 CHAPTER XXIII On leaving the train at Bulkham, one is quickly on the densely wooded forest ridge of Sussex, here fenced and preserved, but further east where it becomes ashtown forest, consisting of vast tracts of open moorland and heather. Bulkham has a simple church, protected by a screen of scotch furs. Its great merit is its position as the key to a paradise for all who like woodland travel. From Bulkham to Werth is one vast pheasant run, with here and there a keeper's cottage or a farm. Originally, of course, a series of plantations growing furnace wood for the iron masters. In Tilgate Forest to the west of Bulkham Forest are two large sheets of water, once hammer ponds. Walking west from which, towards Horsham, one may be said to traverse the lake country of Sussex. A strange transformation from black country to lake country, but nature quickly recovers herself, and were the true black country's furnaces extinguished, she would soon make even that grimy tract a haunt of loveliness once more. No longer are heard the sounds of the hammers, but Bulkham Forest, Tilgate Forest, and Werth Forest have still a constant reminder of machinery, for very few minutes pass from morning to night without the rumble of a train on the main line to Brighton, which passes through the very midst of this wild game region, and plunges into the earth under the high ground of Bulkham Forest. I know of no place where the trains emit such a volume of sound as in the valley of the Stanford Brook, just north of the tunnel. The noise makes it impossible ever, quite, to lose the sense of modernity in these woods, as one may on Shelly Plain, a few miles west, or at Gill's Lap, in Ashdown Forest. Unless, of course, one's imagination is so complacent as to believe it to proceed from the old iron furnaces. This reminds me that Crabbit, just to the north of Werth, where church and vicarage stand isolated on a sandy ridge on the edge of the forest, was the home of one of the most considerable of the Sussex Iron Masters, Leonard Gale of Tinslow Forge, who bought Crabbit Park and House in 1698, since building, in his own words, is a sweet impoverishing. But we must pause for a moment at Werth, because its church is remarkable as being the largest in England to preserve its Saxon foundations. Sussex, as we have seen, is rich in Saxon relics, but the county has nothing more interesting than this. The church is cruciform, as all churches should be, and there is a little east window in the north transept, through which it is conjectured. Arrows were intended to be shot at marauding Danes, for an Englishman's church was once his castle. Archaeologists familiar with Werth's church have been known to pass with disdain, cathedrals for which the ordinary person cannot find too many fine adjectives. To regain Crabbit, the present owner, Mr. Wilfrid Scorn Blunt, poet, patriot, and breeder of Arab horses, who is a descendant of the Gales, has a long poem entitled, Werth Forest, wherein old Leonard Gale is a notable figure. Among other poems by the Lord of Crabbit is the very pleasantly English ballad of the Old Squire. I like the hunting of the hare better than that of the fox. I like the joyous morning air and the crowing of the cocks. I like the calm of the early fields. The ducks asleep by the lake. The quiet hour which nature yields before mankind is awake. I like the pheasants and feeding things of the unsuspicious morn. I like the flap of the woodpigeons' wings as she rises from the corn. I like the blackbirds' shriek and his rush from the turnips as I pass by, and the partridge hiding her head in a bush, for her young ones cannot fly. I like these things, and I like to ride, when all the world is in bed, to the top of the hill where the sky grows wide, and where the sun grows red. The beagles at my horse-heels trot in silence after me. There's Ruby, Roger, Diamond, Dot, Old Slut, and Marjorie. A score of names, well used and dear. The name's my childhood new. The horn with which I rouse their cheer is the horn my father blew. I like the hunting of the hare better than that of the fox. The new world still is all less fair than the old world it mocks. I covet not a wider range than these dear manners give. I take my pleasures without change, and as I lived I live. I leave my neighbours to their thought, my choicities and pride, on my own lands to find my sport, in my own fields to ride. The hare herself no better loves the field where she was bred, than I, the habit of these groves, my own inherited. I know my quarries every one, the mews where she sits low, the road she chose today was run a hundred years ago. The lags, the gills, the forest ways, the hedgerows, one and all, these are the kingdoms of my chase, and bounded by my wall. Nor has the world a better thing though one should search it round than thus to live one's own soul-king upon one's own soul-ground. I like the hunting of the hare. It brings me day by day the memory of old days as fair with dead men passed away. To these, as home would still I ply and pass the churchyard gate, where all are laid, as I must lie, I stop and raise my hat. I like the hunting of the hare. New sports I hold in scorn. I like to be as my fathers were in the days ere I was born. We are indeed just now in a bookish and poetical district, for a little more than a mile to the east of Crabbit, in a beautiful Tudor house in a hollow close to the station, lived Frederick Locker Lampson, the London lyricist, and here are treasured the famous Ralfant books and manuscripts, which he brought together. The subject of graceful verses by many of his friends, not the least charming of these tributes, printed in the Ralfant catalogue in 1886, are Mr. Andrew Lang's lines, to F. L. I mined that forest shepherd saw, for when men preached of heaven, quoth he, it's bore, that's bricht, and all that's braw, but bore hopes quid enough for me. Beneath the green, deep bosomed hills that guard St. Mary's Loch it lies, the silence of the pasture fills that shepherd's homely paradise. Enough for him, his mountain lake, his glen the hern went singing through, and Ralfant when the thrush's wake may well seem good enough for you. For all is old, and tried, and dear, and all is fair, and round about the brook that murmurs from the meer is dimpled with the rising trout. But when the skies of shorter days are dark, and all the ways are mire, how bright upon your books the blaze gleams from the cheerful study fire, on quartos where our fathers read enthralled the book of Shakespeare's play, on all that Poe could dream of dread, and all that Herrick sang of gay. Fair first editions, duly prized, above them all, me thinks I rate the tome where Walton's hand revised his wonderful receipts for bait. Happy, who rich in toys like these forgets a weary nation's ills, who from his study window sees the circle of the Sussex Hills. Ralfant was once the scene of one of the most determined struggles in history. The contestants were a series of Titmice and the GPO, and the account of the war may be read in the Natural History Museum at South Kensington. In 1888 a pair of the great Titmice, Paris Major, began to build their nest in the post-box which stood in the road at Ralfant, and into which letters, et cetera, were posted and taken out by the door daily. One of the birds was killed by a boy, and the nest was not finished. In 1889 a pair completed the nest, laid seven eggs, and began to sit. But one day when an unusual number of postcards were dropped into, and nearly filled, the box, the birds deserted the nest, which was afterwards removed with the eggs. In 1890 a pair built a new nest, and laid seven eggs, and reared a brood of five young, although the letters posted were often found lying on the back of the sitting bird, which never left the nest when the door of the box was opened to take out the letters. The birds went in and out by the slit. End of Chapter 23 Chapter 24 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 24 East Grinsted East Grinsted, the capital of South-East Sussex, is interesting chiefly for Hackville College, that haunt of an ancient piece, of which John Mason Neal, poet, enthusiast, divine, historian, and romance writer for children, was for many years the distinguished warden. Nothing can exceed the quiet restfulness of the quadrangle. The college gives shelter to five brethren and six sisters, one of whom shows the visitor over the building, and to award an inch to assistance, happy collegians, to have so fair a haven in which to pass the evening of life. East Grinsted otherwise has not much beauty, its commanding pinnacle to Church Tower being more impressive from a distance, and its chief street mingling too much, that is new, with its few old-timbered facades, charming though these are. The town when it would be frivolous, today depends upon the occasional visits of travelling entertainers, but in the eighteenth century East Grinsted had a theatre of its own, in the main street, a play-bill of which, for May 1758, is given in Bowden's Life of Mrs. Siddons. It states that Theodosius or The Force of Love, is to be played for the benefit of Mrs. P. Varanis by Mr. P., who will strive as far as possible to support the character of this fiery Persian prince, in which he was so much admired and applauded at Hastings, Arendl, Petworth, Midhurst, Louis, etc. The attraction of the next announcement is the precise converse, Theodosius by a young gentleman from the University of Oxford, who never appeared on any stage. The play-bill continues with a delicate hint, nothing in Italy can exceed the altar in the first scene of the play, nevertheless, should any of the nobility or gentry wish to see it ornamented with flowers, the bearer will bring away as many as they choose to favour him with. Finally, Enby, the great yard-dog that made so much noise on Thursday nights during the last act of King Richard III, will be sent to her neighbours over the way. The Sussex Martyrs, to whom a memorial, as we shall see, has recently been raised above Louis, are usually associated with that town. But on July 18, 1556, Thomas