 Chapter 12 by E. V. Lucas Chapter 12. Horsham Horsham is the capital of West Sussex, a busy agricultural town with horse-dealers in its streets, a core of old houses, and too many that are new. There is in England no more peaceful and prosperous row of venerable homes than the causeway, joining Carfax and the church, with its pollarded limes and chestnuts in line on the pavement's edge, its graceful gables, jutting eaves and glimpses of green gardens through the doors and windows. The sweetest part of Horsham is there, elsewhere the town bustles. I should, however, mention the very picturesque house, now cottages, on the left of the road as one leaves the station, as fine a mass of timbers, gables and oblique lines as one could wish, making an effect such as time alone can give. The days of such relics are numbered. Horsham not only has beautiful old houses of its own, but it has been the cause of beautiful old houses all over the county, since nothing so adds to the charm of a building as a roof of Horsham Stone, those large grey flat slabs on which the weather works like a great artist in harmonies of moss, lichen and stain. No roofing so combines dignity and homeliness, and no roofing except, possibly, thatch, which, however, is short-lived, so surely passes into the landscape. But Horsham Stone is no longer used. It is to be obtained for a new house only by the demolition of an old, and few houses have rafters sufficiently stable to bear so great a weight. Our ancestors built for posterity, we build for ourselves. Our ancestors used Sussex Oak, where we use fur. Not only is Horsham Stone on the roofs of the neighbourhood, it is also on the paths, so that one may step from flag to flag for miles dry shod, or at least without mud. Horsham's place in history is unimportant, but indirectly it played its part in the fourteenth century by supplying the war-office of that era with bolts for crossbows, excellent for slaying scots and Frenchmen. The town was famous also for its horse-shoes. In the days of Cromwell we find Horsham to have been principally royalist. One engagement with parliamentarians is recorded in which it lost three warriors to Cromwell's one. In the reign of William the Third, a young man claiming to be the Duke of Monmouth, and travelling with a little court who addressed him as Your Grace, turned the heads of the women in many an English town, his good looks convincing them at once, as the chronicler says, that he was the true Prince. Justices sitting at Horsham, however, having less susceptibility to the testimony of handsome features, found him to be the son of an innkeeper named Savage, and imprisoned him as a vagrant and swindler. Horsham was the last place in which pressing to death was practised. The year was 1735, and the victim, a man unknown, who on being charged with murder and robbery, refused to speak. Witnesses having been called to prove him no mute, this old and horrible sentence, proper, as the law considered, to his offence and obstinacy, was passed upon him. The executioner, the story goes, while conveying the body in a wheelbarrow to burial, turned it out in the roadway at the place where the king's head now stands, and then, putting it in again, passed on. Not long afterwards, he fell dead at this spot. The Church of St. Mary, which rises majestically at the end of the causeway, has a slender, shingled spire that reaches a great height. Not altogether, however, without indecision. There is probably an altitude beyond which shingles are a mistake. They are better suited to the more modest spire of the small village. The church is remarkable also for length of roof, well covered with Horsham stone, and it is altogether a singularly commanding structure. Within is an imposing plainness. The stone effigy of a knight in armour reclines just to the south of the altar, son of a branch of the Brays family of Chesworth, hard-buy, now in ruins, of whose parent stock we shall hear more when we reach Bramba. The knight, Thomas, Lord Brays, died in 1395. The youth of Horsham, hostile, invincibly like all boys to the stone nose, have reduced that feature to the level of the face. Or was it the work of the Puritans, who are known to have shared in the nasal objection? South of the churchyard is the river, from the banks of which the church would seem to be all Horsham, so effectively as the town behind it plotted out by its broad back. On the edge of the churchyard is perhaps the smallest house in Sussex, certainly the smallest to combine gothic windows with the sale of ginger beer. Horsham seems always to have been fond of pleasure. Within iron railings in the Carfax, in a trim little enclosure of turf and geraniums, is the ancient iron ring used in the bull-baiting, which the inhabitants indulged in and loved, until as recently as 1814. That the town is still disposed to entertainment, although of a quieter kind, its walls testify, for the hoardings are covered with the promise of circus or conjurer, minstrels or athletic sports, drama or lecture. In July, when I was there last, Horsham was anticipating a fate in which a mock bullfight and a battle of confetti were mere details, while it was actually in the throes of a fair. The booths filled an open space to the west of the town, known as the Jew's Meadow, and among the attractions was Professor Adams with his School of Undefeated Champions. The plural is in the grand manner, giving the lie to Cashel Byron's pathetic plaint, it is a lonely thing to be a champion. Avoiding Professor Adams and walking due west, one comes after a couple of miles to Broadbridge Heath, where is Field Place, the birthplace of the greatest of Sussex poets, and perhaps the greatest of the county's sons, Percy Bish Shelley. The author of Adonis was born in a little bedroom with a south aspect on August the 4th 1792. His father's mother, Nay Mitchell, was the daughter of a late vicar of Horsham and member of an old Sussex family. Another Horsham cleric, the reverend Thomas Edwards, gave the boy his first lessons. Field Place is still very much what it was in Shelley's early days, the only days it was a home to him. It stands low in a situation darkened by the surrounding trees, a rambling house, neither as old as one would wish for aesthetic reasons, nor as new as comfort might dictate. There is no view. In the garden one may in fancy see again the little boy, like all poetic children, deep in his unknown day's employ. Indeed, like all children might be said, for is not every child a poet for a little while. In the life of Shelley, by his cousin Thomas Medwin, is printed the following letter to a friend at Horsham, written when he was nine, which I quote not for any particular intrinsic merit, but because it helps to bring him before us in his Field Place days, of which too little is known. Dear Kate, we have proposed a day at the pond next Wednesday, and if you will come tomorrow morning I would be much obliged to you, and if you could anyhow bring Tom over to stay all the night, I would thank you. We are to have a cold dinner over at the pond, and come home to eat a bit of roast chicken and peas at about nine o'clock. Mama depends upon your bringing Tom over to-morrow, and if you don't we shall be very much disappointed. Tell the bearer not to forget to bring me a fairing, which is some gingerbread, sweet meats, hunting nuts, and a pocketbook. Now I end. I am not your obedient servant. F. B. Shelley We are proud to call Shelley the Sussex Poet, but he wrote no Sussex poems and a singularly uncongenial father, for the cursing of whom and the king, the boy was famous at Eton, made him glad to avoid the county when he was older. It was, however, to a Sussex lady, Miss Hitchiner, of Hearst Peer Point, that Shelley went in Ireland in 1812 forwarded the box of inflammatory matter which the Custom House officers confiscated, copies of his pamphlet on Ireland and his Declaration of Rights broadside, which Miss Hitchins was to distribute among Sussex farmers, who would display them on their walls. These were the same documents that Shelley used to put in bottles and throw out to sea, greatly to the perplexity of the spectators, and not a little to the annoyance of the government. Miss Hitchiner, as well as the revolutionary, was kept under surveillance, as we learned from the letter from the Postmaster General of the day, Lord Chichester. I return the pamphlet Declaration. The writer of the first is son of Mr Shelley, member for the Rape of Bramble, and is by all accounts a most extraordinary man. I hear he has married a servant or some person of very low birth. He has been in Ireland for some time, and I heard of his speaking at the Catholic Convention. Miss Hitchiner, of Hearst Peer Point, keeps a school there, and is well spoken of. Her father keeps a public house in the neighbourhood. He was originally a smuggler, and changed his name from York to Hitchiner before he took the public house. I shall have a watch upon the daughter, and discover whether there is any connection between her and Shelley. There Shelley's connection with Sussex may be said to end, yet a poet, whether he will or not, is shaped by his early surroundings. In some verses by Mr C. W. Dalman, called the Sussex Muse, I