THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 GLIMPSES 
 
 OF 
 
 n 
 
 WITH 
 
 SKETCHES 
 
 OF 
 
 SUSSEX CHARACTERS, REMARKABLE 
 INCIDENTS, &c. 
 
 BT 
 
 CHARLES FLEET, 
 
 Author of " Tales and Sketches? " The City Merchant? 
 
 ' I have some rights of memory in this ' County,' 
 Whkh now to claim my vantage doth invite me." Shahpeare, 
 
 BRIGHTON : 
 W. J. SMITH, 41, 42, AND 43, NOBTH STREET. 
 
 1878.
 
 FLEET AND BISHOP, 
 
 PRINTERS, 
 "HERALD" OFFICE, BRIGHTON.
 
 Library 
 
 DA 
 
 TO THE READER. 
 
 The contents of this Volume appeared in the columns of 
 the BRIGHTON HERALD in the years 1875-6-7, under the title of 
 " GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS," and the Author of them is 
 induced to re-publish them in their present form by the frequent 
 applications which have been made for the numbers of the 
 Journal containing them. With the hope that they may help 
 to fill up a gap or two in the history of Men and Manners in 
 his native County, and with full acknowledgment of the large 
 debt he owes, in respect to the matter of several Papers, to 
 the contributors to the Collections of the Sussex Archaeological 
 Society especially to his old and esteemed friends, the late Mark 
 Antony Lower and William Durrant Cooper he commits his 
 work fo the indulgent consideration of the Public.
 
 CONTENTS.- 
 
 I. THE SUSSEX DIARISTS . . , I 
 
 2. THE SUSSEX IRONMASTERS . . .64. 
 
 3. THE SUSSEX SMUGGLERS . . . .73 
 
 4. THE SOUTH-DOWN SHEPHERD . . .87 
 
 5. THE SUSSEX SHEEP-SHEARER . . .98 
 6. SUSSEX CHARACTERS : 
 
 THE SUSSEX COTTAGE-WIFE. . . .105 
 
 THE OLD SUSSEX RADICAL . . . .112 
 
 THE OLD SUSSEX TORY . . . .119 
 
 THE SUSSEX COUNTRY DOCTOR . . .127 
 
 SELF-EDUCATED SUSSEX MEN . . . 135 
 
 THE LAST OF THE SUSSEX M.C.'s . . .150 
 
 THE LAST OF HIS KIND . . . .156 
 
 7. THE SUSSEX REGICIDES . . . .164 
 
 8. -SUSSEX TRAGEDIES AND ROMANCES . . 188 
 
 9. SUSSEX POETS . . . . . .224 
 
 lo.-SOCIAL CHANGES IN SUSSEX : 
 
 SERVANTS AND THEIR WAGES . . .271 
 
 SUSSEX ROADS . . . . . . 287 
 
 Music IN SUSSEX . . . . 293
 
 of 
 
 THE SUSSEX DIARISTS. 
 
 ^REAT changes, material, political, social, are easily seen. 
 They stand out on the surface. Every body can discern 
 the difference between a railway and a highway ; between 
 Fielding's Squire Western and the modern country gentleman. 
 But there are other changes, scarcely less important, which are not 
 so easily to be noted : for instance, between the men who carry on 
 the general trade of country-places in the present day and those who 
 carried it on, say 100 years ago. That such a class as this has 
 participated in the changes which have been going on all over the 
 country, who will deny r But who is to note the change ? Who 
 to describe it ? Who to draw the portrait of " the general trader " 
 at one end of the century and compare it with the lineal successor 
 of the same individual at the other ? How rarely do we get a correct 
 delineation of such classes as these, or, indeed, of any classes in 
 country places. A Fielding will draw the Squire and Parson, the fast 
 young man and poacher and barber of his day, and a Thackeray will 
 do something in the same way in his; but they select different classes 
 and points of view. The one takes the country the other, the 
 town. We still miss the point of comparison. In fact, the country 
 is passing more and more out of the range of vision of writers of 
 fiction ; these writers live in towns, and naturally describe what 
 they see most of: that is, town manners. So, perhaps, 100 years 
 hence, our descendants will wonder what kind of creature was 
 the agricultural labourer, or even the farmer, or small country 
 tradesman of these days. And, unless any of this class happen
 
 2 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 to have kept a Diary, and this Diary shall happen to have been 
 preserved, the feeling of wonder will go unsatisfied ! 
 
 But " sufficient for the day is the evil thereof." Let us make 
 use of some of the material which other ages have provided for 
 us 'and endeavour to present, as much as possible in their own 
 language, some of the moral and social features and characteristics 
 of our forefathers to their successors of the present day, beginning 
 with The Sussex Diarists. 
 
 The range of the Sussex Diaries is from 1655 to 1750, 
 Previous to the earlier date, clerkly accomplishments were rare 
 except in the higher spheres of life, and it is not in that sphere that 
 Diaries are to be found. The Duchess of Newcastle (who lived 
 in the reign of the two Charles's) is an exception to the rule ; but 
 she was not a Sussex woman, nor were the Pastons (who kept 
 Diaries during the Wars of the Roses) a Sussex family. Would 
 that they had been ! Sussex had its men of letters in Andrew de 
 la Borde, the original " Merry Andrew," and the author of that 
 " merry conceit," the " Wise Men of Gotham," as also in Nicholas 
 Culpepper, the author of the Herbal. But neither of these men 
 was a Diarist. They were, perhaps, too occupied with other, and, 
 as they thought, higher matters. Men who keep Diaries would 
 seem, according to our Sussex experience, to be " home-staying 
 youths " men with a certain amount of leisure, and whose minds 
 are more active than their bodies ; not engaged in great affairs, 
 for these engross the mind and lead it from smaller details, such 
 as make up Diaries, to the contemplation of greater results, but 
 men in the middle ranks of life, to whom ordinary passing events, 
 such as occur in all civilized communities, possess an interest, and 
 are not as yet so insignificant as to be utterly unworthy to be re- 
 corded. We are afraid that such is the case now ; that Diarists 
 are an extinct class. They have been superseded by the news- 
 paper. Of what use, it may now be asked, for individuals to 
 chronicle events which it is the business of the journalist to send 
 forth to the world with all the authority of official and verbatim 
 reports ? The notes of a Pepys or an Evelyn would now only be 
 partial and incorrect copies of the Times or the Telegraph. No ;
 
 THE SUSSEX DIARISTS. 3 
 
 the golden days of the English Diarists are gone ; they extend 
 from the period of the Reformation, when the middle ranks began 
 to read and write, up to the introduction of the newspaper. 
 
 All our Sussex diaries fall within that period, and they fill up 
 a most important gap in social history. We are afraid the news- 
 paper itself will not supply to coming ages that insight into 
 domestic life and manners that peep at personal peculiarities 
 at the little failings and the foibles of men their peccadilloes and 
 prejudices which we get in the diaries of the Rev. Giles Moore, 
 Rector of Kforstead Keynes ; Thomas Turner, general shopkeeper, 
 of East Hothly ; Anthony Stapley, Squire of Hickstead Place ; 
 Walter Gale, schoolmaster, of Mayfield ; Leonard Gale, iron- 
 master, of Worth ; Thomas Marchant, yeoman, of " Little Park," 
 Hurst ; Counsellor Timothy Burrell, of Cuckfield; and Dr. Burton, 
 of Oxford. 
 
 The names and avocations of the above list of Sussex 
 Diarists bear out our statement that it is the middle classes that 
 have been the largest contributors to this species of literature, and 
 not so much the noble or rich or learned, who might be supposed 
 to have most leisure for such occupation, not so much these as 
 the ordinarily educated and intelligent man, interested in his own 
 and his neighbours' affairs, and with business habits to which the 
 keeping of a daily record might be a help as well as a diversion. 
 
 It is to be regretted that no female diary has been discovered, 
 or published, in Sussex, which might give us a glimpse of th 
 ladies' side of the question ! In a description of the hall or re- 
 fectory of an old English mansion it is said that an aperture was 
 left in the "bower" of the lady in the upper story, through which 
 she could hear the wise, and, doubtless, sometimes the foolish things 
 said by her lord when he was feasting with his friends below. Now, 
 a diary is just such a peephole as this, through which the actions of 
 one generation are revealed to another ; and, to be complete, the 
 lady should tell her story as well as the lord. But, unfortunately, 
 no lady thought of doing this in Sussex at least, if kept, her 
 record has not been found, and so we must be content to take the
 
 4 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 evidence from 'the only party who puts in an appearance, and 
 that is the male. 
 
 The first witness whom we will call into Court is the Rev. 
 Giles Moore, Rector of Horstead Keynes, whose diary extends 
 from 1655 to 1679. He is methodical, frank, concise, and good- 
 tempered ; in fact, has most of the good qualities of a good 
 diarist, and though we could have wished he had told us a little 
 about things more interesting than the price he paid for his 
 extinguishers, his bellows, his grate, the shoeing of his horses, &c., 
 &c., yet, as it was in order to chronicle these items that he kept 
 the Diary, we must take the boon as he gives it, and get as much 
 instruction and information out of it as we can. 
 
