad in 1831, has just been superseded by the new lighthouse

built on the shore under the cliff. Near the new lighthouse is Parson

Darby's Hole--a cavern in the cliff said to have been hewed out by the

Rev. Jonathan Darby of East Dean as a refuge from the tongue of Mrs.

Darby. Another account credits the parson with the wish to provide a

sanctuary for shipwrecked sailors, whom he guided thither on stormy

nights by torches. In a recent Sussex story by Mr. Horace Hutchinson,

called _A Friend of Nelson_, we find the cave in the hands of a powerful

smuggler, mysterious and accomplished as Lavengro, some years after

Darby's death.

[Sidenote: UNDER BEACHY HEAD]

A pleasant walk from Eastbourne is to Birling Gap, a great smuggling

centre in the old days, where the Downs dip for a moment to the level of

the sea. Here at low tide one may walk under the cliffs. Richard

Jefferies, in the essay from which I have already quoted, has a

beautiful passage of reflections beneath the great bluff:--"The sea

seems higher than the spot where I stand, its surface on a higher

level--raised like a green mound--as if it could burst in and occupy the

space up to the foot of the cliff in a moment. It will not do so, I

know; but there is an infinite possibility about the sea; it may do what

it is not recorded to have done. It is not to be ordered, it may

overleap the bounds human observation has fixed for it. It has a potency

unfathomable. There is still something in it not quite grasped and

understood--something still to be discovered--a mystery.

"So the white spray rushes along the low broken wall of rocks, the sun

gleams on the flying fragments of the wave, again it sinks, and the

rhythmic motion holds the mind, as an invisible force holds back the

tide. A faith of expectancy, a sense that something may drift up from

the unknown, a large belief in the unseen resources of the endless space

out yonder, soothes the mind with dreamy hope.

"The little rules and little experiences, all the petty ways of narrow

life, are shut off behind by the ponderous and impassable cliff; as if

we had dwelt in the dim light of a cave, but coming out at last to look

at the sun, a great stone had fallen and closed the entrance, so that

there was no return to the shadow. The impassable precipice shuts off

our former selves of yesterday, forcing us to look out over the sea

only, or up to the deeper heaven.

"These breadths draw out the soul; we feel that we have wider thoughts

than we knew; the soul has been living, as it were, in a nutshell, all

unaware of its own power, and now suddenly finds freedom in the sun and

the sky. Straight, as if sawn down from turf to beach, the cliff shuts

off the human world, for the sea knows no time and no era; you cannot

tell what century it is from the face of the sea. A Roman trireme

suddenly rounding the white edge-line of chalk, borne on wind and oar

from the Isle of Wight towards the gray castle at Pevensey (already old

in olden days), would not seem strange. What wonder could surprise us

coming from the wonderful sea?"

[Illustration: _Beachy Head from the Shore._]

[Sidenote: EAST DEAN]

The road from Birling Gap runs up the valley to East Dean and Friston,

two villages among the Downs. Parson Darby's church at East Dean is

small and not particularly interesting; but it gave Horsfield, the

county historian, the opportunity to make one of his infrequent jokes.

"There are three bells," he writes, "and 'if discord's harmony not

understood,' truly harmonious ones." Horsfield does not note that one of

these three bells bore a Latin motto which being translated signifies

Surely no bell beneath the sky

Can send forth better sounds than I?

The East Dean register contains a curious entry which is quoted in

Grose's _Olio_, ed. 1796:--"Agnes Payne, the daughter of Edward Payne,

was buried on the _first day of February_. Johan Payne, the daughter of

Edward Payne, was buried on the _first day of February_.

"In the death of these two sisters last mentioned is one thing worth

recording, and diligently to be noted. 'The elder sister, called Agnes,

being very sicke unto death, _speechless_, and, as was thought, past

hope of speakinge; after she had lyen twenty-four hours without speach,

at last upon a suddayne cryed out to her sister to make herself ready

and to come with her. Her sister Johan being abroad about other

business, was called for, who being come to her sicke sister,

demaundinge how she did, she very lowde or earnestly bade her sister

make ready--she staid for her, and could not go without her. Within half

an houre after, Johan was taken very sicke, which increasinge all the

night uppone her, her other sister stille callinge her to come away; in

the morninge they both departed this wretched world together. O the

unsearchable wisdom of God! How deepe are his judgments, and his ways

past fyndinge out!