find the influence of Shelley's surroundings on his mind happily recorded. When Shelley's soul was carried through the air toward the manor house where he was born, I danced along the avenue at Den and praised the grace of heaven, and the mourn which numbered with the sons of Sussex man, a genius so rare, so high an honour and so dear a birth, that though the Horsham folk may little care to lord the favour of his birthplace there, my name is blessed for it throughout the earth. I taught the child to love and dream, and sing, of which hobgoblin, folk and flower-law, and often led him by the hand away into St Leonard's forest, where of yore the hermit fought the dragon. To this day the children every spring find lilies of the valley blowing where the fights took place. Alas! they quickly drove my darling from my bosom and my love, and snatched my crown of laurel from his hair. Two miles south-west of Field Place, by a footpath which takes us beside the Aron, here a narrow stream, and a deserted watermill, we come to the churchyard of Slinfold, a little quiet village with a church of almost suburban solidity, and complete want of Sussex feeling. James Dalloway, the historian of western Sussex, was rector here from 1803 to 1834. He lived, however, at Leatherhead, Slinfold being a sinecure. A Slinfold epitaph on an infant views bereavement with more philosophy than is usual, in conclusion calling upon patience, thus to comfort the parents. Teach them to praise that God with grateful mind, for babes that yet may come, for one still left behind. A quarter of a mile west is Stain Street, striking London Woods from Billingshurst, and we may follow it for a while on our way to Rudgewick, near the county's border. We leave the Roman road, which once ran as straight as might be as far as Billingsgate, but is now diverted and lost in many spots, at the drive to Dedisham on the left, and thus save a considerable corner. Dedisham, in its hollow, is an ancient agricultural settlement, a farm and feudatory cottages in perfect completeness, an isolated self-sufficing community lacking nothing, not even the yellow ferret in the cage. The footpath beyond the homestead crosses a field where we find the Aaron once again, here a stream winding between steep banks, sure home of kingfisher and water rats. Rudgewick, which is three miles farther west along the hard high road, is a small village on a hill, with the most comfortable-looking church tower in Sussex, hiding behind the inn and the general shop. In the churchyard lies a Fruzana, a name new to me. Rudgewick was the birthplace in 1717 of Reynald Cotton, destined to be the author of the best song in Praise of Cricket. He entered Winchester College in 1730, took orders, and became master of Hyde Abbey School in the same city, and died in 1779. Niren prints his song in full. This is the heart of it. The wickets are pitched now, and measured the ground. Then they form a large ring and stand gazing round. Since Ajax fought Hector in sight of all Troy, no contest was seen with such fear and such joy. You bowlers, take heed to my precept attend. On you the whole fate of the game must depend. Spare your vigor at first, nor exert all your strength, but measure each step, and be sure, pitch a length. Your fieldsmen look sharp, lest your pains you beguile. Move close, like an army in rank and in file. When the ball is returned back it, sure, for I throw, whole states have been ruined by one overthrow. You strikers, observe when the foe shall draw nigh. Mark the ball advancing with vigilant eye. Your skill all depends upon distance and sight. Stand firm to your scratch. Let your bat be upright. Further west is Lockswood, on the edge of a little-known tract of country. Untroubled by railways, the most unfamiliar village in which, is perhaps Plasto. Plasto is on the road to nowhere, and has not its equal for quietude in England. It is a dependency of Curdford. Whence comes the Petford Marble, which we see in many Sussex churches? Shellingly Park, the seat of the Earl of Winston, is hard by. From these remote parts one may return to Horsham by way of Warnham, on whose pond Shelly, as a boy, used to sail his little boat, and where, perhaps, he gained that love of navigation, which never left him, and brought about his death. Warnham, always a cricketing village, until lately supplied the Sussex Eleven with dashing lucases, but it does so no more. Before passing to the east of Horsham, something ought to be said of one at least of the villages of the south-west, namely, Billingshurst, on Stain Street, once an important station between Regnum and Londinum, or Chichester and London, as we should now say. It has been conjectured that Stain Street, which we first saw at Chichester under the name of East Street, and again, as it descended Bigner Hill in the guise of a Bostel, was constructed by Bellinus, a Roman engineer, who gave to the woods through which he had to cut his way in this part of Sussex the name Billingshurst, and to the gate by which London was entered, Billingsgate. Billingshurst's place in literature was made by William Cobbett, for it was here that he met the boy in a smock frock, who recalled to his mind so many of his deeds of quicksetry. The incident is described in the rural rides. This village is seven miles from Horsham, and I got here to breakfast about seven o'clock. A very pretty village, and a very nice breakfast in a very neat little parlor of a very decent public house. The landlady sent her son to get me some cream, and he was just such a chap as I was at his age, and dressed just in the same sort of way, his main garment being a blue smock frock, faded from wear, and mended with pieces of new stuff, and of course not faded. The sight of this smock frock brought to my recollection many things very dear to me. This boy will, I dare say, perform his part at Billingshurst, or at some place not far from it. If accident had not taken me from a similar scene, how many villains and fools who have been well-teased and tormented would have slept in peace at night, and have fearlessly swaggered about by day. When I look at this little chap, at his smock frock, his nailed shoes, and his clean, plain, coarse shirt, I ask myself, will anything I wonder ever send this chap across the ocean to tackle the base corrupt, perjured republican judges of Pennsylvania? Will this little lively but, at the same time, simple boy ever become the terror of villains and hypocrites across the Atlantic? What a chain of strange circumstances there must be to lead this boy to thwart a miscreant like McKean, the chief justice and afterwards governor of Pennsylvania, and to expose the corruption of the band of rascals called a Senate and a House of Representatives at Harrisburg in that state. Billingshurst Church has an interesting ceiling, an early brass to Thomas and Elizabeth Bartlett, and the record of one of those disputes over pews which add salt to village life, and now and then, as we saw at Little Hampton, lead to real trouble. The verger, if he be the same, will tell the story, the best part of which describes the race which was held every Sunday for certain seats in the chancel, and the tactical packing of the same by the winning party. In the not very remote past, a noble carved chair used to be placed in one of the galleries for the schoolmaster, and there he would sit during service, surrounded by his boys. One returns to Horsham from Billingshurst through Itchingfield, where the new Christ's hospital has been built in the midst of Greenfields, a glaring red brick settlement which the fastidiously urban ghost of Charles Lamb can now surely never visit. Lamb's house, however, is the name of one of the buildings, and Time the Healer, who can do all things, may mellow the new school into Elian congeniality. St Leonard's Forest To the east of Horsham spreads St Leonard's Forest, that vast tract of moor and preserve which, merging into Tillgate Forest, Bolcom Forest, and Worth Forest, extends a large part of the way to East Grinsted. Only on foot can we really explore this territory, and a compass as well as a good map is needed if one is to walk with any decision, for there are many conflicting tracks, and many points when no broad outlook is possible. Remembering old days in St Leonard's Forest, I recall in general the odouriferous damp open spaces of long grass suddenly lighted upon, over which silver-washed fratilleries flutter, and in particular a deserted farm, in whose orchard it must have been late June, was a spreading tree of white-heart cherries in full bearing. One may easily, even a countryman, I take it, live to a great age and never have the chance of climbing into a white-heart cherry tree and eating one's fill. Certainly I have never done it since, but that day gave me an understanding of Blackbird's Temptations, that is still stronger than the desire to pull a trigger. The reader must not imagine that St Leonard's Forest is rich in deserted farms with attractive orchards, I have found no other, and indeed it is notably a place in which the explorer should be accompanied by provisions. To take train to Fagate and walk from that spot is the simplest way, although more interesting is it perhaps, to