 The Rev. Giles Moore was, we are afraid, open to the charge 
 of "time-serving." He was one of those gentry called, in the 
 Commonwealth times, " Compounders ; " and it was with his own 
 conscience as well as with the Protector, Oliver Cromwell, that 
 he compounded. He was, in point of fact, a Royalist and an 
 Episcopalian. According to his own statement, he was serving in 
 the ranks of the Royalists (in what capacity he does not say 
 perhaps as Chaplain) when he was taken prisoner by Essex's army. 
 How long he remained so, we do not know ; but in 1655 he was 
 presented to the Rectory of Horstead Keynes (then .vacant by the 
 death of Mr. James Pell) by Mr. William Michelborne, of Broad- 
 hurst and Stanmer, whom he calls his patron, and being admitted 
 by " the Commissioners for the approbation of Publique Preachers 
 sitting at Whitehall" (a body of men, partly ministers, partly 
 laymen, appointed by Cromwell and his Council for the proper 
 filling-up of benefices in England and Wales), he " removed fully 
 and wholly from Lindfield to Horstead Canes " (sic.), where he 
 immediately commenced his Diary (from February, 1655), and 
 continued it up to within a few days of his death in 1679. It 
 occupies 60 pages of the first volume of the Sussex Archaeological 
 Collections ; and the greater part of the entries relate to the price 
 of things bought and sold, the amount of tithe taken for lands, 
 crops, &c., and the personal expenses of the Rev. Giles Moore. 
 
 But ever and anon a fact crops up which helps to diversify
 
 THE SUSSEX DIARISTS. 5 
 
 the otherwise dry and matter-of-fact character of the Diary. 
 Thus, how business was carried on in Sussex more than 200 years 
 ago may be guessed from the fact that the Rector bought his 
 " coverletts," blankets, bolsters, &c., of William Clowson,* "up- 
 holsterer itinerant, living over against the Crosse at Chichester, 
 but wJw comes about the country with his packs on horseback" 
 This, in fact, was the way in which business was chiefly carried on 
 in Sussex in the iyth century. The roads were too heavy for 
 vehicles, and " packmen " who rode on horseback were the chief 
 carriers of " dry goods." Still, some of his heavier furniture Mr. 
 Moore procured from London, notably, " a bed, with purple rug, 
 curtaines, &c., which cost mee altogether ^20 i6s. yd." 
 
 If this was dear, house labour was cheap. To his man- 
 servant, Mr. Moore paid ^5 a-year ; and to his maid-servant, 
 Rose Colman, $. What would be said to such salaries at the 
 present time, even if doubled to allow for the depreciation of gold ? 
 
 If Mrs. Moore had kept a diary (would that she had !) she 
 would doubtless have told us what her weekly household expenses 
 were. Mr. Moore does not do so ; but one entry shows that the 
 labour of carrying on " the house " was a divided one that the 
 wife had her department distinct from the husband's. Ex. gr. : 
 " I bought of my wyfe a fat hog to spend in my family, for the 
 which I payed the summe of 305. ; the two flitches of bacon, 
 when dryed, weighed 64lb. I gave her to buy a qr. of lambe 
 3s. 6d." 
 
 Thus buying and selling went on between husband and 
 wife a novelty to us. 
 
 The religious practice of that day the very acme of Puritan- 
 ism was very strict and severe. Mr. Moore has several entries 
 of the number of communicants at his Church, and in three Com- 
 munions they numbered on an average above 180 persons. To 
 
 * Was this William Clowson an ancestor of that William Clowes who went 
 from Chichester 100 years later and established the world-famed printing business 
 of Clowes and Son ? Names got very much altered cropped or augmented in 
 past ages.
 
 6 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 this Mr. R. W. Blencowe (who edits the Diary for the Sussex 
 Archaeological Society) attaches a note to the effect that in the 
 three last years (preceding 1848) the average number of com- 
 municants at Horsted Keynes at eight sacraments had been 148 
 persons : that is, considerably less than the number who attended 
 three Communions in Mr. Moore's time. But we must bear in 
 mind that the reign of Cromwell and the Puritans was an 
 exceptional period for the practice of religion. And with many, 
 doubtless, religion and morality went hand in hand. But not with 
 all. The license of the following reign showed that, with the 
 majority, both religion and morality were but skin deep, and even 
 in those stern times, when play-houses were shut up and the may- 
 pole was pulled down, there did not lack occasional proofs of the 
 weakness of the flesh even, alas ! in the household of the Rev. 
 Giles Moore. Here is one, under the date of November 8, 1659 : 
 
 " Thos. Dumbrell came to mee as servant to dwell with mee, 
 with whom I agreed to give after the rate of ^5 a yeare. On the 
 22nd Dec. I payed him up to that time i 8s. ; that same night I 
 found him sleeping with my mayd Mary, and I packed them off. Jan. 
 2nd I marryed Thos. Uumbrell and Mary his wyfe gratis, and I gave 
 him on his wedding 8 stone of beefe i6s. 8d. a hind qr. of mutton 
 35. 4d. and a lambe 75. 6d., besydes butter, wheate, and fewell." 
 
 The Rev. Giles Moore must have been of a more forgiving 
 temper than many of his Reverend brethren in those stern days, 
 or Thomas Dumbrell and " my mayd Mary " would have come off 
 less easily than this ! 
 
 The above domestic event occurred during the Protectorate. 
 But let -not the enemies of Puritanism triumph over that ! In 
 1676, after the King had got "his own again," and the true 
 Church had been reinstated in all its rights, something very much 
 like a parallel event occurs in the household of the Rev. Giles 
 Moore : 
 
 " 1 3th October I marryed Henry Place and Mary Holden, my 
 two servants, and spent at theyr wedding 203. ; I gave the fiddlers is. 
 I also gave them a large cake, all theyr fewell, and the use of my
 
 THE SUSSEX DIARISTS. 7 
 
 house and stables for 2 dayes, with a quart of white wine, being in all 
 not less than 405. or one yeares wages. On the 6th of February 
 
 following shee was delivered of a daughter,so that the (and here the 
 
 Rev. diarist uses a very strong expression) went but 15 weekes and 
 five dayes after her marriage." 
 
 We are afraid that, so far as the morals of Horstead Keynes 
 were concerned, there was not much to choose between King and 
 Protector ! 
 
 It will be noticed that there were fiddlers at the wedding of 
 Henry Place and Mary Holden ; and on various other occasions 
 the Rev. Giles Moore makes an entry to the same effect : " I payd 
 the fiddlers 6d.," or is. This shows that the fiddlers were a fixed 
 institution in country parishes 250 years ago, and so they con- 
 tinued until our own times, " a case of viols " being kept for their 
 use in most villages. These are the only references to music by 
 the Rector of Horstead Keynes, except a not over flattering entry 
 anent the national instrument of Scotland : " To a begging Welch- 
 man and a bagpipe player, 6d. each." 
 
 As may be concluded from these entries, the Rev. Giles 
 Moore was very careful in the setting-down of his out-goings ; and 
 the national taxes and poor rates begin about this time to figure 
 rather largely and frequentl yin the Diary. At first the requisi- 
 tions made by Oliver upon the country for the support of his 
 army, navy, and government generally must have seemed very 
 exorbitant. But it could not be denied that the Protector gave 
 quid pro quo, and that the interests and the glory of England 
 were protected by him and the country well-governed. Still, the 
 people rejoiced when Charles the Second was restored in 1660 ; 
 and the Rector of Horstead Keynes, who, as we have seen, fought 
 or prayed perhaps both for the Royal cause in his youth, was 
 foremost amongst the rejoicers. As, during the Commonwealth, 
 he had occasionally aired his Latin by giving expression to his 
 loyal feelings in that safe language, so now he poured forth his 
 rejoicings at the restoration of Monarchy in the same classic and 
 orthodox form. But the Rev. Giles Moore scon found that, 
 whether under King or Protector, he had to " pay the piper," and,
 
 8 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 under the former, to a more lively tune than the latter. Assess- 
 ments both for King's taxes and for poor-rates became both 
 heavier and more frequent. In April, 1665, the Rector records 
 as follows : 
 
 " A taxe was made for the reliefe of the poor of the parish, at gd. 
 in the , I being then raysed from 16 to ^30 per an. I payed for 
 the parsonage and glebe \ 2s. 6d. This single time I payd 125. 6d. 
 extraordinary, through Fields malignity, with Cripps concurrence ; the 
 next poore booke, however, I got it downe againe. In Deer. I payed 
 another taxe for the poore at 3d. in the ." 
 
 " There are," adds Mr. Blencowe, " two assessments for King's 
 taxes recorded in this year (1665) ; the share paid by the Rector 
 amounted to 2 123. 6d." Three years later, in 1668, the 
 King's taxes paid by the Rector amounted to ^7 6s., or just treble, 
 exclusive of hearth-money and poll-tax ; and he began, shrewdly 
 remarks Mr. Blencowe, to show symptoms of what, in after ages, 
 Lord Castlereagh called, an " ignorant impatience of taxation." 
 He was, in fact, paying for his loyalty, and getting very little 
 return for his money ; for the foreign wars of Charles (against 
 the Dutch) were disastrous ; and the internal government was any- 
 thing but satisfactory. The poll-tax and hearth-tax referred to in the 
 above entry pressed most unfairly upon the working and middle 
 classes, who paid in respect to the first as much as the wealthy, 
 whilst the latter laid open the habitations of all to the tax-gatherer. 
 That the hearth-tax was not a light one we can gather from the 
 following entry : 
 
 " To Mr. Moore, of East Grinstead, collector, for 8 fire hearths 
 due for one whole yeare expiring at Michaelmas, together with one 
 yeare more for the brewhouse chimney, I payed i8s." 
 