Dungate, John Foreman, and Anne, or Mother, Tree, were burned for conscience's sake at East Grinstead. Between East Grinstead and Forest Row on the east, just over the hill and close to the railway, are the remains of Brambletie House, a rather florid ruin, once the seat of the great Sussex family of Lucnoe. In its heyday, Brambletie must have been a very fine place. Horace Smith's romance, which bears its name, and for which Horsfield, in his history of Sussex, predicted a career commensurable with that of the waverly novels, is now, I fear, justly forgotten. The slopes of Forest Row, which was, of old, a settlement of hunting lodges belonging to the great lords who took their pleasure in Ashdown Forest, are now bright with new villas. From Forest Row, Witchcross and Ashdown Forest are easily gained, but of this open region of dark heather, more in a later chapter. Between Kingscote and West Hosley, a short distance to the south-west of East Grinstead, is another tie, Grave Tie, a two-dimension in a deep hollow, the home of Mr. William Robinson, the author of The English Flower Garden. Last April, the stonework of which there is much was a mass of the most wonderful purple orbricia, and the wild garden between the house and the water, a paradise of daffodils. The church of West Hosley, called West Holy, which stands high on the hill to the south, has a slender, shingled spire that may be seen from long distances. The tower has, however, been injured by the very ugly new clock that has been lately fixed in a position doubtless the most convenient, but doubtless also the least comely. To nail to such a delicate structure as West Holy Church, the kind of dial that one expects to see outside a railway station is a curious lapse of taste. Haver Church in Kent has a similar blemish, probably dating from one of the recent Jubilee celebrations, which left few loyal villages the richer by a beautiful memorial. Surely it should be possible to obtain an appropriate clock face for such churches as these. West Hosley has some iron tombstones, such as used to be cast in the old furnace days, which are not uncommon in these parts. Opposite the church is a building of great antiquity which has been allowed to forget its honorable age. We are now on the fringe of the Sussex Rock Country, to which we come again in earnest when we reach Meersfield, and of which Tumbridge Wells is the capital, but not even Tumbridge Wells, with its famous toad, as anything to offer more remarkable than West Hosley's Big On Little in the Rockhurst Estate. I am tempted to quote two descriptions of the Rock from two very different points of view, an antiquary writing in the eighteenth century, quoted by Horsfield, thus begins his account. About half a mile west of West Hosley Church, there is a high ridge covered with wood. The edge of this is a craggy cliff, composed of enormous blocks of sandstone. The soil has been entirely washed from off them, and in many places, from the interstices by which they are divided, one perceives these crags with bare broad white foreheads, and as it were overlooking the wood which clothed the valley at their feet. In going to the place, I passed across this deep valley, and was led by a narrow footpath almost trackless up to the cliff, which seems as one advances to hang over one's head. The mind in this passage is prepared with all the suspended feelings of awe and reverence, and as one approaches this particular rock, standing with its stupendous bulk poised seemingly in a miraculous manner and point, one is struck with amazement. The recess in which it stands hath behind this rock, and the rocks which surround it, a withdrawn and recluse passage which the eye cannot look into but with an idea of its coming from some more secret and holy adit. All these circumstances, in an age of tutored superstition, would give, even to the finest minds, the impressions that lead to idolatry. And this is Cobbit's description in the rural rides, at the place of which I am now speaking, that is to say, by the side of this pleasant road to Brighton, and between Turner's Hill and Lintfield, there is a rock which they call Big Upon Little, that is to say a rock upon another, having nothing else to rest upon, and the top one being longer and wider than the top of the pit lies on. This big rock is no trifling concern being as big perhaps as a not very small house. How then came this big upon little? What lifted up the big? It balances itself naturally enough. But what tossed it up? I do not like to pay a parson for teaching me, while I have God's own word to teach me. But if any parson will tell me how big came upon little, I do not know that I shall grudge him a trifle. And if he cannot tell me this, if he say all that we have to do is to admire and adore, then I tell him that I can admire and adore without his aid, and that I will keep my money in my pocket. That is pure Cobbit. West Hosley is in the midst of some of the best of the inland country of Sussex, and an excellent centre for the walker. Several places that we have already seen are within easy distance, such as Horsted Keens, Worth, and Worth Forest, and Bulcombe, and Bulcombe Forest. End of Chapter 24 Chapter 25 of Highways and Biways in Sussex This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, recording by Peter Yersley. Highways and Biways in Sussex by E. V. Lucas. Chapter 25. Horsted Keens to Lewis The very pretty church of Horsted Keens, which, in its lowly position, is the very antithesis of West Holy's Hillsome Mounting Spire, is famous for the small recumbent figure of a knight in armour, with a lion at his feet. Possibly a member of the Keens family that gives its name to this Horsted, thus distinguishing it from Little Horsted, a few miles distant in the East. Keens being an anglicisation of Dakaang, a family which sent a representative to assist in the Norman conquest. Horsted Keens, which is situated in very pleasant country, once took its spiritual instruction from the lips of the reverent Giles Moore, extracts from whose journals and account books, 1656 to 1679, have been printed by the SAS. I quote a few passages. I gave my wife fifteen shillings to lay out at St. James Fair at Linfield, all which she spent except two shillings and sixpence, which she never returned me. Sixteenth of September, I bought of Edward Barrett at Lewis, a clock for which I paid two pounds ten shillings, and for a new jack at the same time made and brought home one pound five shillings, for two prolongers, i.e. savals, and an extinguisher, two pence, and a pair of bellows, five shillings. Seventh of May, 1656, I bought of William Clausson, upholstra and itinerant, living over against the cross at Chichester, but who comes about the country with his pack on horseback, a fine large coverlet with birds and bucks, two pounds ten shillings, no pence, a set of striped curtains and valance, one pound eight shillings and no pence, a course eight quarter coverlet, one pound two shillings, no pence, two middle blankets, one pound four shillings, no pence, one Bicill, or Holland type, or Bolster, one pound thirteen shillings and six pence. My maid being sick, I paid for opening her veins, four pence. To the widow Rugglesford, for looking to her, I gave one shilling, and to old Bess, for tending on her three days and two nights, I gave one shilling. In all, two shillings, four pence, this I gave her. Led to my brother Luxford at the widow Newport's, never more to be seen, one shilling. In 1658, to William Batchelor, for bleeding me in bed, two shillings sixpence, and for barboring me, one shilling. A year later, I agreed with Mr. Batchelor of Lindfield to barber me, and I am to pay him sixteen shillings a year, beginning from Lady Day. In 1671, I bargained with Edward Waters that he should have eighteen shillings in money for the trimming of me by the year, and deducting one shilling six pence for his tithes. Twenty-third of April, 1660, this being King Charles' second coronation, I gave my namesake Moore's daughter, then married ten shillings, and the fiddler's sixpence. I paid the widow Potter of Hoadley for knitting me one pair of worsted stockings, two shillings and sixpence, for spinning two pounds of wool, fourteen pence, and for carding it, tuppence. To the collections made at three several sacraments, I gave three several sixpences. Twelfth of May, 1673, I went to London, spending there, going and coming, as Alibiaparet in particularibus, thirteen shillings and eight pence. I bought for Ann Brett a gold ring, this being the posy, when this you see, remember me, and at the same time I bought Patrick's pilgrim, five shillings, the reasonableness of scripture, by Sir Charles Wolsey, two shillings and sixpence, and a comedy called Epsom Wells. Mr Moore, having suffered in his tithes, left the following necessary caution for his successor. Never compound with any parishioner till you have first viewed their land, and seen what corn they have upon their feet here, and may have the next. The next station on this quiet little cross-country line to Lewis, is Sheffield Park, the seat of Lord Sheffield. The present pier, one of the patrons of modern Sussex Cricket, took a famous team to Australia in 1891 to two, and it was on his yacht that, in 1894, Cricket was played in the ice fjord at Spitzbergen under the midnight sun, when Alfred Shaw captured forty wickets in less than three-quarters of an hour. Australian teams visiting England used to open their season with a match at Sheffield Park, which contains one of the best private grounds in the country, but the old custom has, I fancy, lapsed. In the long winter of 1891 several cricket matches on the ice were played on one of the lakes in the park, with well known Sussex players on both sides. Sheffield Park is associated in literature with the name of Edward Gibbon, the historian, who spent much time there in the company of his friend John Baker Holroyd, the first Earl. Gibbon's remains lie in Fletching Church close by. There also lies Peter Dinot, a glover of Fletching, who assisted Jack Cade, the Sussex rebel, whom we