"Testified by diverse oulde and honest persons yet living; which I

myself have heard their father, when he was alive, report.

"Arthur Polland, Vicar; Henry Homewood, John Pupp, Churchwardens."

[Sidenote: THE SELWYN MONUMENT]

[Sidenote: FRISTON PLACE]

Friston church is interesting, for it contains one of the most beautiful

monuments in Sussex, worthy to be remembered with that to the Shurleys

at Isfield. The family commemorated is the Selwyns, and the monument has

a very charming dado of six kneeling daughters and three babies laid

neatly on a tasseled cushion, under the reading desk--a quaint conceit

impossible to be carried out successfully in these days, but pretty and

fitting enough then. Of the last of the Selwyns, "Ultimus Selwynorum,"

who died aged twenty, in 1704, it is said, with that exquisite

simplicity of exaggeration of which the secret also has been lost, that

for him "the very marble might weep." Friston Place, the home of the

Selwyns, has some noble timbers, and a curious old donkey-well in the

garden.

West Dean, which is three miles to the west, by a bleak and lonely road

amid hills and valleys, is just a farm yard, with remains of very

ancient architecture among the barns and ricks. The village, however, is

more easily reached from Alfriston than Eastbourne.

CHAPTER XXXV

PEVENSEY AND HURSTMONCEUX

A well-behaved castle--Rail and romance--Britons, Romans, Saxons and

Normans at Pevensey--William the Conqueror--A series of sieges--The

first English letter--Andrew Borde, the jester, again--Pevensey

gibes--A red brick castle--Hurstmonceux church--The tomb of the

Dacres.--Two Hurstmonceux clerics--The de Fiennes and the de

Monceux--A spacious home--The ghost--The unfortunate Lord

Dacre--Horace Walpole at Hurstmonceux--The trug industry.

Pevensey Castle behaves as a castle should: it rises from the plain, the

only considerable eminence for miles; it has noble grey walls of the

true romantic hue and thickness; it can be seen from the sea, over which

it once kept guard; it has a history rich in assailants and defenders.

There is indeed nothing in its disfavour except the proximity of the

railway, which has been allowed to pass nearer the ruin than dramatic

fitness would dictate. Let it, however, be remembered that the railway

through the St. Pancras Priory at Lewes led to the discovery of the

coffins of William de Warenne and Gundrada, and also that, in Mr.

Kipling's phrase, romance, so far from being at enmity with the iron

horse, "brought up the 9.15."

[Illustration: _Pevensey Castle._]

Pevensey, which is now divided from the channel by marshy fields with

nothing to break the flatness but Martello towers (thirteen may be

counted from the walls), was, like Bramber Castle in the west, now also

an inland stronghold, once washed and surrounded by the sea. The sea

probably covered all the ground as far inland as Hailsham--Pevensey,

Horseye, Rickney and the other "eyes" on the level, being then

islands, as their termination suggests.

There is now no doubt but that Pevensey was the Anderida of the Romans,

a city on the borders of the great forest of Anderida that covered the

Weald of Sussex--Andreas Weald as it was called by the Saxons. But

before the Romans a British stronghold existed here. This, after the

Romans left, was attacked by the Saxons, who slew every Briton that they

found therein. The Saxons in their turn being discomfited, the Normans

built a new castle within the old walls, with Robert de Moreton, half

brother of the Conqueror, for its lord. Thus the castle as it now stands

is in its outer walls Roman, in its inner, Norman.

[Sidenote: WILLIAM'S LANDING]

Unlike certain other Sussex fortresses, Pevensey has seen work. Of its

Roman career we know nothing, except that the inhabitants seem to have

dropped a large number of coins, many of which have been dug up. The

Saxons, as we have seen, massacred the Britons at Anderida very

thoroughly. Later, in 1042, Swane, son of Earl Godwin, swooped on

Pevensey's port in the Danish manner and carried off a number of ships.

In 1049 Earl Godwin, and another son, Harold, made a second foray,

carried off more ships, and fired the town. On September 28, 1066,

Pevensey saw a more momentous landing, destined to be fatal to this

marauding Harold; for on that day William, Duke of Normandy, soon to

become William the Conqueror, alighted from his vessel, accompanied by

several hundred Frenchmen in black chain armour. A representation of the

landing is one of the designs in the Bayeux tapestry. The embroiderers

take no count of William's fall as he stepped ashore, on ground now

grazed upon by cattle, an accident deemed unlucky until his ready wit

explained, as he rose with sanded fingers, "See, I have seized the land

with my hands."