 Pepys, who was keeping his diary at the same time as the 
 Sussex Rector, was better informed as to the extravagant ex- 
 penditure of the Court at this time. " It was," he says, writing 
 in 1666, " computed that the Parliament had given the King for
 
 THE SUSSEX DIARISTS. 9 
 
 this war only, besides prizes, and besides the ,200,000 which he 
 was to spend of his own revenue to guard the sea, above 
 ^5,000,000 and odd ; 100,000, which is a most prodigious sum. 
 It is strange how everybody do now a days reflect upon Oliver, 
 and commend him ; what brave things he did, and made all the 
 neighbouring princes to fear him ; while here, a prince come in 
 with all the love and prayers and good liking of his people, who 
 have given greater signs of loyalty and willingness to serve him 
 with their estates than was ever done by any people, hath lost all 
 so soon, that it is a miracle what way a man could devise to lose 
 so much in so short a time." 
 
 Friend Pepys took care to write in cypher, or this reference to 
 the " brave things that Oliver did " might have cost him dearly ! 
 
 Poor-rates also continued to increase in Horstead Keynes. 
 In 1730 they had reached 23. gd. in the ^, and in 1831 they 
 amounted to 2 a-head in a population of 782 persons. Even 
 in 1848 they averaged 6s. 4d. in the . Horstead Keynes, 
 indeed, was, from some cause or other perhaps its remoteness 
 from any large town, lying as it does in the very centre of the 
 Weald of Sussex, one of the poorest and most neglected, though 
 most picturesque villages in the South of England. It was here 
 that the Sussex peasantry met when they broke out into something 
 like rebellion against their lords and masters, and made the re- 
 porter of the Brighton Herald (professionally present at their 
 meeting) a few hours' prisoner in order that he might put 
 into shape the rough draft of their petition to Parliament for 
 a redress of grievances. On a subsequent occasion the Riot Act 
 was read (by Mr. Mabbott, if we recollect rightly) and the agri- 
 cultural labourers of East Sussex were put down with a strong 
 hand. 
 
 But enough of taxation. Let us turn to more agreeable 
 matters. What will Rectors' wives of the present day say to this 
 indication of the tastes of Mistress Giles Moore ? " Tobacco for 
 my wyfe, 3d." It was, really, a little too bad of the Rector to 
 put down this. Why couldn't he let his " wyfe " have her three- 
 penny worth of tobacco without telling all succeeding generations
 
 10 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 of it? Oh, that Mrs. Moore [had only thought of setting down 
 all the Rector's little indulgences ! 
 
 "For a Ib. of sugar, to preserve quinces, is." shows the high 
 price of colonial produce at that day (Oliver had only recently 
 annexed Jamaica to the English Crown). There are numerous 
 other proofs of it, whilst, on the other hand, home produce was 
 very cheap. Thus, in 1662, " I pay'd for 3 pecks of barley malt 
 2S. 7d. ; for nibs, of beef, 23. 2d." 
 
 Wine was also cheap. Claret and " sack," that is, dry sherry 
 (sherry sec) were chiefly drunk ; the former was is. per bottle, and 
 the latter little more. Here is one entry: " ist April, 1662. I 
 had 5 bottles of claret, and as many of sack from London, for 
 which I payed, and for the bringing them down, at 2d. the bottle, 
 in all i2s. For a pint of old sack 6d., 2 quarts of muscadine 33. 
 2 ounces of tobacco is. For a sugar loafe weighing 4 pounds is." 
 
 Mr. Giles Moore was evidently a temperate man for the 
 times ; and this entry in February, 1668, on the principle of the 
 exception proving the rule, shows it : 
 
 " This evening, between nine and ten o'clock, when I had began 
 prayers with my family, I was so overpowered with the effects of some 
 perry which I had taken, not knowing how strong that liquor was, 
 that I was obliged to break off abruptly. O God ! lay not this sin 
 to my charge ! " 
 
 The original entry, we may add, like the Rev. Diarist's 
 political effusions of an earlier date, is in Latin. 
 
 Close to this entry we have two " signs of the times," 
 videlicet: " I was with Mistress Chaloner and bargained with her 
 at 1 2 per an. for board and schooling for Mat." "I gave Mr 
 Salisbury, a begging Minister, 4d." 
 
 The Mistress Chaloner to whom Mat. (an adopted daughter 
 of the Diarist), was sent for a year's schooling and board at ^12- 
 a year (!), was, doubtless, a member of the great Chaloner family, 
 whose Sussex seat in the i;th century was at Kennard's, Lindfield, 
 and whose head, now in exile, " Ye Major Chaloner of Ken- 
 nard's," had been an active adherent of the Commonwealth, and
 
 THE SUSSEX DIARISTS. II 
 
 was punished by the confiscation of his estates. His family, 
 doubtless, shared in this reverse of fortune, and this " Mistress 
 Chaloner " had to keep a school in London, to which " Mat. " was 
 sent, on terms which would make the heads of modern Seminaries 
 cast up their eyes in wonder. The "begging Minister" was, 
 doubtless, as Mr. Blencowe surmises, one of those unfortunate 
 Ministers of the Church of England who, admitted, like Mr. Giles 
 Moore, to benefices during the Commonwealth, refused, unlike 
 him, to conform to the new doctrines introduced after the 
 Restoration, and so "went out" one "black Monday" to 
 poverty and often destitution, to the number of 2,000. Non- 
 conformists do not forget this little fact even at the present day. 
 Two circumstances point significantly to the alteration in diet 
 which has taken place since the days of the second Charles. The 
 first is, the frequent reference in this and other Diaries to fresh- 
 water fish, now so insignificant a matter in domestic economy ; 
 the other is, the total absence of any mention of the potato. It 
 was, as Mr. Blencowe remarks in a note, introduced into England 
 probably by Raleigh in the reign of James I., for, in an 
 account of the household expenses of his Queen, there is an entry 
 of their purchase at 25. per Ib, But the cultivation of it was slow, 
 " and," says Mr. Blencowe, "before the year 1684, when they were 
 first planted in the open fields in Lancashire, they were raised only 
 in the gardens of the rich." And then Mr. Blencowe gives the 
 following interesting account (on the authority of his friend, Col. 
 Davies), of the introduction of potatoes into Sussex : 
 
 " ' William Warnett, of Horstead Keynes, yeoman, who is turned 
 of 90, but in full possession of his faculties, says that before the year 
 1765, when he was seven years old, potatoes had never been heard of 
 in this neighbourhood ; that in that year the late Lord Sheffield, who 
 had recently purchased the Sheffield estate, brought some, as it was 
 reported, from Ireland, and that his father received a few from his 
 lordship's gardener. He adds, that no one knew how to plant them, 
 but that they got a man who worked on the road, and who came from 
 some distant County, to plant them, which he continued to do 
 regularly on old Lady Day for many years, and it was very long before 
 they began to plant them in the fields. They used in those times to
 
 12 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 leave their potatoes in the ground all the winter, covering the ground 
 with brakes, and taking them up as they wanted them for use. Before 
 potatoes came into use, pease pudding was usually part of the dinner. 
 So strong was the prejudice against them, that, at the elections which 
 took place at Lewes about this period, it shared with Popery the 
 indignation of the people, and ' No Popery, no potatoes ! ' was the 
 popular cry.'" 
 
 In France the cultivation of the potato by the poor was still 
 more tardy than in England ; and, doubtless, our readers will call 
 to mind the graphic account which is given, in MM. Erckmann- 
 Chatrian's " History of a Peasant," of the excitement produced 
 at Phalsbourg when the first crop of potatoes ever raised in 
 Alsace made its appearance in the garden of the black- 
 smith, Maitre Jacques, the ridicule which attended the 
 planting of the peelings, which had been brought from Germany 
 the curiosity excited by the first appearance of the green sprouts 
 above the ground, and the triumph with which the wonderful roots 
 were dug up and the gusto with which they were eaten. It marked 
 an era in the life of the French peasant. 
 
 The introduction of the potato and other vegetables and 
 fruits, and their greater use by all classes, contributed not a little, 
 doubtless, to check the prevalence of that " dire disorder," the 
 scurvy, from which the Rector of Horstead Keynes himself suffered 
 and for which his brother in the Isle of Wight constantly sent him 
 " scurvy water and scurvy grass." 
 
 Another mode of curing (?) this and all other diseases was by 
 " letting blood." Such entries as this constantly occur in the 
 Diary : " I was bled as usual at haemorroyadal times the quantity 
 of 10 oz., for which I paid Mr. Parker 3d." On which entry, Mr. 
 Blencowe remarks, " The custom of being blooded at the Spring 
 and Fall of the year prevailed till within a few years. The 
 labourers generally attended the village surgeon on a Sunday 
 morning, that their week's work might not be interrupted ; the 
 charge for bleeding them being 6d. each." 
 
 It is only in our days that this most pernicious practice has 
 been completely exploded, though Le Sage had made it the object
 
 THE SUSSEX DIARISTS. 13. 
 
 of his satire, directed against Dr. Sangrado, in Gil Bias, 150 
 years before. 
 