meet later, in 1450, while, more history, it was in the woods around Fletching Church that Seymour de Montfort encamped before he climbed the hills, as we are about to see, and fought, and won, the Battle of Lewis in 1264. The line passes next between Newick on the east and Chaley on the west. Fate seems to have decided that these villages shall always be bracketed in men's minds, like Beaumont and Fletcher, or Winchelsea and Rye. One hears of Newick and Chaley than of either separately. Chaley has a wide, breezy common, from which the line of downs between Ditchling Beacon and Lewis can be seen, perhaps to their best advantage. Immediately to the south, and just to the west of Blackcap, the hill with a crest of trees, is Plumpton Plain, six hundred feet high, where the barons formed their ranks to meet the Third Harry in the Battle of Lewis, the actual fighting being on Mount Harry, the hill on Blackcap's east. A cross to mark the struggle, cut into the turf of the plain, is still occasionally visible. More noticeable is the V in Spruce Furs, planted on the escarpment, to commemorate the Jubilee of 1887. Plumpton, which is now known chiefly for its steeple chases, has had in its day at least two interesting inhabitants. One was John Dudany, shepherd, mathematician, and schoolmaster, born here in 1782, who, as a youth when tending his sheep on New Market Hill, dug a study and library in the chalk, and there kept his books and papers. He taught himself mathematics and languages, even Hebrew, and ultimately became a schoolmaster at Lewis. In his thorough adherence to learning, Dudany was the complete contrast to John Kimber of Chaley, a wealthy farmer with a consuming, but unintelligent love of books, who was once, says Horsfield, seen bringing home Macklin's Bible, a costly work in six volumes, in a sack laid across the back of a cart horse. According to the excellent habit of the old Sussex farmers Mr. Kimber's body was born to the grave in one of his wagons, drawn by his best team. Plumpton Place once had a moat in which legend has it, the first farm that came into England. The house then belonged to Leonard Maskell, whom Fuller in the Worthies erroneously ascribed to Plumsted. In Fuller's own words which no one could better, Leonard Maskell of Plumsted in this county, being much delighted in gardening, man's original vocation, was the first who brought over into England from beyond the seas, carps, and pipins, the one well cooked delicious, the other, and restorative. For the proof hereof we have his own word and witness, and did it, it seems, about the fifth year of the reign of King Henry VIII, Anno Domini 1514. The time of his death is, to me, unknown. The credit of introducing carps and pipins has, however, been denied to Maskell, who died in 1589 at Farnham Royal in Buckiamshire, where he was buried, but we know him beyond question to have been an ABS experimentalist in horticulture. He wrote and translated several books, among them a treatise on the orchard by a monk of the Abbey of St. Vincent in France. A book of the art of and manner how to plant and graft all sorts of trees, how to set stones and so pipins to make wide trees to graft on. 1572. I take a few passages from a later edition of this work. To colour apples To have coloured apples with what colour you shall think good, you shall bore or slope a hole with an auger in the biggest part of the body of the tree, unto the midst thereof or thereabouts, and then look what colour you will have them of. First you shall take water and mingle your colour therewith, then stop it up again with a short pin made of the same wood or tree, then wax it round about. You may mingle with the said colour what to make them taste thereafter. Thus may you change the colour and taste of any apple. This must be done before the spring do come. To make apples falls from the tree. If you put fiery coals under an apple tree, and then cast off the powder of brimstone therein, and the fume thereover send up and touch an apple that is wet, that apple shall fall incontinent. To destroy pismirs or ants about a tree, you shall take of the sawdust lonely, and straw that all about the tree root, and the next rain that doth come, all the pismirs or ants shall die there. For earwigs, shoes stopped with hay and hanged on the tree one night, they come all in. For to have wrath meddlers two months before others, for to have meddlers two months sooner than others, and the one shall be better far than the other, you shall graft them upon a gooseberry tree, and also before you do graft them, you shall wet them in hay, and then graft them. To return to the line, for the excursion to Plumpton has taken us far from the original route, the next station to Newick and Chaley is Barkham Mills, a watery village on the ooze. The river valley contracts as Lewis is reached, with Mauling Hill on the east and Offam Hill on the west, both taking their names from two of the hamlets by which Lewis is surrounded. It was at Mauling Deenery that the assassins of Thomas Becket sought shelter on their flight from Canterbury. The legend records how, when they laid their armour on the Deenery table, that noble piece of furniture rose and flung the accursed accoutrements to the ground. On Mauling Hill is the residence of a Lewis lady whose charitable impulses have taken a direction not common among her for others. She receives into her stable old and overworked horses, thus ensuring for them a sleek and peaceful dotage enlivened by sugar and carrots, and marked by the kindest consideration. The pyramidal grave, as of a Saxon chief of one of these dependents, may be seen from the road. End of Chapter 25 Chapter 26 of Highways and Byways in Sussex Apart from the circumstances that the curiosities collected by the county's archaeological society are preserved in the castle, Lewis is the museum of Sussex for she has managed to compress into small compass more objects of antiquarian interest than any town I know. Chichester, which is compact enough, sprawls by comparison. The traveller arriving by train no sooner alights from his carriage that he is on the site of the kitchens of the Cluniac Priory of St. Pancras, some of the walls of which almost scrape the train on its way to Brighton, that a priory eight hundred years old must be disturbed before a railway station can be built is a melancholy circumstance. But in the present case the vandalism had its compensation in the discovery by the excavating navies of the coffins of William de Warren and his wife, Gundrada, the conqueror's daughter, the founders of the priory, which otherwise would probably have been lost evermore. The castle which dominates the oldest part of the town is but a few minutes from its stiff climb from the station. Louis's several ancient churches are within hailing distance of each other. The field of her battle, where Simon de Montfort defeated Henry III, is in view from her northwest slopes, while the new martyr's memorial on the turf above the precipitous escarpement of the cliff, once the scene of a fatal avalanche, reminds one of what horrors were possible in the name of religion less than four hundred years ago. Here are riches enough, yet Louis adds to such mementos of an historic past. Two jails, one civil and one naval, a race course and a river, and she is in a sized town to boot. Once indeed, Louis was still better off, for she had a theatre, which for some years was under the management of Jack Palma, of whom Charles Lamb wrote with such gusto. Added to these possessions she has in Kear Street, the narrowest and steepest thoroughfare down which a king, George IV, ever rode a coach and four, and a row of comfortable and serene residences, on the way to St Anne's, more luxuriously and beautifully covered with leaves than any I ever saw. Much of Louis in September is scarlet with Virginia creeper. Although less than half an hour from Brighton by train and an hour by road Louis is yet a full quarter of a century behind it. She would do well jealously to maintain this interval. Louis was old and grey before Brighton was thought of. Indeed it was as we have seen a Louis man that discovered Brighton, Dr. Russell who lies in his grave in South Mauling Church. Let her cling to her seniority as a town in the movement as a contemporary of the queen of watering places, she would cut her poor figure. But it is amusing to think of the old address of a visitor to Brighton at Bright Helmstone near Louis and to read the county paper, the Sussex Weekly Advertiser or Louis Journal of a century ago with its columns of Louis news and paragraphs of Brighton correspondence. Louis will cease to have charm the moment she modernizes. In the words of the author of Idolhurst as he looked down on the huddling little settlement from the Cliff Hill, let us keep a country town or two as preserves for clean atmospheres of body and soul for the almost lost secret of sitting still. I find myself tangled in half dreams of a devolution by which when national amity shall have become mentionable besides personal pence London shall attract to herself all the small vice as she does already most of the great from the country, all the thrusters after gain, the vulgar heavy-fingered intellects the progressive spouters the bilezes the speculating brigundage and shall give us back from the foggy world of clubs and cab ranks and geniuses, the poets and painters, all the nice and witty and pretty people to make towns such as this conserved and purified into countryside Athens is to form distinctive schools of letters and art individual growths not that universal cockney mind, smoke ingrained, stage-ridden convention-throttled which now masquerades under the forms of every climb and dialect within reach of a tourist ticket the customs of Lewis at the end of the Saxon rule and at the beginning of the Norman as recorded in the pages of the doomsday book show that residents in the town in those days was not unmixed delight except perhaps for murderers for whom much seems to have been done. Thus if the king wished to send an armament to guard the seas without his