Pevensey's later history included sieges by William Rufus in 1088, when

Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, supporter of Robert, was the defender; by

Stephen in 1144, the fortress being held by Maude, who gave in

eventually to famine; by Simon de Montfort and the Barons in 1265; and

by the supporters of Richard of York in 1399, when Lady Pelham defended

it for the Rose of Lancaster. A little later Edmund, Duke of York, was

imprisoned in it, and was so satisfied with his gaoler that he

bequeathed him _L_20. Queen Joan of Navarre, wife of Henry IV., was also a

prisoner here for nine years. In the year before the Armada, Pevensey

Castle was ordered to be either rebuilt as a fortress or razed to the

ground; but fortunately neither instruction was carried out.

The present owner of Pevensey Castle is the Duke of Devonshire, who by

virtue of the possession is entitled to call himself Dominus Aquilae, or

Lord of the Eagle.

[Sidenote: LETTER-WRITING]

Pevensey has another and gentler claim to notice. Many essayists have

said pleasant and ingenious things about the art of letter-writing; but

none of them mentions the part played by Pevensey in the English

development of that agreeable accomplishment. Yet the earliest specimen

of English letter-writing that exists was penned in Pevensey Castle. The

writer was Joan Crownall, Lady Pelham, wife of Sir John Pelham, who, as

I have said, defended the castle, in her Lord's absence, against the

Yorkists, and this is the letter, penned (I write in 1903) five hundred

and four years ago. (It has no postscript.)

My dear Lord,--I recommend me to your high Lordship, with heart and

body and all my poor might. And with all this I thank you as my

dear Lord, dearest and best beloved of all earthly lords. I say for

me, and thank you, my dear Lord, with all this that I said before

of [for] your comfortable letter that you sent me from Pontefract,

that came to me on Mary Magdalen's day: for by my troth I was never

so glad as when I heard by your letter that ye were strong enough

with the grace of God for to keep you from the malice of your

enemies. And, dear Lord, if it like to your high Lordship that as

soon as ye might that I might hear of your gracious speed, which

God Almighty continue and increase. And, my dear Lord, if it like

you to know _my_ fare, I am here laid by in manner of a siege with

the county of Sussex, Surrey, and a great parcel of Kent, so that

I may not [go] out nor no victuals get me, but with much hard.

Wherefore, my dear, if it like you by the advice of your wise

counsel for to set remedy of the salvation of your Castle and

withstand the malice of the Shires aforesaid. And also that ye be

fully informed of the great malice-workers in these shires which

have so despitefully wrought to you, and to your Castle, to your

men and to your tenants; for this country have they wasted for a

great while.

"Farewell, my dear Lord! the Holy Trinity keep you from your

enemies, and soon send me good tidings of you. Written at Pevensey,

in the Castle, on St. Jacob's day last past.

"By your own poor

"J. PELHAM."

"To my true Lord."

[Sidenote: ANDREW BORDE AGAIN]

In the town of Pevensey once lived Andrew Borde (who entered this world

at Cuckfield): a thorn in the side of municipal dignity. The Dogberryish

dictum "I am still but a man, although Mayor of Pevensey," remains a

local joke, and tradition has kept alive the prowess of the Pevensey

jury which brought a verdict of manslaughter against one who was charged

with stealing breeches; both jokes of Andrew's. Borde's house, whither,

it is said, Edward VI. once came on a visit to the jester, still stands.

The oak room in which Andrew welcomed the youthful king is shown at a

cost of threepence per head, and you may buy pictorial postcards and

German wooden toys in the wit's front parlour.

Before leaving Pevensey I must say a word of Westham, the village which

adjoins it. Westham and Pevensey are practically one, the castle

intervening. Westham has a vicar whose interest in his office might well

be imitated by some of the other vicars of the county. His noble church,

one of the finest in Sussex, with a tower of superb strength and

dignity, is kept open, and just within is a table on which are a number

of copies of a little penny history of Westham which he has prepared,

and for the payment of which he is so eccentric as to trust to the

stranger's honesty.

The tower, which the vicar tells us is six hundred years old, he asks us

to admire for its "utter carelessness and scorn of smoothness and

finish, or any of the tricks of modern buildings." Westham church was

one of the first that the Conqueror built, and remains of the original

Norman structure are still serviceable. The vicar suggests that it may

very possibly have stood a siege. In the jamb of the south door of the

Norman wall is a sundial, without which, one might say, no church is

completely perfect. In the tower dwell unmolested a colony of owls, six

of whom once attended a "reading-in" service and, seated side by side on

a beam, listened with unwavering attention to the Thirty-Nine Articles.