 Newspapers had no existence in the Rev. Giles Moore's 
 days ; but the " Gazettes " and " Letters " out of which they 
 sprang had made their appearance during the preceding civil war, 
 and they were not to be rooted out by the Licenser of the Press, 
 Sir Roger L'Estrange. Our Sussex Diarist had evidently acquired 
 a taste for them. Ex. gr. : " To John Morley, for gazettes read 
 from Lady Day till Midsr., at id. per each gazette, is. 3d. I 
 payed him for i qr. newes bookes, zs. 6d. ; and I promised him a 
 paier of old breeches for his letters." A mode of barter not very 
 complimentary to literature. But, doubtless, John Morley was 
 only the carrier, not the inventor of the news ! Another entry of 
 a payment to the same person has a curious addendum: " I 
 payed John Morley for a letter 2d., for carrying news books 
 as. 6d., and 6d. more gratis to stop his mouth." Doubtless there 
 had been some scandal at Horstead Keynes which the Rector did 
 not wish to spread ! 
 
 One entry would puzzle modern readers, did not Mr. 
 Blencowe kindly append an explanation to it. It is this : " 26th 
 Dec. I gave the howling boys 6d." This was not the waits ! 
 " On New Year's Eve," writes Mr. Blencowe, " it was, and it still 
 continues to be the custom, to wassail the orchards. At Horstead 
 Keynes and elsewhere, the ceremony retains the name of ' Apple 
 Howling.' A troop of boys visit the different orchards, and 
 encircling the apple trees, they repeat the following words : 
 
 ' Stand fast root, bear well top, 
 Pray the God send us a good howling crop. 
 Every twig, apples big ; 
 Every bough, apples enou ; 
 Hats full, caps full, 
 Full quarters sacks full.' 
 
 They then shout in chorus, one of the boys accompanying them 
 upon the cow's horn. During this ceremony they rap the trees
 
 14 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 with their sticks. This custom is alluded to in Herrick's 
 ' Hesperides,' p. 311 : 
 
 ' Wassail the trees that they may beare 
 You, many a plum, and many a peare : 
 For more or less fruits they will bring, 
 As you do give them wassailing.' 
 
 This practice is not confined to Sussex ; it prevails in Devon 
 and in Herefordshire." 
 
 Evidence of the manners of the day crops up here and there 
 in the Diary. Ex. gr.: "To Mrs. Stapley, I lost is. at cards" 
 " I bought for my wyfe a new horse pillion, for which I gave 8s." 
 " I payed Wm. Bachelor, at the Tiger Inn, at Lindfield, for a 
 dinner for 12 persons, i 45. ; for beer, bread, and tobacco, 
 75. ;d. ; 3 bottles of sack, 55. ; horse meate, 8d." 
 
 The Tiger Inn still stands at Lindfield, and a curious old 
 building it is ! 
 
 The fashion of tradesmen to put up signs over their doors 
 was in full vogue in Mr. Moore's days. He made not infrequent 
 journeys to London, always riding on horseback, as was the 
 practice in those days, when, indeed, in Sussex there were no 
 roads for vehicles ; and he duly sets down his purchases. Here 
 is one entry as a sample of numerous others : " For 6 yards of 
 black cloth to make a cloake, bought of Mr. Theophilus Smith, at 
 the White Lion, Pauls Church Yard, I payd ^4 i6s., and for 7 
 yards of calaminko to make a cassock ^i 45. 6d., and i qr. of a 
 yard of velvet 6s. ; I bought of Mr. James Allen, at the Hat and 
 Harrow, a new hat, costing mee i ; I bought for my wyfe a lute 
 string hood, costing 6s." 
 
 And so this amusing and instructive Diary goes on from its 
 beginning, in 1655, to its termination, in August, 1679, when it 
 closes in the following suggestive entry : 
 
 " 3rd of August, I payed to Capt. Fishenden for a cephalic 
 playster, and to Mr. Marshall, of Lewis, for a julep, and for something 
 to make mee sleep, 2s, 6d."
 
 THE SUSSEX DIARISTS. 15 
 
 The narcotic must have had the required effect , for the next 
 extract, from the Parish Register, is as follows : 
 
 " Mr. Giles Moore, Minister of this parish, was buryed the 3rd of 
 October, 1679." 
 
 So the Rector of Horstead Keynes slept the long sleep to 
 which there is only one awakening. But his Diary survives, and 
 in it he and his doings will live for many a day, to amuse and 
 interest Sussex people. 
 
 The Stapleys, of Hickstead Place, in the parish of Twineham, 
 may be said to have been a family of Diarists. Their memoranda, 
 in account books and journals, extend from 1607 to 1743 a 
 period of 136 years ! The example was set by John Stapley, who, 
 in addition to being the Squire of Hickstead Place, was a Train- 
 band Captain. His career was in the latter years of the reign of 
 ' ' Good Queen Bess " and the earlier ones of James the First ; but 
 his memoranda, or what remains of them, are limited to one item, 
 namely, " that for all my landes within the whole parish I am to 
 impaile of the churchyard of Twineham 174^2 feet. The church- 
 yard is in compass 28 rods and 2 feet," 
 
 This refers to a custom still, according to the late Rev. E. 
 Turner, observed in some places, of the fences of the churchyard 
 being kept up by the landowners according to the number of acres 
 they possessed in the parish. But, for the most part, we take it, 
 the custom is obsolete, and the burthen is borne by the whole of 
 the parishioners. 
 
 At this early period, 1607-10, the prices of all home- 
 productions were very low, as compared with those which they 
 now fetch. Of course, the value of money has depreciated; a 
 sovereign, a shilling, and a penny 250 years ago were worth double 
 or treble their present value. But, even allowing for this, an ox 
 which weighed " 6oolbs. the foure quarters," would be very cheap 
 at ^9 IDS., and 25. 3d. the stone of 81bs. for mutton would be very 
 acceptable to consumers of butcher's meat. Lambs, too, at 6s. 8d. 
 each (the weight is not specified) Avould not be dear. And these
 
 1 6 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 were the prices of 1610 for meat, whilst those for wheat and eggs 
 may be learnt from the following stanzas of an old ballad ; 
 
 " 111 tell what, old fellowe, 
 
 Before the friars went hence, 
 A bushell of the best wheate 
 
 Was sold for fourteen pence. 
 And forty egges a penny 
 
 That were both good and newe, 
 And this, I say, myself have scene, 
 
 And yet I am no Jewe." 
 
 Forty eggs for a penny ! Will not that make our modern 
 housewives' mouths water ? 
 
 In 1662 wheat was 303. per quarter; peas, 245. per ditto; 
 lime, i2s. per load so that even in the half century which fol- 
 lowed 1610 prices had risen. And they have not ceased to do 
 so from that time to this. 
 
 The Diary of the Rev. Giles Moore bore testimony to the 
 low rate of educational charges in the Charles's day, and the 
 Stapley Diaries confirm it. But we should note that we have now 
 reached the Stapley Diarists Proper. These were the two sons 
 of the before-mentioned John Stapley, the Trainband Captain, 
 and successively the owners of Hickstead Place, namely, Richard 
 Stapley up to 1724 and Anthony up to 1738. These two 
 Stapleys systematically recorded their expenses and the chief 
 events of their lives from 1657, which is contemporaneous with 
 Giles Moore's Diary, and when Oliver Cromwell was England's 
 ruler, until 1738, when George the Second was King ; and Richard 
 Stapley, the son of Anthony, adds a closing memorandum in 1743. 
 What a momentous period in the history of this country ! What 
 vast changes social, religious, political, and, above all, scientific 
 and economical, took place in the interval of the commence- 
 ment and the closing of these Stapley Diaries ! and yet, in the 
 retirement of this little Sussex homestead, the current of life 
 seems to have flowed on with a quietude that no civil or political 
 convulsion could disturb. There were Restorations and Revolu-
 
 THE SUSSEX DIARISTS. 17 
 
 tions Plots, sham and real civil and foreign wars victories and 
 defeats the rise and fall of Ministers, the death and banishment 
 of Kings ; great discoveries in science, by a Newton, a Hervey, 
 and a Boyle ; great changes in the industrial world, such as the in- 
 troduction of coal and the substitution of the iron of Wales for 
 the iron of Sussex. But, of all these changes, we get little or no 
 indications in the Stapley Diaries. A Sussex village like that of 
 Twineham must have been, in those days of impassable roads, 
 almost as remote from the great movements of life at the centres 
 of civilization as the islands of the South Seas are now ; and 
 those who lived in them seemed to concern themselves as little 
 about such movements. They paid taxes, of course and 
 these kept on increasing ! and we presume that they 
 occasionally gave a vote at County elections. But, if so, no note 
 is made of such voting. As Mr. Blencowe remarks, a battle like 
 that of Naseby might have been fought in another County and 
 the news of it never have reached such a village as Twineham ! 
 