come to Fagate at the end of the day, and gaining permission to climb the Beacon Tower on the hill in the Holmbush Estate, retrace one's steps in vision from its summit. In this case one would walk from Horsham to Lower Beading, then strike north over Plummer's Plain. This route leads by Coolhurst and through Manning Heath, just beyond which by following the south that runs for a mile one could see Nuthurst. Lower Beading is not in itself interesting, but close at hand is Leonard's Lee, the seat of Sir Edmund Loder, which is one of the most satisfying estates in the county. North and South runs a deep ravine on the one side, richly wooded, and on the other, the West, planted with all acclimatisable varieties of alpine plants and flowering shrubs. The chain of ponds at the bottom of the ravine forms one of the principal sources of the Adour. In an enclosure among the woods the kangaroo has been acclimatised, and beavers are given all law. North of Plummer's Plain in a hollow are two immense ponds, Hammer Pond and Hawkins Pond, our first reminder that we are in the old iron country. St Leonard's Forest and all the forests on this, the Forest Ridge of Sussex, were of course maintained to supply wood with which to feed the furnaces of the iron masters, just as the overflow of these ponds was trained to move the machinery of the Hammers for the breaking of the iron stone. The enormous consumption of wood in the iron foundries was a calamity seriously viewed by many observers, among them Michael Drayton of the Polyoblion, who was, however, distressed, less as a political economist, than as the friend of the wood nymphs driven out by the encroaching and devastating foundrymen from their native sanctuaries to the inhospitable Downes. Thus he writes, illustrating Lamb's criticism of him, that in this work he has animated hills and streams with life and passion above the dreams of old mythology. The daughters of the Weald, that in their heavy breasts had long their griefs concealed, for seeing their decay each hour so fast come on, under the axe's stroke fetched many a grievous groan. When, as the Anvils wait, and Hammer's dreadful sound even rent the hollow woods, and shook the queechy ground, so that the trembling nymphs, oppressed through ghastly fear, ran madding to the Downes, with loose, dishevelled hair, the sylvones that about the neighbouring woods did it well, both in the tufty frith and in the mossy fell, foresook their gloomy bowers, and wandered far abroad, expelled their quiet seats and place of their abode, when laboring carts they saw to hold their daily trade, where they, in summer, won't to sport them in the shade. Could we, say they, suppose that any would us cherish, which suffer every day the holiest things to perish, or to our daily want to minister supply, these iron times breed none that mind posterity, it is but in vain to tell what we before have been, or changes of the world that we in time have seen, when, now devising how to spend our wealth with waste, we to the savage swine let fall our larding mast, but now alas ourselves we have not to sustain, nor can our tops suffice to shield our roots from rain, jove's oak, the warlike ash, veined elm, the softer beach, short hazel, maple plain, light asp, the bending witch, tough holly, and smooth birch, must all together burn, what should the builder serve, supplies the forger's turn, when under public good base private gain takes hold, and we, poor woeful woods, to ruin lastly sold. We shall learn later more of this old Sussex industry, but here in the heart of St Leonard's forest I might quote also what another old author with less invention says of it. Under the heading of Sussex manufacturers, Thomas Fuller writes, in the Worthies of Great Guns, it is almost incredible how many are made of the iron in this county. Count Condoma well knew their goodness, when of King James he so often begged the Boon to transport them. A monk of Mends, some three hundred years since, is generally reputed the first founder of them. Surely ingenuity may seem transposed, and to have crossed her hands, when about the same time a soldier found out printing, and it is questionable which of the two inventions hath done more good or more harm. As for guns it cannot be denied that though most behold them as instruments of cruelty, partly because subjecting valor to chance, partly because guns give no quarter, which the sword sometimes doth, yet it will appear that since their invention victory hath not stood so long a neuter, and hath been determined with the loss of fewer lives. Yet do I not believe what soldiers commonly say, that he was cursed in his mother's belly, who is killed with a cannon, seeing many prime persons have been slain thereby? Cannon were not of course the only articles which the old Sussex iron masters contrived. The old railings around St. Paul's were cast in Sussex, and iron firebacks were turned out in great numbers. These are still to be seen in a few of the older Sussex cottages in their original position. Most curiosity dealers in the country have a few firebacks on sale. Iron tombstones one meets with two, in a few of the churches and churchyards in the iron district. There are several at Wadhurst, for example. I have seen grass snakes in plenty in St. Leonard's forest, and was once there with a botanist, who, the day being fine, killed a particularly beautiful one, but the forest is no longer famous, as once it was, for really alarming reptiles. The year 1614 was the time. A rambler in the neighbourhood in August of that year ran the risk of meeting something worth running away from, just as John Steele, Christopher Holder, and A Widowwoman did. Their story may be read in the Harley and Miscellany. True and Wonderful is the title of the narrative, a discourse relating a strange and monstrous serpent or dragon, lately discovered and yet living, to the great annoyance and diverse slaughters both of men and cattle by his strong and violent poison. In Sussex, two miles from Horsham, in a wood called St. Leonard's Forest, and thirty miles from London, this present month of August 1614, with the true generation of serpents. The discourse runs thus. In Sussex there is a pretty market town called Horsham, near unto it a forest called St. Leonard's Forest, and there in a vast and unfrequented place, heathy, vaulty, full of unwholesome shades and overgrown hollows, where this serpent is thought to be bread. But wheresoever bread, certain and too true it is, that there it yet lives, within three or four miles compass are its usual haunts, oftentimes at a place called Fagate, and it hath been seen within half a mile of Horsham. He wonder, no doubt, most terrible and noisome to the inhabitants thereabouts. There is always in his track or path left a glutinous and slimy matter, as by a small similitude we may perceive in a snails, which is very corrupt and offensive to the scent, in so much that they perceive the air to be putrefied with all which must needs be very dangerous. For though the corruption of it cannot strike the outward part of a man, unless heated into his blood, yet by receiving it in at any of our breathing organs, the mouth or nose, it is by authority of all authors, writing in that kind, mortal and deadly, as one thus saith Noxia serpentum est ad mix dos sanguinepestis. Lucan. This serpent or dragon, as some call it, is reputed to be nine feet or rather more in length and shaped almost in the form of an axiltree of a cart, a quantity of thickness in the middest, and somewhat smaller at both ends. The former part, which he shoots forth as a neck, is supposed to be an L long, and a white ring as it were of scales about it. The scales along his back seem to be blackish, and so much as is discovered under his belly, appeareth to be red, for I speak of no nearer description than of a reasonable ocular distance, for coming too near it hath already been too dearly paid for as you shall hear hereafter. It is likewise discovered to have large feet, but the eye may be there deceived for some suppose that serpents have no feet but glide upon certain ribs and scales which both defend them from the upper part of their throat unto the lower part of their belly, and also cause them to move much the faster. For so this doth, and rid's way, as we call it, as fast as a man can run, he is of countenance very proud, and at the sight or hearing of men or cattle will raise his neck upright, and seem to listen and look about with great arrogancy. There are likewise on either side of him discovered two great bunches so big as a large football, and as some think will in time grow to wings, but God I hope will to defend the poor people in the neighbourhood that he shall be destroyed before he grows so fledge. He will cast his venom about four rod from him, as by woeful experience it was proved upon the bodies of a man and woman coming that way, who afterwards were found dead, being poisoned, and very much swelled, but not prayed upon. Likewise a man going to chase it, and as he imagined to destroy it with two massive dogs, as yet not knowing the great danger of it, his dogs were both killed, and he himself glad to return with haste to preserve his own life. Yet this is to be noted that