They were absent on my visit, but a small starling, swift and elusive as

a spirit, flitted hither and thither quite happily.

[Illustration: _Westham._]

[Sidenote: ALES CRESSEL]

In the churchyard is the grave of one Ales Cressel (oddest of names),

and among the epitaphs is this upon a Mr. Henty:--

Learn from this mistic sage to live or die.

Well did he love at evening's social hour

The Sacred Volume's treasure to apply.

The remembrance of his excellent character alone reconciles his

afflicted widow to her irreparable loss.

The church contains a memorial to a young gentleman named Fagg who,

"having lived to adorn Human Nature by his exemplary manners, was

untimely snatched away, aged 24."

In the neighbourhood of Westham is a large rambling building known as

Priesthaus, which, once a monastery, is now a farm. Many curious relics

of its earlier state have lately been unearthed.

In Pevensey church, which has none of the interest of Westham, a little

collection of curiosities relating to Pevensey--a constable's staff, old

title deeds, seals, and so forth--is kept, in a glass case.

[Illustration: _Hurstmonceux Castle._]

[Sidenote: HURSTMONCEUX CASTLE]

If Pevensey is all that a castle ought to be, in shape, colour, position

and past, Hurstmonceux is the reverse; for it lies low, it has no

swelling contours, it is of red brick instead of grey stone, and never a

fight has it seen. But any disappointment we may feel is the fault not

of Hurstmonceux but of those who named it castle. Were it called

Hurstmonceux House, or Place, or Manor, or Grange, all would be well. It

is this use of the word castle (which in Sussex has a connotation

excluding red brick) that has done Hurstmonceux an injustice, for it is

a very imposing and satisfactory ruin, quite as interesting

architecturally as Pevensey, or, indeed, any of the ruins that we have

seen.

Hurstmonceux Castle stands on the very edge of Pevensey Level, the only

considerable structure between Pevensey and the main land proper. In the

intervening miles there are fields and fields, through which the Old

Haven runs, plaintive plovers above them bemoaning their lot, and brown

cows tugging at the rich grass. On the first hillock to the right of the

castle as one fronts the south, rising like an island from this sea of

pasturage, is Hurstmonceux church, whose shingled spire shoots into the

sky, a beacon to travellers in the Level. It is a pretty church with an

exterior of severe simplicity. Between the chancel and the chantry is

the large tomb covering the remains of Thomas Fiennes, second Lord

Dacre of Hurstmonceux, who died in 1534, and Sir Thomas Dacre his son,

surmounted by life-size stone figures, each in full armour, with hands

proudly raised, and each resting his feet against the Fiennes wolf-dog.

In the churchyard is the grave of Julius Hare, once vicar of

Hurstmonceux, and the author, with his brother Augustus, of _Guesses at

Truth_. Carlyle's John Sterling was Julius Hare's first curate here.

[Sidenote: THE OLD SPACIOUSNESS]

Hurstmonceux Castle was once the largest and handsomest of all the

commoners' houses in the county. Sir Roger de Fiennes, a descendant of

the John de Fiennes who married Maude, last of the de Monceux, in the

reign of Edward II., built it in 1440. Though the Manor house of the de

Monceux, on the site of the present castle, lacked the imposing

qualities of Roger de Fiennes' stronghold, it was hospitable, spacious,

and luxurious. Edward the First spent a night there in 1302. One of the

de Monceux was on the side of de Montfort in the Battle of Lewes, and

the first of them to settle in England married Edith, daughter of

William de Warenne and Gundrada, of Lewes Castle.

How thorough and conscientious were the workmen employed by Roger de

Fiennes, and how sound were their bricks and mortar, may be learned by

the study of Hurstmonceux Castle to-day. In many parts the walls are

absolutely uninjured except by tourists. The floors, however, have long

since returned to nature, who has put forth her energies without stint

to clothe the old apartments with greenery. Ivy of astonishing vigour

grows here, populous with jackdaws, and trees and shrubs spring from the

least likely spots.