personal attendance twenty shillings were collected from all the inhabitants without exception or respect to particular tenure and these were paid to the men at arms in the ships the seller of a horse within the borough pays one penny to the mayor note sheriff end note and the purchaser another of an ox a half-penny of a man fourpence in whatsoever place he may be brought within the rape a murderer forfeits seven shillings and fourpence a ravisher forfeits eight shillings and fourpence an adulterer eight shillings and fourpence and adulteress the same the king has the adulterer the bishop the adulteress with the conquest new life came into the town as into south Sussex generally the rule of the Debrowses who dominated so much of the country through which we have been passing is here no more the great lord of this district being William de Warren who had claims upon William the Conqueror not only for services rendered in the conquest but as a son-in-law when therefore the contest was over some of the richest prizes fell to Earl de Warren among them was the township of Lewis de Warren so pleased the Earl that he decided to make his home there his first action then was to graft upon the existing fortress a new stronghold the remains of which still stand ten years after the victory at Hastings the memory of the blood of the sturdy Saxons whom he had hacked down at battle began so to weigh upon de Warren's conscience that he set out with Gundrada upon an expiatory pilgrimage to Rome sheltering on the way in the monastery of Saint Perre at Clooney they were so hospitably received that on returning to Lewis William and Gundrada built a priory partly as a form of gratitude and partly as a safeguard for the life to come in 1078 it was formally founded on a magnificent scale thus Lewis obtained her castle and her priory both now in ruins in the one of which William de Warren might sin with a clear mind knowing that just below him on the edge of the waterbrooks was, in the other, so tangible an expiation the date of the formation of the priory spoils the pleasant legend which tells how Harold only badly wounded was carried hither from battle and how recovering he lived quietly with the brothers until his natural death some years later a variant of the same story takes the English king to a cell in the ruins under the castle also in Lewis and establishes him there as an anchorite but, although as we shall see when we come to battle the facts were otherwise all true Englishmen prefer to think of Harold fighting in the midst of his army killed by a chance arrow shot into the zenith and lying there until the eyes of Editha of the swan neck lighted upon his dear corpse amid the hundreds of the slain the de Warrens and Louis Castle until the 14th century the Sussex Archaeological Society now have it in their fostering care architecturally it is of no great interest although it was once unique in England by the possession of two keeps nor has it romantic associations like, like Kennelworth or even Carriesbrook the crumbling masonry was assisted in its decay by no siege or bombardment but the castle has been never the scene of human struggle visitors therefore must take pleasure chiefly in the curiosities collected in the museum and in the views from the roof a few little rooms hold the treasures amassed by the Archaeological Society amassed it may be said with little difficulty for the soil of the district is fertile in relics from ringma come rusty shield bosses and the mouldering skull of an Anglo-Saxon from the old Louis Jail come a lock and a key strong enough to hold Jack Shepherd and from Horsham Jail a complete set of fetters for ankles and wrists once used to cramp the movements of female malefactors here in a case is a tiny bronze symbol that tip to the pretty finger of a Roman seamstress one only among scores of tokens of the Roman county flint arrowheads and kelts in profusion take us back to remota times a pycom crook hangs on one wall and relics of the Sussex ironworks are plentiful the highest room contains rubbings of our best brasses outside is an early Sussex plough in a corner is a Beatles staff that once struck terror into the hearts of sabbath breaking boys and near one of the windows is a little brass crucifix from St. Pancras Priory but nothing the custodian tells me so pleases visitors to this very Catholic collection as the mummied hand of a murderess looking down and around from the roof of the keep you are immediately struck by the wide shallow hollow in which Louis lies it is something the shape of a dairy basin the gap to the north west between Mauling Hill and Offam serving for the lip nothing could be flatter than the smiling meadows streaked with tiny streams stretching between Louis and the coastline to the southeast with the exception of one symmetrical hillock just out of the town among them curls the lazy ooze just beneath you Louis sleeps red roofed as an Italian town sending up no hum of activity listless and immovable save for a few spirals of silent smoke the surrounding hills are very fine furl beacon in the far east Mount Cabern a noble cone in the near east Mount Harry to the west on whose slopes Henry III assisted by the fiery Prince Edward fought the barons so fiery indeed was this lad that he forgot all about his father and gave chase to a small detachment of the enemy catching them up and hewing them down with the keenest enjoyment while the unhappy Henry was being completely worsted by de Montfort it was a bloody battle made up as old Fabian wrote of embittered men with hearts full of hatred either desirous to bring the other out of life great fun was made by the humorists of the time after the battle the fact that Richard King of the Romans Henry's brother was captured in a windmill in which he had taken refuge this mill stood near the site of the Black Horse Inn in the barons wars by Mr. Blau the Sussex antiquary the whole story is told Lewis has played but a small part in history since that battle but as we saw when we were at Rottingdeen it was one of her Cluniac priors that repulsed the French in 1377 and her son, St. Nicholas Pelham who performed a similar service in 1545 at Seaford as the verses on his monument in St. Michael's Church run what time the French sought to have sacked Seaford this Pelham did repel him back aboard the Cluniac priory of St. Pancras resolved by Henry VIII in 1537 Thomas Cromwell that execrable vandal not only abolishing the monks but destroying the buildings which covered with their garden and fishponds 40 acres the ruins that remain give some idea of the extent of this wonderful priory another relic being the adjacent mound on which the calvary stood probably constructed of the earth removed for the purpose of keeping pan as the hollow circular spaces called where Lewis now plays cricket one very pretty possession of the monks was allowed to stand until quite recent times the columbarium which was as large as a church and contained homes for 3228 birds it has now vanished but an idea of what it was may be gained from the Pigeon house at Alsistan which belonged to Battle Abbey the priory's possessions were granted to Cromwell by Henry VIII who tradition asserts somewhat directly in the face of historical evidence murdered one of his wives on a winding stair in the building and may therefore have been glad to see its demolition which wife it was is not stated but when Cromwell went the way of all this king's favourites the property was transferred to Anne of Cleves who is supposed to have lived in the most picturesque of the old houses on the right hand side of Southover Street as you leave at Lewis for the ooze valley Southover church in itself a beautiful structure of the grave red type with a square ivy tower and the most delicate vein in Sussex is rendered the more interesting by the possession of the leaden caskets of William de Waren and Gundrada and the superb tomb removed from Isfield's church and very ingeniously restored these relics repose in a charming little chapel built in their honour a notable man who had association with Lewis was Tom Payne author of The Rights of Man he settled there as an excise man in 1768 married Elizabeth Olive to John at St. Michael's church in 1771 and succeeded to her father's business as a tobacconist and grocer Payne was more successful as a debater than a businessman as a member of the White Heart Evening Club he was more often than any other the winner of the Headstrong Book an old Greek Homer dispatched the next morning to the most obstinate harranger of the preceding night it was at Lewis that Tom Payne's thoughts were first turned to the question of government he used thus to tell the story one evening after playing bowls all the party retired to drink punch when in the conversation that ensued Mr. Verrill note it should be Verrill end note observed alluding to the wars of Frederick that the king of Prussia was the best fellow in the world for a king he had so much of the devil in him this striking me with great force occasioned the reflection that if it were necessary for a king to have so much of the devil in him kings might very beneficially be dispensed with I thought of that historic game of bowls as I watched four Lewis gentlemen playing this otherwise discreetest of games in the meadow by the castle gate on a fine September evening after the historic Plymouth Ho a lawn in the shadow of a Norman castle is the ideal spot for this leisurely but exciting pastime the four Lewis gentlemen played uncommonly well with bowls of peculiar splendor in which a setting of silver glistened as they sped over the turf after each game one little boy bearing a cloth wiped the bowls while another registered the score and now I feel that no one can really be said to have seen Lewis unless he has watched the progress of such a game it remains in my mind as intimate a part of the town and the town's spirit as the ruins of the Priory or Keer Street or the castle itself the house of Tom Payne just off the high street almost opposite the circular tower of St. Michael's has a tablet commemorating its