the dogs were not prayed upon, but slain and left whole, for his food is thought to be for the most part in a coni waran, which he much frequents, and it is found much scanted and impaired in the increase it had won't to afford. These persons whose names are here under printed have seen this serpent, beside diverse others, as the carrier of Horsham, who lieth at the white horse in Southwark, and who can certify the truth of all that has been here related. John Steele, Christopher Holder, and a widow woman dwelling near Fagate. It would be very interesting to know what John Steele, Christopher Holder, and the widow woman really saw. Such a story must have had a basis of some kind. A printed narrative such as this would hardly have proceeded from a clear sky. St. Leonard's forest has another familiar, for there the headless horseman rides, not on his own horse, but on yours, seated on the cropper with his ghostly arms encircling your waist. His name is Powlett, but I know no more, except that his presence is an additional reason why one should explore the forest on foot. Sussex, especially near the coast, is naturally a good nightingale country. Many of the birds pausing there after their long journey at the end of April do not fly farther, but make their home where they first delight. I know of one meadow and cops under the north escarpment of the Downs, where three nightingales singing in rivalry in a triangle, the perfect condition, can be counted upon in May by night, and often by day two, as surely as the rising and setting of the sun. But in St. Leonard's forest the nightingale never sings. American visitors, who, as Mr. John Burroughs once did, come to England in the spring to hear the nightingale, must remember this. End of Chapter 13 Chapter 14 of Highways and Byways in Sussex This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, recording by Peter Yersley. Highways and Byways in Sussex by E. V. Lucas Chapter 14 West Grinsted, Cowfold and Henfield West Grinsted is perhaps the most remarkable of the villages on the line from Horsham to Staining, by reason of its association with literature, the rape of the lock having been to a large extent composed beneath a tree in the park. Yet, as one walks through this broad expanse of brake fern, among which the deer are grazing, with the line of the Downs culminating in Chanktonbury Ring in view, it requires a severe effort to bring the mind to the consideration of Belinda's loss and all the surrounding drama of the toilet and the card table. If there is one thing that would not come naturally to the memory in West Grinsted Park, it is the poetry of Pope. The present house, the seat of the burrows, was built in 1806. It was in the preceding mansion that John Carroll, Pope's friend, made his home, moving hither from West Harding as we have seen. Carroll suggested to Pope the subject of the rape of the lock, the hero of which was his cousin, Lord Petrie. The line, this verse to Carroll, Muse is due, is the poet's testimony and thanks. John Gay, who found life a jest, has also walked amid the West Grinsted Brackham. West Grinsted Church is isolated in the fields, a curiously pretty and cheerful building, with a very charming porch and a modest shingled spire rising from its midst. Brasses to members of the Halsham family are within, and a monument to Captain Powlett, whose unquiet ghost, hunting without a head, we have just met. Hard by the church is one of the most attractive and substantial of the smaller manor houses of Sussex, square and venerable, and well-roofed with Horsham Stone. A mile to the West, in a meadow by the Worthing Road, stands the forlorn fragment of the keep, which is all that remains of the Norman stronghold of Nepp. For its other stones you must seek the highways, the road-menders having claimed them a hundred years ago. William de Bray's, who we shall meet at Bramble, built it. King John, more than once, was entertained in it, and now it is a ruin. Yet, if Nepp no longer has its castle, it has its lake, the largest in the county, a hundred acres in extent, a beautiful sheet of water, the overflow of which feeds the adore. Within a quarter of a mile of the ruin is the new Nepp Castle, which was built by Sir Charles Merrick Burrell, son of Sir William Burrell, the antiquary, whose materials for a history of Sussex on a grand scale, collected by him for many years, are now in the British Museum. But Nepp Castle, the new, with all its hullbines, was destroyed by fire this 1904. To the east of the line lies Cowfold, balancing West Grinstead, a village ranged on either side of a broad road. It is famous chiefly for possessing in its very pretty church the Nellond Brass, being the effigy of Thomas Nellond prior of Lewis, who died in 1433. Few brasses are finer or larger. In length it is nearly ten feet, its state is practically perfect, and pilgrims come from all quarters to rub it. John Nellond, in the dress of a cleniac monk, stands with folded hands beneath an arch, protected by the Virgin and Child, St. Pancras, and St. Thomas Becket. This splendid relic would, perhaps, were ours an ideal community, be handed over to the keeping of the Carthusian monks nearby, in the monastery of St. Hugh, the commanding building to the south of Cowfold, whose spire is to the wield what that of Chichester Cathedral is, to the plain between the Downs and the Sea, and whose Angelus may be heard on favourable evenings for many miles. The Carthusian monks of St. Hugh's lend a very foreign air to the village when they walk through it. Visitors are encouraged to call at the porter's gate and explore this huge settlement, often in the very competent care of an Irish brother. While to suffer an accident anywhere in the neighbourhood is to be certain of a cordial glass of the monastery's own chartreuse. It was at Brook Hill, just to the north of Cowfold, that William Bore, the ornithologist and the author of The Birds of Sussex, lived, and made many of his interesting observations. Near Cowfold is Ocundine, a stronghold of cricket at the beginning of the last century. William Wood was the greatest of the Ocundine men. He was the best bowler in Sussex, the art having been acquired as he walked about his farm with his dog, when he would bowl at whatever he saw, and the dog would retrieve the ball. Borough of Ditchling, Marchand of Hearst, Voice of Handcross, and Valance of Brighton also belonged to the Ocundine club. Borough and Valance played for Brighton against Marilabon at Lords in 1792, and, when all the betting was against them, including gold rings and watches, won the match in the second innings by making, respectively, sixty and sixty-eight not out. Another player in that match was Jutton, the fast bowler, who, when things were going against him, bowled at his man, and so won by fear, what he could not compass by skill. There are too many Juttons on village greens. Five miles south of Cowfold is Henfield, separated from Staining in the south-west by the low-lying meadows through which the ador runs, and which, in winter, are too often a sheet of water. Henfield consists of the usual street, and a quiet, retired common, flat and marshy, with a flock of geese, some scotch furs, and a fine view of Wallstonbury rising in the east. It was on Henfield common that Mr. Borough once saw fourteen golden oreoles on a thorn-bush. Adventures are to the adventurous, birds to the ornithologist. Most of us have never succeeded in seeing even one oreole. William Borough, the botanist, uncle of the ornithologist, was born in Henfield and is buried there. In his Henfield garden in 1860, as many as 6,600 varieties of plants were growing. Beyond a small memoir on lichens, written in conjunction with Dawson Turner, he left no book. Another illustrious son of Henfield was Dr. Thomas Stapleton, once canon of Chichester, and one of the founders of the Catholic College of Douay, of whom it was written somewhat ambiguously, that he was a man of mild demeanour and unsuspected integrity. Fuller has him characteristically touched off in the Worthies. He was bred in new college in Oxford, and then by the bishop, Christopherson, as I take it, made canon of Chichester, which he quickly quitted in the first of Queen Elizabeth. Flying between the seas, he first fixed at Douay, and there commendably performed the Office of Catechist, which he discharged to his commendation. Reader pardon and excursion caused by just grief and anger. Many counting themselves Protestants in England do slight and neglect that ordinance of God by which their religion was set up, and gave credit to it in the first Reformation. I mean catechising. Did not our Saviour say even to Saint Peter himself, Feed my lambs, feed my sheep? And why lambs first? One, because they were lambs before they were sheep. Two, because if they be not fed whilst lambs, they could never be sheep. Three, because sheep can in some sort feed themselves, but lambs, such their tenderness, must either be fed or famished. Our Stapleton was excellent at this lamb feeding. An epitaph in Henfield's Church is worth copying for its quaint mixture of mythology and theology. It bears upon the death of a lad, Menelab Rainsford, aged nine, who died in 1627. Great Jove hath lost