The castle in its old completeness was, practically, a little town. From

east to west its walls measured 206-1/2 feet, from north to south,

214-1/4; within them on the ground floor were larders, laundries, a

brewhouse, a bakehouse, cellars, a dairy, offices, a guard room,

pantries, a distillery, a confectionery room, a chapel, and, beneath, a

dungeon. Between these were four open courts. Upstairs, round three

sides of the Green Court, were the Bird Gallery, the Armour Gallery, and

the Green Gallery, and lords' apartments and ladies' apartments "capable

of quartering an army," to quote a writer on the subject. On each side

of the entrance, gained by a drawbridge, was a tower--the Watch Tower

and the Signal Tower.

In the reign of Elizabeth a survey of Hurstmonceux was taken, which

tells us that in the park were two hundred deer, "four fair ponds"

stocked with carp and tench, a "fair warren of conies," a heronry of 150

nests, and much game. The de Fiennes, or Dacres as they became, had also

a private fishery in Pevensey Bay, seen from the Watch Tower as a strip

of blue ribbon.

In addition Hurstmonceux had a ghost, who inhabited the Drummers' Hall,

a room between the towers over the porter's lodge, and sent forth a

mysterious tattoo. Sometimes he left his hall, this devilish musician,

and strode along the battlements drumming and drumming, a terrible

figure nine feet high. Most people were frightened, but there were those

who said that the drummer was nothing more nor less than a gardener in

league with the Pevensey smugglers, whose notes, rattled out on the

parchment, rolled over the marsh and gave them the needful signal.

[Sidenote: THE UNFORTUNATE LORD DACRE]

Hurstmonceux once had a very real tragedy. The third Lord Dacre, one of

the young noblemen who took part in the welcoming of Ann of Cleves when

she landed in England preparatory to her becoming the wife of Henry

VIII., was so foolish one night in 1541 as to accompany some of his

roystering companions to the adjacent park of Sir Nicholas Pelham, near

Hellingly, intent on a deer-stealing jest. There three gamekeepers rose

up, and a bloody battle ensued in which one John Busbrig bit the dust.

Pelham was furious and demanded justice, and Lord Dacre, though he had

taken no part in the fray, was held responsible. Three of his friends

were hanged at Tyburn, and, in spite of all the influence that was

brought to bear, he also was executed. The next Dacre of importance

married the Lady Ann Fitzroy, a natural daughter of Charles II., and was

made Earl of Sussex. Financial losses compelling him to sell

Hurstmonceux, a lawyer named George Naylor bought it in 1708, leaving

it, on his death, to the Right Rev. Francis Hare, Bishop of Chichester.

It remained in the family as a residence until, in 1777, an architect

pronounced it unsafe, and the interior was converted into materials for

the new Hurstmonceux Place in the park to the north-west. Since then

nature has had her way with it.

[Sidenote: WALPOLE AT HURSTMONCEUX]

Horace Walpole's visit, as described in one of his letters, gives us an

idea of Hurstmonceux in the middle of the eighteenth century, a little

before it became derelict:--"The chapel is small, and mean; the Virgin

and seven long lean saints, ill done, remain in the windows. There have

been four more, but they seem to have been removed for light; and we

actually found St. Catherine, and another gentlewoman with a church in

her hand, exiled into the buttery. There remain two odd cavities, with

very small wooden screens on each side the altar, which seem to have

been confessionals. The outside is a mixture of grey brick and stone,

that has a very venerable appearance. The draw-bridges are romantic to a

degree; and there is a dungeon, that gives one a delightful idea of

living in the days of soccage and under such goodly tenures. They showed

us a dismal chamber which they called _Drummer's_-hall, and suppose that

Mr. Addison's comedy is descended from it. In the windows of the gallery

over the cloisters, which leads all round to the apartments, is the

device of the Fienneses, a wolf holding a baton with a scroll, _Le roy

le veut_--an unlucky motto, as I shall tell you presently, to the last

peer of that line. The estate is two thousand a year, and so compact as

to have but seventeen houses upon it. We walked up a brave old avenue to

the church, with ships sailing on our left hand the whole way."

[Sidenote: TRUGS]

Hurstmonceux is famous not only for its castle, but for its "trugs," the

wooden baskets that gardeners carry, which are associated with

Hurstmonceux as crooks once were with Pyecombe, and the shepherds' vast

green umbrellas, on cane frames, with Lewes.

CHAPTER XXXVI

HASTINGS

The ravening sea--Hastings and history--Titus Oates--Sir Cloudesley

Shovel--A stalwart Nestor--Edward Capel--An old Sussex harvest

custom--A poetical mayor--Picturesque Hastings--Hastings

castle--Hollington Rural and Charles Lamb--Fairlight Glen and the

Lover's Seat--Bexhill.