 But there were events and incidents even in the Stapley world. 
 There were children born into the world, and they had to be taught 
 to read, write, and reckon. How cheaply, we may infer from the 
 entry (May, 1731) that "Anthonie Stapley went to school to 
 Thomas Painter by the week, to learn to write and read, and cast 
 accounts, at 6d. pet week." Previous to this the same Anthony 
 (a son of Anthony Stapley, we presume) had been to a Brighton 
 boarding school,- and we have this entry : " Paid Grover and 
 Browne, of Brighton, ^7 6s. lod." Doubtless for the year : for 
 at the same period, we are told, "Sarah Stapley went to William 
 Best's to board at 33. 6d. per week. She is to go to Miss Leach's 
 school at 6d. per week ; and Jane, and John, and Samuel went to 
 Dame Bellchamber's the same day, the boys at 2d. and Jane at 
 4d. per week." Again (May 2oth, 1735) " Carried my son John 
 to Mr. Browne, of Lindfield, to be boarded by him at 33. per week. 
 And on the 23rd he is to go to school to John Wood, to learn to 
 read and write, at 6d. per week." 
 
 Verily, the education rate was not a heavy one at Hickstead 
 
 Place ! 
 
 c
 
 1 8 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 The practice of sending children to board with one person, 
 and to another to get their schooling, seems to have been a 
 common one ; and, certainly, the bodily food was better paid for 
 than the intellectual ! Ex. gr. " Paid Thomas Burtenshaw his 
 half-year's salary, for teaching the girls and boys, i IDS." As 
 much is now often paid for a single lesson on the pianoforte ! 
 
 Domestic servants were a different class of persons in the 
 1 7th century from what they are now. They came, indeed, from 
 the same ranks of life those of the agricultural labourer. But 
 their pretensions were much humbler, and their affections seem to 
 have been much more constant. Instances were not rare of both 
 male and female servants devoting their whole lives to their 
 masters and mistresses, and periods of 10, 20, and even 30 years 
 of service in the same family were common ; and that, too, at 
 wages which would now be laughed at. Here are some entries by 
 Mr. Anthony Stapley who kept three men and three maid- 
 servants of the wages he paid them : 
 
 " 1730. Mary White began her year May ist, and is to have 
 i $s. if she stay until May, 1731. Hannah Morley came, and is 
 to have 2 if she stays until Lady Day next. Paid Edwd. Harland 
 and George Virgoe year's wages each, 3 55. James Hazelgrove 
 came to live with me at 6 55. per annum. 
 
 " 1740. Sarah Chandler came to live with me, and she is to 
 have 2 IDS. if she stays until Lady Day, 1741. But as she left my 
 service in about 8 weeks I gave her is. only. Sarah Martin left me, 
 and William Sully. Also Mary White, who went back to Bolney ; 
 and Thomas Fairhall, whose loss of time was a week, and he allowed 
 me a shilling for it. Richard Sayers took his place, and is to have 
 2 1 55. if he stays twelve months. He stayed with me but a very 
 short time. Paid Thos. Avery his wages in full, though he was sick 
 part of the time. 
 
 " 1741. John Steer went away from my house Dec. i6th. He 
 was with me about a year, and I had just given him a coat, waistcoat, 
 breaches, and hat, and 3 shirts, which cost me ^5 is. 
 
 " 1742. Sarah Juppe came to live with me March 25th, and is to 
 have 2 i os. if she stays with me to Lady Day, 1743. But this she 
 did not do. For she left me Nov. 7th, and came to me on the i6th 
 of the same month."
 
 THE SUSSEX DIARISTS. 19 
 
 Mr. Turner suggests a reason for this quitting service one day 
 and returning to it two or three days later. It was to avoid 
 making a servant chargeable to the parish by an uninterrupted 
 twelve months' hiring. One of the blessings of the old Poor Law ! 
 
 Like most country gentlemen, the Stapleys were sportsmen, 
 and there are numerous entries concerning dogs, guns, foxes, and 
 even hawks, showing that falconry was not yet an obsolete sport. 
 Thus, in 1642, "Bought a hawk for 2, and in 1643 bought 
 another at the same price." These must have been well-trained 
 birds, to fetch such high prices. 
 
 There is nothing about music in the Stapley diaries no 
 mention of concerts or pianofortes or even fiddles ; but Mr. 
 Richard Stapley had an ear for one species of music. Ex. gr. : 
 " Paid to William Ashford, for two beagles, which make my cry 
 complete, 4 153." 
 
 This expression calls to mind the beautiful lines uttered by 
 Theseus in A Midsummer Nighfs Dream : 
 
 My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind, 
 So flew'd, so sanded ; and their heads are hung 
 With ears that sweep away the morning dew ; 
 Crook-knee'd and dew-lapp'd like Thessalian bulls ; 
 Slow in pursuit, but match'd in mouth like bells, 
 Each under each. A cry more tuneable 
 Was never holla'd to, nor cheerd with horn, 
 In Crete, in Sparta, nor in Thessaly : 
 Judge, when you hear. 
 
 On the 5th of October, 1739, Mr. Stapley records a sad mis- 
 fortune to his canine establishment : " I had a mad dog in my 
 kennel, and was obliged to kill all my hounds. Six of them were 
 all hanging at the same time." 
 
 Mr. Anthony Stapley had the feelings of " a gentleman and 
 a Christian " for his dumb servants. Here is an example : 
 
 " 1735, Octr. gth. James Matthew had my old white horse away, 
 which I gave him to keep as long as he should live, and when dead to 
 bury him in his skin, and not to flaw him or abuse him in any way."
 
 20 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 By a later entry it appears that this old horse died May 2ist, 
 1736, and was buried in the sawpit in the Laines Wood. His age 
 when he died was supposed to be 35 years. 
 
 In all articles of home-produce the rise of prices has been 
 immense since the Stapley's days ; and horse-flesh has " gone up " 
 with the rest. In May, 1737, Mr. A. Stapley records that 
 " Chowne bought me a mare, which cost me 10 IDS, and I gave 
 him is for bringing her." Again, in 1739, " Bought a black mare 
 for John Stapley to ride; she cost ^5, with bridle and saddle in." 
 1740 : " Bought a mare of John Daulton, for which I gave him 
 
 $" 
 
 Sometimes, however, a higher figure was reached, as in 1741, 
 when he " bought a mare of John Lindfield, of Dean House, for 
 which I paid him ^15." 
 
 They were great meat-eaters at Hickstead Place ; but they 
 did not go to the butcher for it. " The calves, sheep, and lambs," 
 writes Anthony Stapley, " which I have killed in my house this 
 year (1642) are 4 calves, 20 sheep, and 45 lambs." The practice 
 of neighbours exchanging meat with each other was, it is evident, 
 common : Thus, in 1645, "Had of Georg Luxford, of Hurst, 21 
 nailes of beef, which I have since repaid him." And in 1654, 
 " Goodman Butcher owes me 15 nailes of beef and 2 Ibs., and he 
 has been paid all the beef I owed him." 
 
 It was very convenient, doubtless, when it was necessary to 
 kill a sheep in order to get a leg or shoulder of mutton, to ex- 
 change in this way with a neighbour. 
 
 Brewing, of course, was carried on at Hickstead Place, for 
 home consumption, and, doubtless, very good ale was brewed. 
 There are numerous entries of the purchase of malt. The average 
 consumption at Hickstead was, says Mr. Turner, until 1746, about 
 eight bushels a month. In speaking of malt the Stapley accounts 
 generally describe it as barley malt. This (remarks Mr. Turner) 
 doubtless is done to distinguish it from malt made of other grain. 
 In the early part of the reign of Edwd. II. great quantities of 
 wheat were made into malt, and this, towards the close of his reign, 
 he found it necessary to prohibit. But this practice was subse-
 
 THE SUSSEX DIARISTS. 21 
 
 quently resumed, for in the " Chronicles of London " we 
 find the following receipt : " For brewing 60 barrels of good 
 Songel Beer, 10 quarters of Barley Malt, 2 do. of Wheat do., 2 
 do. of Oats do., and 4olbs. of Hoppys." And this appears to 
 have gone on until the year 1630, when wheat was again pro- 
 hibited from being made into malt by royal proclamation, and it 
 was further ordered that " no grain, meet for bread to feed men, 
 be wasted and consumed in stuff called starch," which was 
 profusely used for stiffening the ruffles, and cuffs, and other linen 
 attire which an ostentatious and inconvenient fashion had been 
 the means of introducing into the habits both of the gentlemen 
 and ladies of the times of Charles the First and Second. 
 
 Hops, though grown at Twineham, were also bought by the 
 Stapleys in large quantities. 
 
 Whilst upon this subject of liquor, we may note that claret 
 was the principal wine drunk by the Stapleys, and doubtless other 
 families of the period, with a certain quantity of sherry, under the 
 name of sack. Thus (1646), " I had from Cleer, of London, one 
 runlet of sacke, and 3 runlets of claret." "For sack, when 
 strangers were here, 123 6d." "Had a dozen of white wine and 
 one gallon of sack, which cost me i i/s 4d." 
 
 We have referred to the absence of politics in these Diaries, 
 and to- the utter ignoring of the rise and fall of Kings and 
 Governments. Only in the payment of taxes, which all Govern- 
 ments, Kingly or Republican, levy, can we detect any signs of the 
 great events going on in England, and this is shown in the curious 
 admixture of " King " and " Parliament " in the following 
 entries : 
 
 " 1644. To the King, i 45 2d. To William Dumbrell for tax, 
 1 155 2d. To the Parliament, i. To Goodman Erie for a six 
 months' tax, 2 75 6d. 
 
 " 1645. To the Parliament, i 75 6d. 
 