his Ganymede, I know, which made him seek another here below. And finding none, not one, like unto this, hath tain him hence into eternal bliss. Cease then for thy dear Menelab to weep. God's darling was too good for thee to keep. But rather joy in this great favour given, a child on earth is made a saint in heaven. Three miles east of Henfield, and a little to the north, is a farm the present tenant of which has made an interesting experiment. He found in the house an old map of the county, and, identifying his own estate, discovered a large sheet of water marked on it. On examining the site, he saw distinct traces of this ancient lake, and at once set about building a dam to restore it. Water now, once again, fills the hollow, completely transforming this part of the country, and bringing into it wild duck and herons as of old. The lake is completely hidden from the neighbouring roads, and is accessible only by field paths, but it is well worth finding. There once hung in the parlour of Henfield's chief inn, I wonder if it is there still, a rude etching of local origin, rather in the manner of busses' plates to Pickwick, representing an inn kitchen, filled with a jolly company listening up roriously to a fat farmer by the fire, who, with an arm raised, told his tale. Underneath was written Mr West, describing how he saw a woodcock settle on an oak, a perfect specimen of the Sussex joke. End of Chapter 14 Chapter 15 of Highways and Biways in Sussex This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, recorded by Peter Yersley. Highways and Biways in Sussex by E. V. Lucas. Chapter 15. Staining and Bramber Of great interest and antiquities staining, the little grey and red town which huddles under the hill four miles to Henfield's south west. The beginnings of staining are lost in the distance. Its church was founded, probably in the eighth century, by St. Cuthman, an early Christian whose adventures were more than usually quaint. He began by tending his father's sheep, with which occupation his first miracle was associated. Being called one day to dinner, and having no one to take his place as shepherd, he drew a circle round the flock with his crook, and bad the sheep, in the name of the Lord, not to stray beyond it. The sheep obeyed, and thenceforth on repeating the same manoeuvre, he left them with an easy mind. In course of time his father died, and Cuthman determined to travel. Intense filial piety determined him to take his aged mother with him. In order to do this, he constructed a wheel-barrow couch, which he partly supported by a cord over his shoulders. Thus united mother and son fared forth into the cold world, which was, however, warmed for them by the watchful interest taken in Cuthman by a vigilant providence. One day, for example, the cord of the barrow broke in a hay-field where Cuthman, who supplied its place by elder twigs, was the subject of much ridicule among the hay-makers. Immediately a heavy storm broke over the field, destroying the crop, and not only then, but ever afterwards in the same field, possibly to this day, has hay-making been imperiled by a similar storm. So runs the legend. The second occasion on which the cord broke, and let down Cuthman's mother, was at staining. Cuthman took the incident as a divine intimation, that the time had come to settle, and he therefore first built for his mother and himself a hut, and afterwards a church. The present church stands on its side. Cuthman was buried there. So also was Ethel Wolf, father of Alfred the Great, whose body afterwards was moved to Winchester. Alfred the Great had his states at staining, as elsewhere in Sussex. While Cuthman was building his church, a beam shifted, making a vast amount of new labour necessary. But as the saint sorrowfully was preparing to begin again, a stranger appeared, who pointed out how the mischief could be repaired in a more speedy manner, and with less toil. Cuthman and his men followed his instructions, and all was quickly well again. Cuthman thereupon fell on his knees, and asked the stranger who he was. I am he, in whose name thou buildest this temple, he replied, and vanished. The present church, which stands on the site of St Cuthman's, is only a reminder of what it must have been in its best days. When one faces the curiously checkered square tower, an impression of quiet dignity is imparted. But a broad side view is disappointing, by reason of the high deforming roof, giving an impression as of a hunched back. One sees the same effect at Oudymour in the east of Sussex. Within are two rows of superb circular arches, with zigzag mouldings, on massive columns. Staining has an importance in English history that is not generally credited to it. Edward the Confessor gave a great part of the land to the Abbey at Faykamp, whose church is, or was, the counterpart of staining's. These possessions Harald took away, and act that, among others, decided William Duke of Normandy upon his assailing and conquering course. Staining should be proud. To have brought the conqueror over is at least as worthy as to have come over with him, and far more uncommon. In Church Street stands Brotherhood Hall, a very charming ancient building, long used as a grammar school, flanked by overhanging houses, which, though less imposing, are often more quaint and ingraciating. Most of staining, indeed, is of the past, and the spirit of antiquity is visibly present in its streets. The late Louis Jennings, in his Vrambles Among the Hills, was fascinated by the placid air of this unambitious town, as an American might be expected to be in the uncongenial atmosphere of age and serenity. One almost expects, he wrote, to see a fine green moss all over an inhabitant of staining. One day, as I passed through the town, I saw a man painting a new sign over a shop, a proceeding that so aroused my curiosity that I stood for a minute or two to look on. The painter, filled in one letter, gave a huge yawn, looked up and down two or three times as if he had lost something, and finally descended from his perch and disappeared. Five weeks later, I passed that way again, and it is a fact that the same man was at work on the same sign. Perhaps when the reader takes the walk I am about to recommend to his attention, a walk which comprises some of the finest scenery in Sussex, that sign will be finished, and the accomplished artist will have begun another. But I doubt it. There is plenty of time for everything in staining. I am told that staining was incensed when this criticism was printed. There was even talk of an action for libel. But it seems to me that whatever may have been intended, the words contain more of compliments than censure. In this hurrying age it is surely high praise to have one's wise passiveness, as Wordsworth called it, so emphasised. The passage calls to mind Diogenes requesting as the greatest of possible boons that Alexander the Great would stand aside and not interrupt the sunshine. Only at staining would one seek for Diogenes today. No commendation of staining in the direction of its enterprise, briskness, smartness, or any of the other qualities which are now most in fashion would so speedily decide a wise man to pitch his tent there, as Mr. Jennings, Certificate of Inertia. Staining, if still disposed to stand on its defence, might plead external influence beyond the control of man, as an excuse for some of its interesting placidity, for this curiously inland town was once a port. In Saxon times, when staining was more important than Birmingham, the Adore was practically an estuary of the sea, and ships came into staining harbour, or St. Cuthman's Port as it was otherwise called. There is notoriously no such quiet spot as a dry harbour town. In those days staining also had a mint. Bramba, a little roadside village, less than a mile southeast of staining, also a mere relic of its great days, was once practically on the coast, for the arm of the sea which narrowed down at staining was here of great breadth, and washed the sides of the castle mound. The last time I came into staining was by way of the bustle down staining round hill. The old place seems more than ever medieval, as one descends upon it from the height. The best way to approach a town, and sitting among the wild time on the turf, I tried to reconstruct in imagination the scene a thousand years ago, with the sea flowing over the meadows of the Adore Valley, and the masts of ships clustered beyond staining church. Once one had the old prospect well in the mind's eye, the landscape became curiously in need of water. After rain, Bramba is a pleasant village, but when the dust flies it is good neither for man nor beast. All that remains of the castle is crumbling battlement, and a wall of the keep, survivals of the renovation of the old Saxon stronghold by William de Bray's, the friend of the conqueror, and the Sussex founder of the Duke of Norfolk's family. Picnic parties now frolic among the ruins, and enterprising boys explore the rank overgrowth in the moat below. The castle played no part in history, its demolition being due probably to gunpowder pacifically fired with a view to obtaining building materials. But during the Civil War the village was the scene of an encounter