illustrious owner it also has a very curious red carved demon which otherwise distinguishes it Lewis was not always proud of Tom Payne but Cuckfield went father in 1793 I learned from the Sussex advertiser for that year Cuckfield emphasised its loyalty to the constitution by singing God Save the King in the streets and Burning Payne in Effigy mention of Tom Payne naturally calls to mind his friend and biographer and my thrice great uncle Thomas Cleo Rickman the citizen of the world who was born at Lewis in 1760 Rickman began life as a Quaker and therefore without his pagan middle name which he first adopted as the signature to epigrams and scraps of verse in the local paper and afterwards incorporated in his signature Rickman's connection with Tom Payne and his own revolutionary habits were a source of distress to his Quaker relatives at Lewis so much so that there is a story in the family of the citizen being refused admission to a house in the neighbourhood where he had eight impressionable nieces and when he would visit their father being entertained instead at The Bear his Bible with sceptical marginal notes is still preserved with the bad pages pasted together by a subsequent owner after roving about in Spain and other countries he settled as a bookseller in London and it was in his house and at his table that the rights of man was written this table says an article on Rickman in the wonderful museum is prized by him very highly at this time and no doubt will be deemed a rich relic by some of our irreligious connoisseurs it was shown at the Tom Payne exhibition a few years ago Rickman escaped persecution but he once had his papers seized according to his portrait Cleo wore a hat like a beehive and he invented a trumpet to increase the sound of a signal gun his verse is exceedingly poor his finest political achievement the epitaph on Thomas Tipper in New Haven Churchyard Tipper was the brewer of the ale that was known as New Haven Tipper but he was other things too honest he was ingenuous, blunt and kind and dared what few dared do to speak his mind philosophy and history well he knew was versed in physics and in surgery too the best old Stingo he both brewed and sold and more did one naivish act to get his gold he played through life a varied comic part and knew immortal woody brass by heart Charles Lamb greatly admired the end of this epitaph Cleo Rickman died in 1834 among other men of note who have lived in Lewis or have had association with it was John Evelyn the diarist of his education at South Over Grammar School Mark Anthony Lower the Sussex antiquary to whom all writers on the county are indebted the Reverend T. W. Horsfield the historian of Sussex without whose work we should also often be in difficulties and the Reverend Gideon Mantell the Sussex geologist whose collection of Sussex fossils is preserved in the British Museum in St Anne's Church on the hill lie the bones of a remarkable man who died at Lewis in the 10th Climacteric in 1613 no less a person than a Thomas Twine M.D. in addition to the principles of physics he comprehended earthquakes and wrote a book about them he also wrote a survey of the world I quote Horsfield's translation of the Florid Latin inscription to his memory Hippocrates saw Twine lifeless and his bones slightly covered with earth some of his sacred dust says he will be of use to me in removing diseases for the dead when converted into medicine will expel human maladies and ashes prevail against ashes now the physician is absent disease extends itself on every side and exalts its enemy is no more alas here lies our preserver twine the flower and ornament of his age Sussex deprived of her physician languished and is ready to sink along with him believe me no future age will produce so good a physician and so renowned a man as this has he died at Lewis in 1613 on the 1st of August in the 10th Climacteric note this 70 end note Dr. Johnson was once in Lewis on a day's visit to the Shelleys at the house which bears their name at the south end of the town one of the little girls becoming rather a nuisance with her questions the doctor lifted her into a cherry tree and walked off at dinner some time later the child was missed and a search party was about to set out when the doctor exclaimed oh I left her in a tree for many years the tree was known as Dr. Johnson's Cherry Tree Lewis is ordinarily still and leisurely with no bustle in her steep streets save on market days and a boat of rest and unhacening feet but on one night of the year she lays aside her grey mantle and her quiet tones and emerges a becante robed in flame Lewis on the fifth of November is an incredible sight probably no other town in the United Kingdom offers such a contrast to its ordinary life I have never heard that Lewis is notably Protestant on other days in the year that any intolerance is meted out to Roman Catholics on November the fourth or November the sixth but on November the fifth she appears to believe that the honour of the reformed church is wholly in her hands and that unless her voice is heard declaiming against the tyrannies and treacheries of Rome all the spiritual labours of the eighth Henry will have been in vain no fewer than eight bonfire societies flourish in the town all in a strong financial position each of these has its bonfire blazing or smouldering at a street corner from dusk to midnight and each at a certain stage in the evening forms into procession and approaching its own fire by devious roots burns an effigy of the pope together with whatever miscreant most fills the public eye at the moment such as General Booth or Mr Kruger both of whom I have seen incinerated amid cheers and detonations the figures are not lightly cast onto the flames but are conducted either ceremoniously the bishop of the society having first passed sentence upon them in a speech bristling with local illusions these speeches serve the function of a review of the year and are sometimes quite clever but it is not until they are printed in the next morning's paper that one can take their many points the principle among the many distractions is the rouser a squib peculiar to Lewis to which the bonfire boys note who are by the way in great part boys only in name like the post boys of the past and the cowboys of the present end note have given laborious nights throughout the preceding October the rouser is much larger and heavier than the ordinary squib it is propelled through the air like a rocket by the force of its escaping sparks and it bursts with a terrible report in order to protect themselves from the ravages of the rouser the people in the streets wear spectacles of wire netting while the householders board up their windows and lay damp straw on their gratings ordinary squibs and crackers are also continuously ignited while now and then one of the sky rockets discharged in flights from a procession elects to take a horizontal course and hurtles head high down the crowded street so the carnival proceeds until midnight when the firemen who have been on the alert all the evening extinguish the fires the bonfire societies subsequently collect information as to any damage done and make it good a wise course to which they owe in part the sanction to renew the orgy next year other towns in Sussex keep up the glorious fifth with some spirit but nowhere in England is there anything to compare with the thoroughness of Lewis to some extent Lewis may consider that she has reason for the display for on June the 22nd 1557 10 men and women were tied to the stake and burned to death in the high street for professing a faith obnoxious to Queen Mary chief of these courageous enthusiasts were Richard Woodman and Derek Carver Woodman, a native of Buckstead had settled at Warbelton he was a prosperous iron master all went well until Mary's accession to the throne when the rector of Warbelton who had been a Protestant under Edward the Sixth turned in Fox's words head to tail and preached clean contrary to that which he had before taught Woodman's protests carried him to imprisonment and the stake all together Lewis saw the death of 16 martyrs and of Chapter 26 Chapter 27 of The Highways and Byways of Sussex this LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Peter Yersley The Highways and Byways of Sussex by E. V. Lucas Chapter 27 The Ooze Valley the road from Lewis to the sea runs along the edge of the ooze levels just under the bare hills passing through villages that are little more than homesteads of the sheep farmers albeit each has its church Ifford, Rodmill, South-Ease Piddinghoe and so to New Haven the county's only harbour of any importance since the seas filtered up the shore and bar you may be as much out of the world in one of these minute villages as anywhere twice the distance from London and the downs above them are practically virgin soil The Brighton Horseman or Walker takes as a rule a line either to Lewis or to New Haven rarely venturing in the direction of Ifford Hill, High Dole Hill or Telskum Village which nestles 300 feet high over Piddinghoe By day the wagons ply steadily between Lewis and the port but other travellers are few Once evening falls it is your own with nothing but the bleed of sheep and the roar of the French boat trains to recall life and civilisation The air of this valley is singularly clear producing on fine days a blue effect that is I believe peculiar to the district In the sketches of a Brighton painter in watercolours Mr. Clem Lambert who has worked much at Rodmill the spirit of the river valleys of Sussex ordinary fidelity and the minimum loss of freshness Horsefield rather than have no poetical blossom to deck his page at the mention of the Lewis River quotes a passage from The Task Here ooze slow winding through a level plain of spacious meads with cattle sprinkled oar conducts the eye along his sinuous course delighted Dr. Johnson's remark that one green field is like another green field might one seas be extended to rivers for Calpa was of course describing the ooze at Olney The first village out of Lewis on the New Haven Road is Kingston one of