 " 1646. Taxes for the Parliament, April 8th. To Arthur Luxford 
 for four months' tax, IDS. To William Dumbrell for eight months' 
 tax, i os 4d. To do. for twelve months' tax, i los 6d.
 
 22 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 " 1649. To William Dumbrell for a tax, 135 $d. To Thomas 
 Averie for a do., 143 6d. To Thomas Marchant, of Hurst, for a tax 
 for the Parliament ,3. To Arthur Luxford for the use of the King 
 and Parliament, 145. To William Dumbrell for an eight months' tax, 
 2, I os 6d. For the King's Provision, 145 8d." 
 
 The contribution to King and Parliament is pretty equal, and 
 perhaps the feelings of the Stapleys, who counted Roundheads 
 and Cavaliers among their successors, and one of whom was a 
 friend of Cromwell, and figured as a Regicide, were pretty 
 equally balanced. All that they cared for at Twineham was 
 to be let alone ! 
 
 As we go through the entries of the Squires of Hickstead 
 Place, as to their eatings and drinkings, buyings and sellings, we 
 cannot help wishing that they had given us a glimpse of them- 
 selves, and of their "interior" the ways and fashions of the 
 house and of its inmates, male and female. But we look in vain 
 for anything of the sort. It was a Diary for the use of Richard 
 and Anthony Stapley, and not for the information of those who 
 might come after them. If it had not been for entries of fees 
 paid to Mr. Nightingale, " for his journey half-a-guinea, and as 
 for things which he brought with him " we should scarcely have 
 known that Richard Stapley had a wife, until her death, from a 
 cause which is thus quaintly but forcibly described : " Struck 
 with the dead palsy from head to foot, in a moment of time." 
 
 For pictures of the mode of life of such families as that of 
 the Stapleys the Squires or gentry of the iyth and i8th cen- 
 turies we must go to other sources. The Rev. E. Turner, who 
 edited these Stapley Diaries for the Archaeological Society, and 
 who had other sources of information as to the manners of Sussex 
 people in their day, drew the following lively picture of the style 
 in which our forefathers lived 200 years ago : 
 
 " They dined at one or two o'clock, and many now do the same ; 
 the only difference between them and us being, that what they called 
 dinner we call luncheon. They sat down to a substantial meal at half- 
 past seven or eight o'clock, and so do we ; and this they called supper,
 
 THE SUSSEX DIARISTS. 23 
 
 but we call dinner. And as soon as supper was over the squire sat 
 down at the shovel-board table, with his canine pets about him ; and 
 his tenants and retainers being called in, they smoked their pipes and 
 quaffed they grogs unless any of the party preferred instead potent 
 home-brewed October ale discussing all the while the business as 
 well as the passing events of the day. And this continued 
 varied, perhaps, with now and then a hunting song, in the 
 chorus of which all heartily joined, or with a game played with 
 cards until it was time to prepare for bed, which, in well- 
 regulated families, was seldom later than ten o'clock ; while in 
 another part of the hall, if it was spacious enough to admit of it, or if 
 not in some adjoining apartment opening into the hall, sat the lady 
 of the house, with her family and any female friends that might be 
 staying with her, busily engaged in spinning. Pianofortes, now to be 
 found in every tradesman's and farmer's house, were unknown even 
 in the houses of many of the gentry in those days . The drone of the 
 spinning-wheel was the music they most delighted in ; and singing, or, 
 as one of my church choir used to call it when he was in a grandilo- 
 quent humour, 'the tuneful music of the vocal voice,' was all the 
 melody that arrested the ear within the substantial walls of the Place 
 House ; and profitable music it was, for all the linen of the house, 
 body, bed, and table, was, for the most part, thus supplied ; the maid 
 servants, as well as the mistress of the hquse, her daughters and her 
 friends, employing all their not otherwise occupied time in the same 
 way. Tea was a repast not then much appreciated, even if it was 
 known ; the article itself from a decoction of which the meal 
 took its name being far too costly during the period under considera- 
 tion to be much used in a common way, even in the houses of the 
 better class ; though it appears to have been occasionally indulged in 
 at Hickstead ; the price given for the article thus consumed being 
 charged, according to the accounts, at 255. and 305. per pound. The 
 family breakfasts at this date were upon the substantial Elizabethan 
 scale. They consisted for the most part of hot meats, with a liberal 
 supply of well-matured nut-brown malt liquor. A hot beef steak, with 
 no scant measure of two years' old ale. was no unusual thing for the 
 lords and ladies of Queen Elizabeth's Court at breakfast to indulge 
 in ; and her most gracious Majesty did the same. And at Hickstead 
 this meal was taken at a somewhat unusually early hour, so that by 
 eight o'clock the squire was ready either for business or pleasure. 
 If, during the hunting season 
 
 ' A southerly wind and a cloudy sky 
 Proclaimed a hunting morn,'
 
 24 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 the hounds were unkenelled, and every servant that could be spared 
 from his customary duties in and about the house, each with a hunting 
 pole in his hand, attended his master to the cover, and the welkin 
 soon rang with the music of their tuneable voices ; for game was far 
 too plentiful in the Hickstead woods and hedgerows in those days to be 
 long in being found. Or if the day was better adapted to shooting, 
 the old Sussex spaniels, for which Hickstead was then famous, were 
 brought out, .and the squire spent his morning in trying either the 
 covers for pheasants or the stubbles for partridges ; and by twelve 
 o'clock he was able to return home with a well-filled bag." 
 
 For a contemporary picture of Sussex manners in the i8th 
 century, though not of a very flattering character, we are in- 
 debted to Dr. Burton, the learned Greek Lecturer of Oxford, 
 who, in 1751, was bold enough to "go down, through muddy, 
 fertile, pastoral Sussex," to Shermanbury, to see his mother, who 
 had married the Rector of that place, Dr. John Bear. Here he 
 had an opportunity of seeing a little of the people who constituted 
 the society of Sussex 137 years ago, the squires and yeomen of 
 the County, and he draws the following not over-flattering sketch 
 of them : 
 
 " You should observe that the farmers of the better sort are consi- 
 dered here as squireb. These men, however, boast of honourable 
 lineage, and, like oaks among shrubs, look down upon the rural vulgar. 
 You would be surprised at the uncouth dignity of these men, and their 
 palpably ludicrous pride ; nor will you be less surprised at the humility 
 of their boon-companions (compotantium), and the triumphs of their 
 domineering spirit among the plaudits of the pothouse or kitchen ; the 
 awkward prodigality and sordid luxury of their feasts ; the inelegant 
 roughness and dull hilarity of their conversation ; their intercourse 
 with servants and animals so assiduous, with clergymen or gentlemen 
 so rare ; being illiterate, they shun the lettered ; being sots, the sober 
 (sobrios bibaculi). Their whole attention is given to get their cattle 
 and everything else fat, their own intellect not excepted. Is this 
 enough about the squires ? Don't ask anything further about their 
 women. They who understand Latin will feel that these remarks do 
 not apply to them ; they who do not, I need not dread their abuse." 
 
 This is certainly not very complimentary to the Sussex gentry 
 of 1751.
 
 THE SUSSEX DIARISTS. 2$ 
 
 To the ladies he is a little more polite, but it is at the expense 
 of their lords and masters : 
 
 " You would probably admire the women if you saw them, as 
 modest in countenance and fond of elegance in their dress, but, at 
 the same time, fond of labour, and experienced in household matters ; 
 both by nature and education better bred and more intellectual 
 generally than the men." 
 
 In social position, as in worldly possessions, Thomas Mar- 
 chant, of Little Park, Hurst, who follows next in order of the 
 Sussex Diarists, was a degree below the Stapleys, of Hickstead 
 Place. They were Squires, and one (Richard) was a Justice of 
 the Peace. Thomas Marchant was a Yeoman. Yet they touched 
 closely upon each other, and mixed with and were probably 
 related to the same families : the Campions, Courthopes, Dod- 
 sons, Scutts, Harts, Turners, Whitpaines, Lindfields, Stones, &c. 
 For Thomas Marchant belonged to that higher order of English 
 Yeomen who farmed their own land, and the house he resided in 
 at Hurst was one of some pretensions. It had originally belonged 
 to Sir William Juxon, of whom it was bought by Mrs Annie 
 Swaine, of Hurstpierpoint, and was purchased of her son and 
 heir by the father of Thomas Marchant. Little Park is now the 
 property of Col. Smith Hannington, who acquired it from the 
 Executors of the last male representative of the Marchants of 
 Hurst. Thomas Marchant, our Diarist, was the second of his 
 family who held Little Park, and he began his Diary in September, 
 1714 ; a few years before that of the Stapleys was brought to a 
 close. 
 