between royalists and roundheads. A letter from John Coulton to Samuel Jake of Rye, dated January the 8th, 1643-4, thus describes the event. The enemy attempted Bramba Bridge, but our brave Carlton, and Evanden with his dragoons and our Colonel's horse welcomed them with drakes and muskets, sending some eight or nine men to hell, I fear, and one trooper to Arendl Castle, prisoner, and one of Captain Evanden's dragoons to heaven. A few years later, as we have seen, Charles II ran a grave risk at Bramba, while on his way to Brighton and safety. Bramba was, for many years, a pocket-barra of the worst type. George Spencer, writing to Algernon Sydney after the Bramba election in 1679, says, you would have laughed to see how pleased I seemed to be in kissing of old women, and drinking wine with handfuls of sugar, and great glasses of burnt brandy, three things much against the stomach. In 1768, 18 votes were polled for one candidate, and 16 for his rival. One of the tenants, in a cottage valued at about three shillings a week, refused a thousand pounds for his vote. Bramba remained a pocket-barra until the reform bill. William Wilberforce, the abolitionist, sat for it for some years. There is a story that, on passing one day through the village, he stopped his carriage to inquire the name. Bramba? Why, that's the place I'm member for! Bramba possesses a humorist in taxidermy whose efforts win more attention than the castle. They are to be seen in a small museum in its single street, the price of admission being, for children, one penny, for adults, tuppence, and for ladies and gentlemen, what they please, indicating that the naturalist also knows human nature. In one case, guinea pigs strive in crickets, manly toil. In another, rats read the paper and play dominoes. In a third, rabbits learn their lessons in school. In a fourth, the last scene in the tragedy of the babes of the wood is represented, Bramba Castle in the distance, strictly localizing the event, although Norfolk usually claims it. Isolated in the fields south of Bramba are two of the quaintest churches in the county, Coombs and Botolps. Neither has an attendant village. The owl's story, which crops up all over the country, and is found in literature in Mr. Hardy's novel, far from the Madding crowd. The scene, whereof is a hundred miles west of Sussex, has a home also at Upper Beading, the little dusty village beyond Bramba, across the river. Mr. Hardy gives the adventure to Joseph Porgrass. At Beading, the hero is one kiddie wee. His rightful name was kid, but, being very small, the village had invented this double diminutive. Lost in the wood, he cried for help, just as Porgrass did. Asked the owl, kiddie wee of Beading, was the reply. It was not long ago that a masterpiece was discovered at Beading, in one of those unlikely places in which, with ironical humour, fine pictures so often hide themselves. It hung in a little general shock kept by an elderly widow. After passing unnoticed or undetected for many years, it was silently identified by a dealer who happened to be buying some biscuits. He made a casual remark about it, learned that any value that might be set upon it was sentimental rather than monetary, and returned home. He laid the matter before one or two friends, with the results that they visited Beading in a party a day or so later, in order to bear away the prize. Outside the shop they held a council of war. One was for bidding at the outset a small but sufficient sum for the picture, another for affecting to want something else and leading round to the picture, and so forth. But in the discussion of tactics they raised their voices too high, so that a visitor of the widow sitting in the room over the shop heard something of the matter. Suspecting danger but wholly unconscious of its nature, she hurried downstairs and warned her friend of a predatory gang outside, who were not to be supplied on any account with anything they asked for. The widow obeyed blindly. They asked for tea. She refused to sell it. They asked for biscuits. She set her hand firmly on the lid. They mentioned the picture. She was a rock. Baffled they withdrew, and the widow, now on the right scent, took the next train to Brighton to lay the whole matter before her landlord. He took it up, consulted an expert, and the picture was found to be a portrait of Mrs Jordan, the work either of Romney or Lawrence. Furniture is the usual prey of the dealer who lounges casually through old villages in the guise of a tourist, asking for food or water at old cottages and farmhouses, and using his eyes to some purpose the while. Pictures are rare. The search for chests, turned bed-posts, fire-backs, chippendale chairs, warming pans, grandfather's clocks, and other indigenous articles of the old simple homestead which are thought so decorative in the sophisticated villa, and establish the artistic credit and taste of their new owner, has been prosecuted in Sussex with as much energy as elsewhere, not only by the professional dealer, but by amateurs no less unwilling to give an ignorant peasant fifteen shillings for an article which they know to be worth as many pounds. But suspicion of the plausible furniture collector has, I am glad to say, begun to spread, and the palmiest days of the spoilation of the country are probably over. It must not, however, be thought that the peasant is always the underdog, the amateur, the upper. A London dealer informs me that the planting of spurious antiques in old cottages has become a recognised form of fraud among less scrupulous members of the trade, an old chest bearing every superficial mark of age that a clever workman can give it, and the profession of worm-holer is now, I believe, recognised, is deposited in a tumble-down half-timbered home in a country village whose occupant is willing to take a share in the game. A ticket marked Ginger Beer sold here is placed in the window and the trap is ready. It is almost beyond question that everyone who bids for this chest, which has, of course, been in the family for generations, is hoping to get it at a figure much lower than is just it. It is quite certain that whatever is paid for it will be too much. Ugly as the situation is, I like to think of this biting of the biter. Chanktonbury, Washington and Worthing For nothing within its confines is staining so famous as for the hill which rises to the south-west of it, Chanktonbury Ring. Other of the south-downs are higher, other are more commanding. Walstonbury, for example, standing forward from the line, makes a bolder show, and Phil Beacon daunts the sky with a braver point. But when one thinks of the south-downs as a whole, it is Chanktonbury that leaps first to the inward eye. Chanktonbury, when all is said, is the monarch of the range. The words of the Sussex enthusiast, refusing an invitation to spend a summer abroad, express the feeling of many of his countrymen. For howsoever fair the land, the time would surely be that brought our wield and blackbirds know to cross the waves to me, and howsoever strong the door, could never keep at bay the thought of falking's violets, the scent of hornbush hay, and ever, when the day was done, and all the sky was still, how I should miss the climbing moon or Chanktonbury's hill. It is Chanktonbury's crown of beaches that lifts it above the other hills. Uncrowned it would be no more noticeable than full King Beacon, or a score of others, but its dark grove can be seen for many miles. In western house under the hill, the seat of the Goring family, to whom belong the hill and a large part of the country that it dominates, is an old painting of Chanktonbury before the woods were made, bare as the barest, without either beach or juniper, and the eye does not notice it, until all else in the picture has been examined. The planter of Chanktonbury's ring in 1760 was Mr. Charles Goring of Whiston, who wrote, in extreme old age in 1828, the following lines, How oft, around thy ring, sweet hill, a boy I used to play, and form my plans to plant thy top on some auspicious day. How oft among thy broken turf, with what delight I trod, with what delight I placed those twigs beneath thy maiden sod, and then an almost hopeless wish would creep within my breast. Oh, could I live to see thy top in all its beauty dressed? That time's arrived, I've had my wish, and lived to eighty-five. I'll thank my God who gave such grace as long as ere I live. Still, when the morning sun, in spring, whilst I enjoy my sight, shall gild thy new-clothed beach and sides, I'll view thee with delight. Most of the trees on the side of Chanktonbury and its neighbours were self-sown children of the clumps which Mr. Goring planted. I might add that Mr. Charles Goring was born in 1743, and his son, the present reverent John Goring, in 1823, when his father was eighty, so that the two lives cover a period of one hundred and sixty years, true Sussex longevity. Whiston House, pronounced Whiston, is a grey Tudor building in the midst of a wide park, immediately under the hill. The lofty hall, dating from Elizabeth's reign, is as it was. Much of the remainder of the house was restored in the last century. The park has deer and a lake. The Goring family acquired Whiston by