three Sussex villages of this name on the side of the hill once the property of Sir Philip Sydney next is Ifford with straw blowing free and cows in its meadows next Rodmill Wents, Whiteway Bottom and Breaky Bottom lead to the Highlands above next South-Ease where the only bridge over the ooze between Lewis and New Haven is to be crossed a little village famous for a round church tower of which Sussex knows but three one other at St. Michael's Lewis and one at Piddinghoe the next village The South-Ease rustics were once of independent mind as may be gathered from the following extract from the Manorial Customs of South-Ease with Highton near Lewis in 1623 Every reaper must have allowed him at the cost of the Lord or his farmer one drinking in the morning of bread and cheese and a dinner at noon consisting of roast meat and other good vitals meat for men and women in harvest time and two drinking in the afternoon one in the midst of their afternoon as work and the other at the end of their day's work and drink always during their work as need shall require Telscombe the capital of these lonely downs and as good an objective as the walker who sets out from Brighton Rottingdeen or Lewis to Climb Hills can ask is a charming little shy hamlet which nothing can harm snuggly reposing in its coom above Piddinghoe Piddinghoe, pronounced Pidnu is a compact village at the foot of the hill but it has suffered in picturesqueness and character by its proximity to the commercial enterprise of Newhaven Hussie in his notes on the churches of Sussex suggests that a field north of the village was once the site of a considerable Roman villa a local sarcasm credits Pidnu people with the habit of shooing their magpies the downs when we saw them first between Midhurst and Chichester formed an inland chain parallel with the shore here and eastward as far as Beechey Head where they suddenly cease their southern slopes are washed by the channel this companionship of the sea lends them an additional wildness sea mists now and then envelop them in a cloud seabirds rise and fall above their cliffs the roar or sigh of the waves mingles with the cries of sheep the salt saver of the sea is born on the wind over the crisp turf it was, I fancy, among the downs in this part of Sussex that Mrs. Marriott Watson wrote the intimately understanding lines which I take the liberty of quoting on the downs broad and bare to the skies the great down country lies green in the glance of the sun fresh with the clean salt air screaming the gulls rise from the fresh turned mould where the round bosom of the windswept wold slopes to the valley fair where the pale stubble shines with golden gleam the silver plowsher cleaves its hard one way behind the patient team the slow black oxen toiling through the day tireless, impassive still from dawning dusk and chill to twilight grey far off the pearly sheep along the upland steep follow their shepherd from the waddled fold with tinkling bell-notes falling sweet and cold as a stream's cadence while a skylark sings high in the blue with eager outstretched wings till the strong passion of his joy be told but when the day grows old and night cometh fold on fold dulling the western gold blackening bush and tree failing the ranks of cloud in their pallid pomp and proud that hasten home from the sea listen now and again if the night be still in hour you may hear the distant sea range to and fro tearing the shingly-born of his bounden track moaning with hate as he fails and falleth back the downs are peopled then fugitive low-browed men start from the slopes around over the murky ground crouching they run with rough wrought bow and spear now seen, now hid they rise and disappear lost in the gloom again soft on the dewfall damp scarce bronze the measured tramp of bronze-mailed sentinels dark on the darkened fells guarding the camp the roman watchfires glow red on the dusk and harsh cries a heron flitting slow over the valley marsh where the sea mist gathers low closer and closer yet draweth the night's dim net hiding the troubled dead no more to see or know but a black waste lying below and a glimmering blank or head of Newhaven there is little to say except that in rough weather the traveller from France is very glad to reach it and on a fine day the traveller from England is happy to leave it behind in the churchyard is a monument in memory of the officers and crew of the brazen which went down off the town in 1800 and lost all hands save one on the way to Seaford which is nearly three miles east sheltering under its white headland her preliminary sketch as one might say for beachy head we pass the bishopstone tide mills once the property of a sturdy and prosperous Sussex autocrat named William Cat the grower of the best pairs in the county and the first to welcome Louis Philippe who lives on Milling in France when he landed at Newhaven in exile a good story told of William Cat by Mr. Lauer in his Worthies of Sussex illustrates not only the character of that sagacious and kindly Martinette but also of the Sussex peasant in its mingled independence and dependence, frankness and caution Mr. Cat having unbent among his retainers at a harvest supper one of them a little emboldened perhaps by draughts of Newhaven tipper thus addressed his master give us your hand sir, I love you I love you but he added I'm dang'd if I beant a feared of you though there was a hermitage on the cliff at Seaford some centuries ago in 1372 the hermit's name was Peter and we find him receiving letters of protection in the unusual term of five years in the vestry of the church is an old monument bearing the riddling inscription also near this place lie two mothers three grandmothers four aunts four sisters four daughters four granddaughters three cousins but six persons a record in the Seaford archives then were all accounts taken and all made even from the beginning of the world of the former bailiffs until the present time and there remained the sum of 12 pounds 16 shillings seven pence Milborough House, Seaford was of old called Corsica Hall having been built originally at Wellingham near Lewis and then moved by a smuggler named Whitfield Lord for illicit traffic in Corsican wine he obtained the removal of his outlawry by presenting George II with a selection of his choicest vintages another agreeable story of local corruption is told concerning Seaford's old electioneering days it was in 1798 during the candidature of Sir Godfrey Webster of Battle Abbey Sir Godfrey was one day addressed is S nothing but horsefield's delicacy keeps her name from fame in the following terms Mr. S. Sir will vote of course as he pleases I have nothing to do or to say about him but there is my gardener and my coachman both of whom will I am sure be entirely guided by me now they are both family men Sir Godfrey and I wish to do the best I can to serve them now I know that you are in great doubt and that two sure votes are of great value I'll tell you what you shall do you shall give me 200 pounds nobody will know anything about it there will be no danger no bribery Sir Godfrey at all I will desire the men to go and vote for you and Colonel Tarleton and it will be all right and no harm done the bargain, adds horsefield was struck, the money paid the votes given as promised Lady gave the two men 30 pounds a piece and pocketed the rest for the good of her country Seaford's neighbouring village Bishopston, in addition to its tide mills the only tide mills in Sussex accepting that at Sidlesham now disused possessed once the oldest windmill in the county in the very charming little church is buried James Hurdis author of The Village Curate will meet again at Burwash from Bishopston we may return to Lewis either by the road through South Highton Tarring Neville, Itford Farm and Beddingham or cross the river again at South Ease and retrace our earlier steps through Rodmill and Ifford that is the quicker way the road through Beddingham is longer and interesting rather for the hills above it than for anything upon it these hills we come in the next chapter End of Chapter 27 Chapter 28 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 28 Alfriston Alfriston may be reached from Lewis by rail taking train to Berwick by road under the hills or by foot or horseback over the hills by road you pass first through Beddingham a small village where it is said was once a monastery then by a southern detour to West Furl a charming little village with a great park which bears the same relation to Furl Beacon that Whiston Park does to Chanktonbury Ring the tower in the east serves to a good view of the wheeled for those who do not care to climb the beacons seven hundred feet and get a better the little church is rich in interesting memorials of the gauges who have been the lords of Furl for many a long year in the house is a portrait of Sir John Gage the trusted friend of Henry VIII Edward VI and Mary and as Constable of the Tower the jailer but a very kind one of both Lady Jane Gray and the Princess Elizabeth afterwards Good Queen Bess in Harrison Ainsworth's romance The Constable of the Tower Sir John Gage is much seen Sir John was succeeded at Furl by his son Sir Edward who as High Sheriff of Sussex was one of the judges of the Sussex Martyrs but who even Fox admits exercised courtesy to them Sir Edward's son Sir John Gage was the second husband of the Lady Penelope Darcy Mr. Hardy's heroine whose portrait we saw at Parham who being courted as a girl by Sir George Trenchard Sir John Gage and Sir William Hervey promised she would marry all in turn and did so Sir George left her a widow at seventeen to Sir John Gage she bore nine children Returning from Furl to the High Road we come next by following for a little a left turn to Selmiston the village where Mr. W. D. Parish the rector for very many years collected most of the entertaining examples of the Sussex dialect with which I have made so free in a later chapter The church is very simple and well cared for with some pretty south windows the small memorial tablets of brass which have been let into the floor symmetrically