 There is a certain family resemblance between the Stapley 
 and the Marchant Diaries. Both illustrate the character of the 
 times one of great material prosperity, but, in country places, 
 at all events, of little intellectual activity, and of peaceful pur- 
 suits. The sword had, in very truth, been turned into the plough- 
 share. The campaigns of Marlborough were brought to a close, 
 and the next 50 years were passed, with only rare exceptions, in
 
 26 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 profound peace, and in a state of material prosperity which has 
 perhaps never been exceeded in England. But it was of a gross 
 kind. This is reflected in the Diary of Thomas Marchant, of 
 Hurst ; in that of Thomas Turner, of East Hoathly ; and others 
 of the same period. They are redolent of eating and drinking 
 and of the dealings connected therewith. People married, begat 
 and christened children, eat and drank " hugely," amused them- 
 selves in a coarse kind of way, bought and sold, died, and 
 were buried. And all this went on in an uniform way as if there 
 were nothing more in life, and as if life would always go on in the 
 same way. The education of the lower classes was utterly 
 neglected, and their morals did not improve. But they were fed 
 well to a large extent in the houses of their employers, who were 
 not much superior to them in manners or in education. It was 
 the period, perhaps, when the relations of the farmer and the 
 labourer were closest to each other. The time was yet to come 
 when they were to separate : the former struggling to maintain 
 their position and eventually rising in the scale ; the latter sinking 
 more and more into poverty and pauperism, until poor-rates 
 threatened to swallow up rents, and then a reactionary movement 
 set in towards independence, which, assisted by new forces, is 
 going on in our own day. 
 
 But these changes were far off in Thomas Marchant's days. 
 The Civil Wars were well nigh forgotten ; the great wars in 
 Flanders, where our soldiers fought so well and swore so terribly, 
 were over. Sir Robert Walpole was entering on his long lease of 
 political power, and finding out the price at which men were to 
 be bought ; peace being the great object of his policy, and a 
 gross national prosperity the reward of it. 
 
 Thomas Marchant, of Little Park, Hurst, was, we may be 
 sure, one of those who accepted this policy, and his life was a 
 capital illustration of it. He had received a practical kind of 
 education could read, write, and keep accounts, and was, in all 
 probability, rather superior in these respects to his neighbours ; 
 for he was frequently selected as executor to their wills, and as 
 Overseer, &c. ; and was eventually chosen by the owner of Pet-
 
 THE SUSSEX DIARISTS. 27 
 
 worth, the " proud " Duke of Somerset, to be his Steward, and 
 for some time filled that post, living then near Petworth. But, 
 at the time he began this Diary, he was at Little Park, farming his 
 own land there, and doing a great deal as the breeder of fresh- 
 water fish, for which, it is clear, there was a much greater demand 
 in those days than there is now. In every way, indeed, he 
 was a good man of business ever ready to turn a penny 
 and make a bargain. The first day's entry, September 29, 
 1714, is not a bad sample of the character of the whole Diary. 
 Here it is : 
 
 " John Shelley went away. Set 4 pigs to fatting yesterday. Lent 
 James Reed 4 oxen. Paid John Gun i guinea. Went by Henfield to 
 Steyning fair : and received 313. 6d. of John Goffe, as part paiment 
 of 3 guineas which I had lent him. Bought five runts of Thomas 
 Jones for 16. Drank with Thomas Vinal of Cowfold at J. Beard's. 
 Met with J. Gold of Brighthelmstone at Bramber as we were coming 
 home ; and concluded that he should have a load of my wheat at 
 7 los. which is to be delivered on friday se'nnight next at the Rock. 
 ' We did not agree for any Barley ; because some one had told him, 
 that my Barley was all of it mowburnt. Ned Grey kept holiday. The 
 day was dry ; we took in the evening 22 pigeons." 
 
 And so the Diary of Thomas Marchant runs on, filled with 
 details which are purely personal, and, for the most part, relating 
 to business matters, and pounds, shillings, and pence scarcely a 
 reference to national affairs, which now occupy so much of men's 
 thoughts of the great contests of parties or collisions of Empires 
 hardly a thought beyond the parish in which Mr. Marchant 
 lived, or its immediate neighbourhood. Brighthelmstone, indeed, 
 figures more than once in the Diary, and Lewes pretty frequently, 
 Mr. Marchant going to the Sessions on parochial business, dis- 
 puted settlements being a fertile source of litigation between 
 neighbouring parishes, which rejoiced in their triumphs over each 
 other as though it were a gain to the community that some un- 
 fortunate labourer, who had strayed from his parish, was trans- 
 ferred from Hurst to Cuckfield, or vice versa, as the case might be.
 
 2 8 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 " Went to the Sessions at Lewes, where we had a trial with the 
 parish of Cuckfield about the settlement of Tho'mas Mitchell : and we 
 fast them" 
 
 With what exultation did Thomas Marchant make that entry, 
 not forgetting the inevitable sequel : " Dined at the Crown," the 
 parish paying for the dinner to celebrate the victory over Cuckfield 
 in re Thomas Mitchell, pauper ! 
 
 Obsolete customs, coins, and terms crop up here and there. 
 Ex. gr. : " Sold John Smith a steer at 6 certain ; and, if he 
 prove worth it, I am to have a noble more." 
 
 How long is it since nobles disappeared from our current 
 coin? 
 
 Thomas Marchant was not an intemperate man ; but all men 
 in those days, in all ranks of life, drank freely, and at times 
 deeply, and our Sussex Diarist does not blink the matter. At 
 Danny, on one occasion, he, his wife, and others " staid late and 
 drank too much." On another occasion, at Mr. Whitpaine's, 
 "staid late there and drank enough." Again, at John Smith's, 
 " stay'd late and drank too much." Nor was he very particular 
 with whom he drank. A mountebank came to the town (Hurst), 
 and Mr. Marchant records, " Mr. Scutt and I drank tea with the 
 tumbler. Of his tricks (he modestly writes) I am no judge ; but 
 he appears to me to play well on the fiddle." 
 
 Perhaps the trick of playing the fiddle was to Thomas 
 Marchant (as, indeed, it was at a later date to Dr. Johnson) the 
 most wonderful of all tricks ! The arrival of a mountebank was 
 evidently an event at Hurst. In subsequent entries we are in- 
 formed, " A mountebank man here the 2nd time. * * * I 
 drank with him yesterday at the Swan." And, later on, " The 
 mountebank in the town. A smock race in our field." Probably 
 in honour of the mountebank ! The visits of mountebanks are 
 rare enough now ; but the visits of another sort of gentry have 
 died out quite. " Mr. Russell, the non-juror, came there (to Mr. 
 Dodson's, the Rector of Hurst) in the evening." Non-jurors were 
 those clergymen of the Church of England who refused to take
 
 THE SUSSEX DIARISTS. 2 
 
 the oaths of allegiance to the new dynasty and denied the ortho- 
 doxy of the Bishops who recognised William and Mary as their 
 Sovereigns. 
 
 Bleedings and shavings of the head are frequently recorded, 
 and cyder is still brewed. Side by side with these old fashions, 
 now extinct, are symptoms of new ones, which still flourish. Thus, 
 in 1717, "Willy went to see a cricket match," an early record 
 of that now national game. In Whitsuntide of the same year 
 " the new singers began to sing in the Church," and Mr. Blencowe 
 adds, in a note, that the then Bishop of Chichester granted a 
 faculty at this time for a singing gallery at the west end of Hurst 
 Church, where, doubtless, the " new singers " were located. 
 " Carried flax" is a reference to a growth now seldom seen in 
 Sussex. The Sussex iron mills were in full work ; prize-fighting 
 was in vogue ; " Will and Jack went to Lewes to see a prize-fight 
 between Harris and another." Horses and carts were "mired" 
 in Sussex roads, and people died of the small-pox in a way which 
 would gladden the hearts of modern anti-vaccinators ! " Crying 
 lost goods in Church" is a custom " more honoured in the breach 
 than the observance." But there are some signs of civilization : 
 " Mr. Lun, the dancing-master, began teaching at KesterV Tea 
 begins to be drunk with greater frequency, and the following 
 entry " Paid Norman 6d. for the reading of a book yesterday, 
 and reed, a case to carry pen and ink and sand" indicates that 
 letters were not quite neglected. Indeed, this Diary itself is a 
 proof of this. But, at the same time, it proves the slight extent 
 to which literature had penetrated to the middle classes at the 
 beginning of the 1 8th century. In the Diary of Thomas Turner, 
 mercer, of East Hothly, we shall find great advance in this 
 respect. He was a reader of books, and had a taste for their 
 contents. To Thomas Marchant, as to the Stapleys, they appear 
 to have been totally closed. The only books they were acquainted 
 with, judging from their own records, were account books. Yes, 
 one book is named by Thomas Marchant : it is a book entitled 
 " Lex Testamentaria " (the law of Wills), which he received from 
 Mr. Norman, and he couples the fact with another : " paid 205.
 
 30 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 for a ribbon and slouch for Molly Balcombe !" We wonder if 
 Mrs. Marchant was privy to this purchase ! 
 