marriage with the fags, and a superb portrait of Sir John Fag in the manner of Van Dyke, with a fine flavour of Velasquez, is one of the treasures of the house. Before the fags came the Shirley's, a family chiefly famous for the three wonderful brothers, Anthony, Robert and Thomas. Fuller, in the Worthies, gives them full space indeed, considering that none was interested in the church. I cannot do better than quote him. Sir Anthony Shirley, second son to Sir Thomas, set forth from Plymouth May the 21st, 1596, in a ship called the Bevis of Southampton, attended with six lesser vessels. His design for St. Tom was violently diverted by the contagion they found in the south coast of Africa, where the rain did stink as it fell down from the heavens, and within six hours did turn into maggots. This made him turn his course to America, where he took and kept the city of St. Jago two days and nights, with 280 men, whereof 80 were wounded in the service, against 3,000 portugals. Hence he made for the Isle of Fuego, in the midst whereof a mountain, Etna-like, always burning, and the winds did drive such a shower of ashes upon them, that one might have wrote his name with his finger on the upper deck. However, in this fiery island they furnished themselves with good water, which they much wanted. Hence he sailed to the Isle of Margarita, which to him did not answer its name, not finding here the pearl dredgers which he expected, nor was his gain considerable in taking the town of St. Martha, the isle and chief town of Jamaica, whence he sailed more than thirty leagues up the river Rio Dolce, where he met with great extremity. At last, being diseased in person, distressed for vitals, and deserted by all his other ships, he made by newfound land to England, where he arrived June the 15th, 1597. Now, although some behold his voyage, begun with more courage than council, carried on with more valor than advice, and coming off with more honour than profit to himself or the nation, the Spaniard being rather frighted than harmed, rather braved than frighted therewith, yet unpartial judgments who measure not, worth by success, justly allow it a prime place among the probable, though not prosperous, English adventures. Sir Robert Shirley, youngest son to Sir Thomas, was by his brother Anthony entered in the Persian court. Here he performed great service against the Turks, and showed the difference betwixt Persian and English valor, the latter having therein as much courage and more mercy, giving quarter to captives who craved it, and performing life to those to whom he promised it. These his actions drew the envy of the Persian lords and love of the ladies, among whom one reputed a kinsman to the great Sophie after some opposition was married unto him. She had more of ebony than ivory in her complexion, yet amiable enough and very valiant, a quality considerable in that sex in those countries. With her he came over to England, and lived many years therein. He much affected to appear in foreign vests, and as if his clothes were his limbs, accounted himself never ready till he had something of the Persian habit about him. At last a contest happening betwixt him and the Persian ambassador, to whom some reported Sir Robert gave a box on the ear, the king sent them both into Persia, there mutually to impeach one another, and joined Dr. Goff, a senior fellow of Trinity College in Cambridge, in commission with Sir Robert. In this voyage, as I am informed, both died on the seas, before the controverted difference was ever heard in the court of Persia, about to the beginning of the reign of King Charles. Sir Thomas Shirley, I name him the last, though the eldest son of his father, because last appearing in the world, men's activity not always observing the method of their register. As the trophies of militarities would not suffer thermistically to sleep, so the achievements of his two younger brethren gave an alarmon to his spirit. He was ashamed to see them worn like flowers in the breasts and bosoms of foreign princes, while he himself withered upon the stalk he grew on. This made him leave his aged father and fair inheritances in this county, and to undertake sea voyages into foreign parts, to the great honour of his nation, but small enriching of himself, so that he might say to his son, as Aeneas to Iscanias, disque pur, vertutem ex me verum que le borem, fortunum ex alias, vertu and labour learn from me thy father, as for success, child, learn from others, rather. As to the general performance of these three brethren, I know the affidavit of a poet carryeth but a small credit in the court of history, and the comedy made of them is, but a friendly foe to their memory, as suspected more accommodated to please the present spectators than in form posterity. However, as the belief of Mithio, when an inventory of his adopted son's misdemeanours was brought unto him, embraced a middle and moderate way, neck omnia credere, neck nihil, neither to believe all things nor nothing of what was told him, so in the list of their achievements we may safely pitch him on the same proportion, and when abatement is made for poetical embellishments, the remainder will speak them worthies in their generations. Such were the three Shirley's. Wissen Church, which shelters under the eastern wall of the house, almost linear against it, has some interesting tombs. Walking west from Wissen we come to the tiny hamlet of Buncton, one of the oldest settlements in Sussex, a happy hunting ground for excavators in search of Roman remains, and possessing in Buncton Chapel a quaint little Norman edifice. The word Buncton is a sign of modern carelessness for beautiful words. The original Saxon form was Bayoch Shandown, which is charming. Buncton belongs to Ashington, two miles to the northwest on the Worthing Road, a quiet village with a 15th century church, a mere child compared with Buncton Chapel, and a famous Loss. The Loss is tragic, being no less than that of the parish register, containing a full and complete account by Ashington's best scribe of a visit of Good Queen Best, the village in 1591. A destroyed church may be built again, but who shall restore the parish register? The book, however, is perhaps still in existence, for it was deliberately stolen, early in the 18th century by a thief who laid his plans as carefully as did Colonel Blood in his attack on the regalia, abstracting the volume from a cupboard in the rectory through a hole which he made in the outside wall. No interest in the progress of Queen Elizabeth prompted him. The register was taken during the hearing of a lawsuit in order that its damning evidence might not be forthcoming. While at Ashington we ought to see Warminghurst only a mile distant, once the abode of the Shelleys, and later of William Penn, who bought the Great House in 1676. One of his infant children is buried at Coulomb close by, where he attended the Quaker's meeting, and where services are still held. The meeting house was built of timber from one of Penn's ships. A later owner than Penn, James Butler, rebuilt Warminghurst and converted a large portion of the estate into a deer park, but it was thrown back into farmland by one of the dukes of Norfolk, while the house was destroyed, the deer exiled, and the lake drained. Perhaps it was time that the house came down, for in the interim it had been haunted, the ghost being that of the owner of the property, who one day, although far distant, was seen at Warminghurst by two persons, and afterwards was found to have died at the time of his appearance. Warminghurst in those days of park and deer, lake and timber, it had a chestnut two hundred and seventy years old, might well be the first spot to which an enfranchised spirit winged its way. From Warmington is a road due south over high sandy heaths to Washington, which, unassuming as it is, may be called the capital of a large district of West Sussex that is unprovided with a railway. Staining five miles to the east, Amberley seven miles to the west, and West Worthing eight miles to the south on the other side of the Downs are the nearest stations. In the midst of this thinly populated area stands Washington, at the foot of the mountain pass that leads to Findon, Worthing and the sea. It was once a Saxon settlement, Wassa Ingartoun, town of the Sons of Wassa. It is now derelict, memorable only as a baiting place for man and beast, but there are few better spots in the country, for a modest contented man to live and keep a horse, rents are low, turfed hills are near, and there is good hunting. The church, which was restored about fifty years ago, but retains its Tudor tower, stands above the village. In 1866 three thousand pennies of the reign of Edward the Confessor and Harold were turned up by a plow in this parish, and, says Mr. Lauer, were held so cheaply by their finders that half a pint measure of them was offered at the inn by one man in exchange for a quart of beer. Possibly Mr. Hillier-Bellock would not think the price excessive, for I find him writing in a Sussex drinking song. They sell good beer at Hazelmere, and under Guilford Hill. At Little Cowfold, as I've been told, a beggar may drink his fill. There is a good brew in Amberley too, and by