among the tiles seem to me a happier means of commemoration than mural tablets at least for a modest building such as this in losing your way in this neighbourhood do not ask the passerby for Selmiston but for Simpson for Selmiston pronounced as spelt does not exist Sussex men are curiously intolerant of the phonetics of orthography that Helmstone was called Brighton from the first although only in the last century was the spelling modified to agree with the sound Chalvington the name of a village north of Selmiston is a pretty word but Sussex declines to call it other than Chorton Furl becomes Furl Lewis is almost Luz but not quite Heathfield is Heffel it is characteristic of a Sussex man that he always knows best though all the masters of all the colleges should assemble about him and speak reasoningly of Selmiston he would leave the Congress as incorrigible and self-satisfied a Simpsonian as ever many years ago Selmiston Churchyard possessed an empty tomb in which the smugglers were wont to store their goods until a favourable time came to set them on the road any objections that those in authority might have had were silenced by an occasional tub but of this more in the next chapter and so we come to Alfreston but as I said the right way was over the hills ascending them either at Itford crossing the ooze at South-Ease or by that remarkable coom one of the finest in Sussex with an avenue leading to it which is gained from a lane south of Beddingham Furl Beacon's lofty summit is half way between Beddingham and Alfreston and from this height with its magnificent view of the wheel we descend steadily to the Cuckmeer Valley of which Alfreston is the capital Alfreston which is now only a village street shares with Chichester the distinction of possessing a market cross Alfreston's specimen is however sadly mutilated a mere relic whereas Chichester's is being made more splendid as I write Alfreston also has one of the oldest inns in the county, the star finer far in its way than any of Chichester's 70 and more but Ainsworth was wrong in sending Charles the second thither in Ovington Grange it is one of the inns that the merry monarch never saw the star was once a sanctuary within the jurisdiction of the Abbot of Battle for persons flying from justice and it is pleasant to sit in the large room upstairs over the street and think of fugitives pattering up the valley with fearful backward glances and hammering at the old door one birral in the reign of Henry VIII having stolen a horse at Lid in Kent it is a huge here the inn in those days was intended chiefly for the refreshment of mendicant friars in 1767 the landlord was, according to a private letter as great a curiosity as the house I wish we had some information about him for the house is quaint and curious indeed with its red lion sentinel at the side figurehead from a Dutch wreck in Cuckmeer Haven inside and out the old and the new mingled very oddly when I was lately at Altristan hearing a familiar sound as of a battle door and a ball in one of the rooms I opened the door and discovered the landlord and a groom from the racing stables nearby in the throes of the most modern of games amid surroundings absolutely medieval the size of the grave and commanding church which has been called the cathedral of the South Downs alone proves that Altristan was once a vastly more important place than it now is legend says that the foundations were first cut in the meadow known as Savine Croft there day after day the builders laid their stones arriving each morning to find them removed to the tie the field where the church now stands at last the meaning of the miracle entered their heads and the church was erected on the new site its shape was determined by the slumbers of four oxen who were observed by the architect to be sleeping in the form of a cross Poyning's church under the dyke hill near Brighton was built it has been conjectured by the same architect within the cathedral of the South Downs which is a 14th century building is a superb east window but it has no coloured glass the register beginning with 1504 is perhaps the oldest in England hard by the church is the simple little clergy house unique in England I believe dating from pre-reformation times it has lately been very carefully restored Alfristan once had a scholar in the person of Thomas Chown of Frog-Furl the old house on the road to Seaford beyond the village Chown who died in 1639 and was buried in Alfristan is thus touched off by Fuller Thomas Choun Esquire living at Alfristan in this county set forth a small manual entitled Collectione's Theologi Charum Conclusionum indeed many have much opposed it as what book meteth not with opposition though such as dislike must commend the brevity and clearness of his positions for my own part I am glad to see a lay gentleman so able and industrious Chown's great-great-grandson an antiquary one night left some books to near his library fire they ignited and Frog-Furl place was in large part destroyed it is now only a fragment of what it was and is known to be an ancient house an intermediate dweller at Frog-Furl was one Robert Andrews who when a unwell seems to have been attended by William Benberg Miss Florence A. Pagdon in her agreeable little history of Alfristan from which I have been glad to borrow Prince two of Mr. Benberg's letters of kindly but vague advice to his patient which you may take in the manner following vis of that in the bottle marked with a plus you may take of the quantity of a spoonful or so now and then and at night take some of those pills drinking a little warm beer after it and in the morning take two spoonfuls of that in blank bottle fasting an hour after it and then you may eat something you may take also of the first and every night a pill and in the morning I hope this will do you good which is the desire of him who is your loving friend William Benberg Alfristan once had a race meeting of its own the course is still to be seen on the southern slope of Furl-Beacon and it also fostered cricket in the early days a famous single wicket match was contested here in 1787 between four men whose united ages amounted to 297 years history records that the game was played with great spirit and activity Mr. Lauer records in 1870 that the largest pair and the largest apple ever known in England were both grown at Alfristan but possibly the record has since been broken the smallest church in Sussex is however still to Alfristan's credit for Lullington church on the hillside just across the river and the fields to the east of Alfristan church may be considered to belong to Alfristan without any violence to its independence as a matter of fact the church was once bigger the chancell alone now standing what Charles Lamb says of Hullington church in chapter 26 of this book would be more fitting of Lullington we have come to Alfristan from Lewis proposing to return there but it might well be made a centre so much fine hill country does it command Alfristan to Seaford direct over the hills and back of the cliffs and the Cuckmere valley Alfristan to Eastbourne crossing the Cuckmere at Littlington and beginning the ascent of the hills at West Dean Alfristan to Lewis over Furl Beacon Alfristan to New Haven direct Alfristan to Jevington and Willingdon all these routes cover good down country making the best of primitive rambles by day and bringing one at evening back to the star this medieval inn in the best of primitive villages few persons however are left who will climb hills even grass hills if they can help it the hill is likely to lead to no overcrowding of four down the camp, Five Lordsborough South Hill or Furl Beacon I might here perhaps be allowed to insert some verses upon the new locomotion since they bear upon this question of walking in remote places and were composed to some extent in Sussex Byways in the spring of 1903 a song against speed of speed the savour and the sting none but the weak deride but ah the joy of lingering about the countryside the swiftest wheel, the conquering run we count no privilege beside acquiring in the sun the secret of the hedge where is the poet fired to sing the snail's discreet degrees a rhapsody of sauntering a gloria of ease proclaiming there's the baser part who consciously foreswear the delicate and gentle art of never getting there to get there first it is time to ring the knell of such an aim to be the swiftest riches bring so easily that fame to shine a highway meteor devourer of the map a vulgar bliss to choose before repose in nature's lap consider too how smaller thing the highest speed you gain a beak and frolic on the wing around the fastest train think of the swallow in the air the salmon in the stream and cease to boast the records rare of paraffin and steam most most of all when comes the spring to gain to lay as now her hand benign and quickening on meadow hill and bower should speed's enchantment lose its power for none who would exceed the mother speaks a mile an hour my heart a right can read the turnpike from the car to fling as from a yacht the sea is doubtless as in can be I grant the glory the romance but look behind the veil suppose that while the motor pants you miss the nightingale to return to alfredston there are two brief excursions possible in the vehicles that are glanced at in the foregoing verses which ought to be described here to alcistan and to wilmington alcistan is a little hamlet under the east slope of furl beacon practically no more than a farmhouse, a church and dependent cottages it is on a road that leads only to itself and to the hill as the signboards say here about it is perhaps as nearly forgotten as any village in the county and yet I know of no village with more unobtrusive charm the church which has no vicar is known, being served from selmyston a mile away, stands high amid its graves the whole church-yard having been heaped up and ramparded much as a castle is in the hollow to the west of the church is part of the farmyard a pond, a vast barn with one of the noblest red roofs in these parts and the ruins of a stone pigeon-house of great