Brighton, as we have seen, was made by Dr. Russell. It was Dr. Baillie,

some years later, who discovered the salubrious qualities of Hastings.

In 1806, when the Duke of Wellington (then Major-General Wellesley) was

in command of twelve thousand soldiers encamped in the neighbourhood,

and was himself living at Hastings House, the population of the town was

less than four thousand; to-day, with St. Leonard's and dependant

suburbs, Hastings covers several square miles. With the exception of the

little red and grey region known as Old Hastings, between Castle Hill

and East Hill, the same charge of a lack of what is interesting can be

brought against Hastings as against Brighton; but whereas Brighton has

the Downs to offer, Hastings is backed by country of far less charm.

Perhaps her greatest merit is her proximity to Winchelsea and Rye.

Hastings, once one of the proudest of the Cinque Ports, has no longer

even a harbour, its pleasure yachts, which carry excursionists on brief

Channel voyages, having to be beached just like rowing boats. The

ravages of the sea, which have so transformed the coast line of Sussex,

have completely changed this town; and from a stately seaport she has

become a democratic watering place. Beneath the waves lie the remains of

an old Priory and possibly of not a few churches.

Hastings has been very nigh to history more than once, but she has

escaped the actual making of it. Even the great battle that takes its

name from the town was fought seven miles away, while the Duke of

Normandy, as we have seen, landed as far distant as Pevensey, ten miles

in the west. But he used Hastings as a victualling centre. Again and

again, in its time, Hastings has been threatened with invasion by the

French, who did actually land in 1138 and burned the town. And one

Sunday morning in 1643, Colonel Morley of Glynde, the Parliamentarian,

marched in with his men and confiscated all arms. But considering its

warlike mien, Hastings has done little.

[Sidenote: THE ADMIRAL'S MOTHER]

Nor can the seaport claim any very illustrious son. Titus Oates, it is

true, was curate of All Saints church in 1674, his father being vicar;

and among the inhabitants of the old town was the mother of Sir

Cloudesley Shovel, the admiral. A charming account of a visit paid to

her by her son is given in De la Prynne's diary: "I heard a gentleman

say, who was in the ship with him about six years ago, that as they were

sailing over against the town, of Hastings, in Sussex, Sir Cloudesley

called out, 'Pilot, put near; I have a little business on shore.' So he

put near, and Sir Cloudesley and this gentleman went to shore in a small

boat, and having walked about half a mile, Sir Cloudesley came to a

little house [in All Saints Street], 'Come,' says he, 'my business is

here; I came on purpose to see the good woman of this house.' Upon this

they knocked at the door, and out came a poor old woman, upon which Sir

Cloudesley kissed her, and then falling down on his knees, begged her

blessing, and calling her mother (who had removed out of Yorkshire

hither). He was mightily kind to her, and she to him, and after that he

had made his visit, he left her ten guineas, and took his leave with

tears in his eyes and departed to his ship."

[Sidenote: THE CHURCH MILITANT]

Hastings had a famous rector at the beginning of the last century, in

the person of the Rev. Webster Whistler, who combined with the eastern

benefice that of Newtimber, near Hurstpierpoint, and managed to serve

both to a great age. He lived to be eighty-four and died full of vigour

in 1831. In 1817, following upon a quarrel with the squire, the

Newtimber living was put up for auction in London. Mr. Whistler decided

to be present, but anonymous. The auctioneer mentioned in his

introduction the various charms of the benefice, ending with the

superlative advantage that it was held by an aged and infirm clergyman

with one foot in the grave. At this point the proceedings were

interrupted by a large and powerful figure in clerical costume springing

on the table and crying out to the company: "Now, gentlemen, do I look

like a man tottering on the brink of the grave? My left leg gives me no

sign of weakness, and as for the other, Mr. Auctioneer, if you repeat

your remarks you will find it very much at your service." The living

found no purchaser.

Mr. Whistler had a Chinese indifference to the necessary end of all

things, which prompted him to use an aged yew tree in his garden, that

had long given him shade but must now be felled, as material for his

coffin. This coffin he placed at the foot of his bed as a chest for

clothes until its proper purpose was fulfilled.