the bridge also, but the swipes they take in at the Washington Inn is the very best beer I know. The white road to Worthing from Washington first climbs the hill, and then descends steadily to the sea. The first village is Findon, three miles distant, but one passes on the way, two large houses, Hyden and Muntum. Muntum, which was originally a shooting-box of Viscount Montague, Lord of Cowdery, was rebuilt in the nineteenth century by an eccentric traveller in the east, named Franklund, a descendant of Oliver Cromwell, who, certainly at home again, gave up his time to collecting mechanical appliances. Findon is a pleasant little village at the bottom of the valley, the home of the principal Sussex training-stable, which has its galloping course under Cisbury. Training-stables may be found in many parts of the Downs, but the Sussex turf has not played the same part in the making of racehorses as that of Hampshire and Berkshire. Lady Butler painted the background of her picture of Balaclava at Findon, the neighbourhood of which curiously resembles in configuration the Russian battlefield. The Rector of Findon in 1276, Galfriedus de Aspal, seems to have brought the art of pluralising to a finer point than most. In addition to being Rector of Findon, he had, Mr Lauer tells us, a benefit in London, two in the Diocese of Lincoln, one in Rochester, one in Hereford, one in Coventry, one in Salisbury, and seven in Norwich. He was also cannon of St Paul's and master of St Leonard's Hospital at York. Above Findon on the south-east rises Susbury, one of the finest of the South Downs, but by reason of its inland position less noticeable than the hills on the line. There have been many conjectures as to its history. The Romans may have used it for military purposes, as certainly they did for the Pacific cultivation of the Grape, distinct terraces as of a vineyard being still visible. Traces of a factory of flint arrowheads have been found, giving it the ugly name of the flint sheffield, while Caesar, Lord of Chichester, may have had a berry or fort there. Mr Lauer's theory is that the earthworks on the summit, whatever the later function, were originally religious and probably druidical. Selvington, a little village which is gained by leaving the main road two miles beyond Cisbury and bearing it to the west, is distinguished as the birthplace in 1584 of one who was considered by Hugo Grotius to be the glory of the English nation, John Selden. Nowadays, when we choose our glories among other classes of men than jurists and wits, it is more than possible for even cultured persons who are interested in books to go through life very happily without knowledge at all of this great man, the friend of great men, and the writer best endowed with common sense of any of his day. From Selden's table talk, I take a few passages on the homelier side to be read at Selvington. Friends. Old friends are best. King James used to call for his old shoes. They were easiest for his feet. Conscience. Some men make it a case of conscience whether a man may have a pigeon house, because his pigeons eat other folk's corn. But there is no such thing as conscience in the business. The matter is whether he be a man of such quality that the state allows him to have a dove house. If so, there's an end of the business. His pigeons have a right to eat where they please themselves. Charity. Charity to strangers is enjoined in the text. By strangers is there understood those that are not of our own kin, strangers to your blood, not those you cannot tell whence they come, that is, be charitable to your neighbours whom you know to be honest, poor people. Ceremony. Ceremony keeps up all things. It is like a penny-glass to a rich spirit, or some excellent water. Without it the water was spilt, the spirit lost. Of all people, ladies have no reason to cry down ceremony, for they take themselves slighted without it. And were they not used with ceremony, with compliments and addresses, with legs and kissing of hands, they were the pitifulest creatures in the world. But yet me thinks to kiss their hands after their lips, as some do, is like little boys that after they eat the apple fall to the pairing, out of a love they have to the apple. Religion. Religion is like the fashion. One man wears his doublet slashed, another laced, another plain, but every man has a doublet. So every man has his religion. We differ about trimming. Alteration of religion is dangerous, because we know not where it will stay. It is like a millstone that lies upon the top of a pair of stairs. It is hard to remove it, but if once it be thrust off the first stair, it never stays till it comes to the bottom. We look after religion as the butcher did after his knife, when he had it in his mouth. Wit. Nature must be the groundwork of wit and art, otherwise what is done will prove but Jack Pudding's work. Wife. You shall see a monkey some time that has been playing up and down the garden. At length leap up to the top of the wall, but his clog hangs a great way below on this side. The bishop's wife is like that monkey's clog. Himself is got up very high, takes place of the temporal barons, but his wife comes a great way behind. Selden's father was a small farmer who played the fiddle well. The boy is said at the age of ten to have carved over the door a Latin dystic which, being translated runs, walk in and welcome, honest friend, repose. Thief, get thee gone, to thee I'll not unclose. Between Salvington and Worthing lies Tarring, noted for its fig gardens. It is a fond belief that Thomas a Becket planted the original trees from which the present Tarring figs are descended, and there is one tree still in existence, which tradition asserts was set in the earth by his own hand. Whether this is possible, I am not sufficiently an Arboriculturist to say, but Becket certainly sojourned often in the Archbishop of Canterbury's palace in the village. The larger part of the present fig garden dates from 1745. I have seen it stated that during the season a little band of Beca fecos fly over from Italy to taste the fruit, disappearing when it is gathered, but a Sussex ornithologist tells me that this is only a pretty story. The fig gardens are perhaps sufficient indication that the climate of this part of the country is very gentle. It is indeed unique in mildness. There is a little strip of land between the sea and the hills whose climatic conditions approximate to those of the Riviera, hence in addition to the success of the Tarring fig gardens, Worthing's fame for tomatoes and other fruit. I cannot say when the tomato first came to the English table, but the first that I ever saw was at Worthing, and Worthing is now the centre of the tomato growing industry. Miles of glass houses stretch on either side of the town. Worthing, like Brighton and Bogner, owed its beginning as a health resort to the house of Guelph, the visit of the Princess Amelia in 1799, having added a cachet previously lacking to its invigorating character. But unlike Brighton, neither Worthing nor Bogner has succeeded in becoming quite indispensable. Brighton has the advantage not only of being nearer London, but also nearer the hills. One must walk for some distance from Worthing before the Lonely Highland District between Sisbury and Lansing Clump is gained, whereas Brighton is partly built upon the Downs and has a little dyke railway to boot. But the visitor to Worthing, who surfited of sea and parade, makes for the hill country, knows a solitude as profound as anything that Brighton's heights can give him. Worthing has at least two literary associations. It was there that the most agreeable comedy, the importance of being earnest, was written. The town even gave its name to the principal character, John Worthing, and it was there that Mr Henley lived while the lyrics in Hawthorne and Lavender were coming to him. The beautiful dedication to the book is dated Worthing, July 31, 1901. Ask me not how they came, these songs of love and death, these dreams of a futile stage, these thumbnails seen in the street. Ask me not how or why, but take them for your own, dear wife, of twenty years, knowing, oh, who so well you it was, who made the man that made these songs of love, death, and the trivial rest, so that, your love elsewhere, these songs, or bad or good, how should they ever have been. Of the villages to the west, we have caught glimpses in an earlier chapter, goring, angmoring, faring, and so forth. To the north and east are broadwater, sompting, and lancing. Broadwater is perhaps a shade too near Worthing to be interesting, but sompting, lying under the downs, is unspoiled with its fascinating church among the elms and rocks. The church, of which Mr Griggs has made an exquisite drawing, was built nearly eight hundred years ago. Within are some curious fragments of sculpture, and a tomb which Mr Lauer considered to belong to Richard Berry, Bishop of Chichester in the reign of Henry VIII. East of sompting lie the two lancings, north lancing on the hill, south lancing on the coast. East of north lancing the true village stands lancing college, high above the river, with its imposing chapel, a landmark in the valley of the Adour, and far out to sea. End of chapter 16