age and solidity buttressed and built as if made curious contrast to the gentle pretty purpose for which it was intended between the church and the hill and almost adjoining it is the farmhouse where the church keys are kept a relic of Alcyst and Grange once the property of battle abbey with odds and ends of its past life still visible and a flourishing fig tree at the back heavy with fruit when I saw it under a september sun the front of the house looks east across a valley of corn to Berwick church on a corresponding mound and beyond Berwick to the downs above Wilmington and at the foot of the garden on the top of the grey wall above the moat is a long narrow terrace of turf commanding this eastern view a terrace meet for Benedict and Beatrice to pace exchanging railery in Berwick church by the way is a memorial to George Hall a former rector of whom it is said that his name speaks all learning humane and divine and that his memory is precious both to the muses and the graces the reverend George Hall's works seem however to have vanished Wilmington northeast of Alfriston occupies a corresponding position to that of Alcyst in the northwest but having a lion in the shape of the long man it has lost its virginal bloom Wilmington is providing tea and ginger beer while Alcyst nurses its unsullied inaccessibility the long man is a rude figure cut in the turf by the monks of the Benedictine Priory that once flourished here the ruins of which are now incorporated like Alcyst and Grange in a farmhouse on the east of the village at least it is thought by some antiquaries that the effigy is the work of the monks others pronounce it druidical the most alluring of several theories indeed would have the figure to represent pole or boulder the sun god pushing aside the doors of darkness pole gate or bowls gate nearby being brought in as evidence end of chapter 28 chapter 29 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 29 smuggling Alfriston's place in history was one by its smugglers all Sussex smuggled more or less but smuggling may be said to have been Alfriston's industry one close by offered unique advantages it was retired, the coast was unpopulated the roadway inland started immediately from the beach the valley was in friendly hands the paths and contours of the hills were not easily learned by revenue men nature from the first clearly intended that Alfriston men should be too much for the excise smuggling was predestined farmers, shepherds ocelars what you will that is respectable these Alfriston men might be by day and when the moon was bright but when the darks came round they were smugglers every one chief of what was known nearly a hundred years ago as the Alfriston gang was Stanton Collins who lived at Market Cross House Collins employed his men not only in assisting him in smuggling this is removed from that calling by a wide gulf thus when Mr. Betts the minister of the Lady Huntington Chapel at Alfriston was high-handedly suspended by the chief trustee of the chapel on account of his opposition to that gentleman's proposed union with his deceased wife's sister it was Collins's gang who invaded the chapel ejected the new minister replaced Mr. Betts in the pulpit mounted guard around it while he continued the service Mr. Betts was equal to the occasion he gave out to him God moves in a mysterious way Collins terrorized the countryside for some years except upon the score of personal bravery and humorous audacity I doubt if his place is quite on the golden role of smugglers and was at length brought within the power of the law for sheep-stealing sentenced to seven years the last of his gang, Bob Hall died in the work-house at Eastbourne in 1895 aged 94 Sussex may always be proud of her best smugglers there were brutal scoundrels among them such as the men that murdered Chaitre and were executed at Chichester in 1748 note the report may be read in Mr. H. L. Stevens's State Trials volume four, end-note but the ordinary smuggler was often a fine, rebellious fellow courageous, resourceful and gifted with a certain grim humor that led him, as we have seen to hide his tubs as often in the Belfry or the churchyard as anywhere else and enough knowledge of character to tell him when he might secure the silence of the vicar with an oblatory keg the Sussex clergy seemed to have needed very little encouragement to omit smuggling from the decalogue it is, I think, the late Mr. Coker Egerton of Burwash who tells of a Sussex parson feigning illness a whole Sunday on hearing suddenly in the morning that a cargo hard-pressed by the revenue had in despair been lodged among his pews but the classical passage on this subject comes from Cornwall from the pen of R. S. Hawker the vicar of Morwenstow and the author of The Song of the Western Men he was not himself a smuggler but his parishioners had no scruples and his heart was with the braver side of the business it was full sea in the evening of an autumn day when a traveller arrived where the road ran along by a sandy beach just above Highwatermark the stranger who was a native of some inland town and utterly unacquainted with Cornwall and its ways had reached the brink of the tide just as a landing was coming off it was a scene not only to instruct a townsman but also to dazzle and surprise at sea just beyond the billows lay the vessel well moored with anchors at stem and stern between the ship and the shore boats laden to the gunnel past to and fro crowds assembled on the beach to help the cargo ashore on the one hand a boisterous group surrounded a keg with the head knocked in for simplicity of access to the good cognac into which they dipped whatever vessel came first to hand one man had filled his shoe on the other side they fought and wrestled cursed and swore horrified at what he saw the stranger lost all self-command and oblivious of personal danger he began to shout what horrible sight have you no shame is there no magistrate at hand cannot any justice of the peace be found in this fearful country no thanks be to God answered a horse gruff voice none within eight miles well then screamed the stranger is there no clergyman here about does no minister of the parish live among you on this coast I to be sure there is said the same deep voice well how far off does he live where is he that's he sir yonder with the lantern and sure enough there he stood on a rock and poured with pastoral diligence the light of other days on a busy congregation the clergy however did not always know how useful they were the Reverend Webster Whistler of Hastings records that he was awakened one night to receive a votive casque of brandy as his share of the spoil which to his surprise his church tower had been harboring a commoner method was to leave the gift the tithe silently on the doorstep revenue officers have perhaps been placated in the same way smuggling in the old use of the word is no more the surreptitious introduction into this country of German cigars odor cologne and Tauchnitz novels does not merit the term a revised tariff having removed the necessity for smuggling the game is over for that is the reason of the disappearance of the smuggler rather than any increased vigilance on the part of the Coast Guard the records of smuggling show that to the profession by the government were difficulties that existed merely to be overcome perhaps fiscal reform may restore the old pastime the word smuggler arouses in the mind the figure of a bold and desperate mariner searching the Coast for a signal that all is safe to land his cargo but as a matter of fact the men who ran the greatest risks were not the marine smugglers at all but the land smugglers took the tubs on the shore and conveyed them to a hiding place preparatory to the journey to London with the major part was perilously taken such were the alfredston smugglers these were the men who fought the revenue officers and had the hare's breadth escapes these were the men whose houses were watched whose every movement was suspected who needed to be wily as the serpent and to know the country inch by inch the sea smuggler ran no risks on the contrary he was continually in danger from revenue cutters and the coast guards boats bloody fights in the channel were by no means rare he was 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 the 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 officers 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 Grinsted March 13th, 14th, 15th and 16th, 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 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 would 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 on all the routes employed by the land smugglers were certain cottages and farmhouses where tubs might be hidden houses still abound supplied with unexpected recesses and vast cellars where cargos 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 smugglers half way house filled as 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 Wytheam the sun strikes hot enough would you like to ride in the shade a while? immensely I replied keep after me then said he but the wrong 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 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 space only and in Indian file what is the meaning of it all? I asked him 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 folk grew to use the new roads as they were made leaving the lanes unheeded to be overgrown here and there certain basefellows of the Leuda sort commonly called smugglers may have deepened them further and improved on what nature had begun so well as a result that you can ride many a mile mole-like if you know your way from the sea coast northward never showing your face above ground at all that is what it means he ended 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 as a child after saying her prayers she was put early to bed with the strict injunction now mind if the gentleman come along don't you look out of the window the gentleman 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 gentleman between the coast and the capital end of chapter 29