Hastings was also the home of Edward Capel, a Shakespeare-editor of the

eighteenth century. Capel, who is said to have copied out in his own

hand the entire works of the poet no fewer than ten times, was the

designer of his own house, which seems to have been a miracle of

discomfort. He was an eccentric of the most determined character, so

much so that he gradually lost all friends. According to Horsfield, "The

spirit of nicety and refinement prevailed in it [his house] so much

during his lifetime, that when a friend (a baronet) called upon him on

a tour, he was desired to leave his cane in the vestibule, lest he

should either dirt the floor with it, or soil the carpet."

[Sidenote: HARVEST HOME]

One does not think naturally of old Sussex customs in connection with

this town, so thoroughly urban as it now is and so largely populated by

visitors, but I find in the Sussex Archaeological Collections the

following interesting account, by a Hastings alderman, of an old harvest

ceremony in the neighbourhood:--"At the head of the table one of the men

occupied the position of chairman; in front of him stood a pail--clean

as wooden staves and iron hoops could be made by human labour. At his

right sat four or five men who led the singing, grave as judges were

they; indeed, the appearance of the whole assembly was one of the

greatest solemnity, except for a moment or two when some unlucky wight

failed to 'turn the cup over,' and was compelled to undergo the penalty

in that case made and provided. This done, all went on as solemnly as

before.

"The ceremony, if I may call it so, was this: The leader, or chairman,

standing behind the pail with a tall horn cup in his hand, filled it

with beer from the pail. The man next to him on the left stood up, and

holding a hat with both hands by the brim, crown upwards, received the

cup from the chairman, on the crown of the hat, not touching it with

either hand. He then lifted the cup to his lips by raising the hat, and

slowly drank off the contents. As soon as he began to drink, the chorus

struck up this chant:

I've bin to Plymouth and I've bin to Dover.

I have bin rambling, boys, all the wurld over--

Over and over and over and over,

Drink up yur liquor and turn yur cup over;

Over and over and over and over,

The liquor's drink'd up and the cup is turned over.

"The man drinking was expected to time his draught so as to empty his

cup at the end of the fourth line of the chant; he was then to return

the hat to the perpendicular, still holding the hat by the brim, then to

throw the cup into the air, and reversing the hat, to catch the cup in

it as it fell. If he failed to perform this operation, the fellow

workmen who were closely watching him, made an important alteration in

the last line of their chant, which in that case ran thus:

The liquor's drink'd up and the cup _aint_ turned over.

"The cup was then refilled and the unfortunate drinker was compelled to

go through the same ceremony again. Every one at the table took the cup

and 'turned it over' in succession, the chief shepherd keeping the pail

constantly supplied with beer. The parlour guests were of course invited

to turn the cup over with the guests of the kitchen, and went through

the ordeal with more or less of success. For my own part, I confess that

I failed to catch the cup in the hat at the first trial and had to try

again; the chairman, however, mercifully gave me only a small quantity

of beer the second time."

[Sidenote: THE MAYOR'S PRETTY LAMENT]

The civic life of Hastings would seem to encourage literature, for I

find also in one of the Archaeological Society's volumes, the following

pretty lines by John Collier--Mayor of Hastings in 1719, 22, 30, 37, and

41--on his little boy's death:

Ah, my poor son! Ah my tender child,

My unblown flower and now appearing sweet,

If yet your gentle soul flys in the air

And is not fixt in doom perpetual,

Hover about me with your airy wings

And hear your Father's lamentation.

Hastings has two advantages over both Brighton and Eastbourne: it can

produce a genuine piece of antiquity, and seen from the sea it has a

picturesque quality that neither of those towns possesses. Indeed, under

certain conditions of light, Hastings is magnificent, with the craggy

Castle Hill in its midst surmounted by its imposing ruin. The smoke of

the town, rising and spreading, shrouds the modernity of the sea front,

and the castle on its commanding height seems to be brooding over the

shores of old romance. Brighton has no such effect as this.

[Sidenote: THE FIRST TOURNAMENT]

Of the Castle little is known. It was probably built on the site of

Roman fortifications, by the Comte d'Eu, who came over with the

Conqueror. The first tournament in England is said to have been held

there, with Adela, daughter of the Conqueror, as Queen of Beauty. After

the castle had ceased to be of any use as a stronghold it was still

maintained as a religious house. It is now a pleasure resort. The

ordinary visitor to Hastings is, however, more interested by the caves

in the hill below, originally made by diggers of sand and afterwards

used by smugglers.