 In fact, the whole time and attention of the country gentry 
 and farmers of that time were absorbed in res angusta domi, but 
 which to them were a source of pleasure as well as of profit. It 
 was a prosperous period ; but the leisure which prosperity pro- 
 duces had not yet begun to give that refinement and taste for 
 luxuries which were to follow. The men eat, drank, fished, shot, 
 hunted, bought and sold, raised stock, sowed and reaped, married 
 and begot children ; and these, with a little parish business, or a 
 County election now and then, and an occasional bout of drinking, 
 made up life, at least, there are signs of little more in the Stapley 
 and Marchant Diaries. The political allusions, as to the Corona- 
 tion Day of George I. (October 18, 1714), his death, and the 
 accession of George II. (1727) ; the report about the Duke of 
 Ormond, the great supporter of the Chevalier St. George, 
 commonly called the Pretender, " going off at Shoreham," with 
 Sir Harry Goring, Mr. Middleton, and one or two more, are of the 
 most meagre kind. There is a little more detail than usual about 
 the contested election for Sussex which followed on the accession 
 of George I., and in which the Whigs gained the victory " by a 
 vast majority," but, as Mr. Marchant (who had Tory, if not 
 Jacobite proclivities) insinuates, " by all manner of indirect 
 practices." But these are " few and far between," and show the 
 faint interest taken in politics in those days, compared with 
 present times. In one respect they seem to have had the 
 advantage over us : there was, to all appearance, a more free 
 mixture of classes less separation between the degrees of social 
 rank which made up the rural community. Mr. Thomas Mar- 
 chant, although only a yeoman, farming his own land, dines and 
 sups at Danny with the Campions and the Courthopes, and goes 
 to Mr. Dodson's at the Rectory, and mixes with the Whitpaines, 
 the Scutts, and other members of the landed gentry living at or 
 near Hurst, on terms of perfect equality. One of the last entries 
 tells us how " three of Sir George Parker's daughter's supt and 
 spent the evening here." In fact, there is no evidence of social
 
 THE SUSSEX DIARISTS. 31 
 
 differences or jealousies in the Marchant Diary, and we are afraid 
 that such would not be the case if one of the same rank were to 
 keep a Diary in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred 
 and seventy-eight ! 
 
 The first and foremost of our Sussex Diarists, in Diaristic 
 ability, though, in order of time, he came last, is, without question, 
 Thomas Turner, general dealer, of East Hothly. He is our 
 Sussex Pepys, and possesses many of the qualities of that Prince 
 of Diarists. He is intelligent, frank, open-speaking, rather fond 
 of recording his own failings, disposed to be social, a good man of 
 business, but yet with a decided bent towards literature. In all 
 these points, Samuel Pepys, Secretary of the Admiralty, and 
 Thomas Turner, grocer, draper, haberdasher, hatter, clothier, 
 druggist, ironmonger, stationer, glover, undertaker, for Thomas 
 Turner was all of these, aim mullis a/Us, resemble each other, 
 and if one enjoys a world-wide fame and the other only a local 
 reputation, it is owing, perhaps, to the Fate that placed them in 
 such different spheres. 
 
 Still, in his own sphere, Thomas Turner is a man to be 
 esteemed, and he has performed a work, namely, that of 
 describing the life of a Sussex rural tradesman 100 years 
 ago, for which he ought to be held in high regard by all 
 students of social history in England. 
 
 He was not a native of Sussex. He was born in 1728 at 
 Groombridge, in Kent ; but he claimed descent from an old 
 Sussex family the Turners of Tablehurst, at East Grinstead and 
 he must have settled in Sussex pretty early in life, for he begins 
 his diary in 1754, at which time he was only 26 years of age. 
 Where -he was educated we are not told ; but he had evidently 
 received an education above the average, and though, as was the 
 failing of the times, his orthography was by no means perfect, he 
 expresses himself with ease and force, and has a considerable 
 command of language. In this, indeed, and in other respects, 
 he is far above the Stapleys and Marchants, or even the Rev.
 
 32 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 Giles Moore. Take, as a sample, the sentence with which he 
 opens his Diary on Sunday, Feb. 8, 1754 : 
 
 " As I by experience find how much more conducive it is to my 
 health, as well as pleasantness and serenity to my mind, to live in a 
 low, moderate rate of diet, and as I know I shall never be able to 
 comply therewith in so strickt a manner as I should chuse, by the 
 unstable and over-easyness of my temper, I think it therefore fit to 
 draw up Rules of proper Regimen, which I do in the manner and 
 form following, which I hope I shall always have the strictest 
 regard to follow, as I think they are not inconsistent with either 
 religion or morality." 
 
 As is the wont of young men beginning life, young women, 
 too, perhaps, Thomas Turner forms a number of good resolu- 
 tions, which but the sequel will show how he kept them. He 
 determines to rise early, to breakfast between seven and eight, and 
 to dine between the hours of twelve and one; eating sparingly of 
 meat, but plenty of garden-stuff; his supper to consist of weak 
 broth, water-gruel, or milk pottage, varied occasionally with a fruit 
 pie. 
 
 " If," he says, " I am at home, or in company abroad, I will 
 never drink more than four glasses of strong beer ; one to drink the 
 King's health, the second to the Royal Family, the third to all friends, 
 and the fourth to the pleasure of the company. If there is either 
 wine or punch, never upon any terms or perswasion to drink more 
 than eight glasses, each glass to hold no more than half a quarter of 
 a pint. :> 
 
 He concludes with the resolution, "allways to go to bed at or 
 before ten o'clock." 
 
 Mr. Turner was at this time a married man. Men married 
 early 100 years ago, in all ranks of life; for competition was not 
 so fierce as it is now, and men were less ambitious in their aims 
 and women less expensive in their dress and houses. His wife, 
 too, shared in his literary tastes, for an early entry tells us that on 
 one occasion " my wife read to me that moving scene of the
 
 THE SUSSEX DIARISTS. 33 
 
 funeral of Miss Clarissa Harlow" (in Richardson's novel), and 
 thereupon he makes the edifying remark : 
 
 " Oh, may the Supreme Being give me grace to lead my life in 
 such a manner as my exit may in some measure be like that divine 
 creature's." 
 
 And let it not be supposed that the East Hothly grocer's 
 readings was limited to novels. In the course of five or six weeks, 
 say the editors of his Diary (Messrs. R. W. Blencowe and M. A. 
 Lower), "we find him recording his perusual of Gray's Poems, 
 Stewart On the Supreme Being, the Whole Duty of Man, Paradise 
 Lost and Regained, Othello, the Universal Magazine, Thomson's 
 Seasons, Young's Night Thoughts, Tournefort's Voyage to the Levant, 
 and Peregrine Pickle." 
 
 A very good six weeks' reading for a man engaged all the day 
 in trade ! Another day we find him reading part of Boyle's 
 Lectures ; then he turns from science to politics, and reads 
 "several numbers of the Freeholder," which, he adds, "I think, is 
 a proper book for any person at this critical juncture of affairs " 
 it was in April, 1756, and from politics to poetry; for on the 
 same day he read "Homer's Odysseyss" (sic}, and thus records 
 his opinion of it : 
 
 " I think the character which Menelaus gives Telemachus of 
 Ulisses, when he is a specking of his warlike virtues, in the 4th Book, 
 is very good. Read the I3th Book, after supper ; I think the soliloquy 
 which Ulysses makes when he finds the Phoenicians have in his sleep 
 left him on his native shore of Ithaca, with all his treasure, contains a 
 very good lesson of morality." 
 
 At the same time he copies out in full the passages he ad- 
 mired from Pope's translation. 
 
 As some explanation, however, of this unusual taste for 
 literature in a Sussex tradesman of that day, it should be noted 
 that Mr. Turner began his career at East Hothly as a school- 
 master. It was not a long nor apparently a successful career, for 
 
 D
 
 34 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 in May, 1756, he resigned his school and scholars to Mr. Francis 
 Ellis, and entered on the more lucrative vocation of a general 
 shopkeeper. But he did not give up his reading. To the last 
 we find him deep in such solid works as " Burnett's History of 
 the Reformation," and Beveredge's "Thoughts," varied by 
 Shakspeare's plays and John Wilkes's " North Briton." 
 
 It would have been well for Thomas Turner if he had been 
 constant to his books, and had not indulged in another habit more 
 in keeping with the times ; and that was of excessive drinking. 
 The reader will not forget the good resolution with which he 
 started, " never upon any terms or persuasion to drink more than 
 eight glasses (of wine or punch), each glass to hold no more than 
 half a quarter of a pint." 
 
 Quite enough, one might have thought, for a moderate man. 
 But Thomas Turner was, it is evident, not proof against tempta- 
 tion, and his lapses from sobriety commence early and recur only 
 too frequently. Here is the first set down : " I went to the audit 
 and came home drunk. But I think never to exceed the bounds 
 of moderation more." 
 
 Alas ! for the frailty of human nature. Close upon the 
 above is the following : " Sunday, 28th, went down to Jones, 
 where we drank one bowl of punch and two muggs of bumboo ; 
 and I came home again in liquour. Oh ! with what horrors does 
 it fill my heart, to think I should be guilty of doing so, and on a 
 Sunday, too ! Let me once more endeavour never, no never, to 
 be guilty of the same again." 
 
 Can any reader tell us what " bumboo " is ? But perhaps it 
 is as well they should not know ! 
 
 It is amusing, but scarcely edifying, to find our Diarist per- 
 fectly awake to the enormity of his offence, and yet still offending. 
 " In the evening " so runs one of his entries "I read part of 
 the fourth volume of the Tatler ; the oftener I read it the better I 
 like it. I think I never found the vice of drinking so well ex- 
 ploded in my life, as in one of the numbers." 
 
 So of his attendance, or rather non-attendance, at church. 
 He plainly saw the right road, and he followed the wrong one.
 
 THE SUSSEX DIARISTS. . 35 
 
 Yet never was a man who kept a Diary less disposed to 
 screen his weaknesses, or more ready to lay the lash upon his own 
 back ! In the making of good resolutions, too, he was decidedly 
 strong. We have had some specimens. Here is another : 
 "June 2oth. This is my birthday, in which I enter the 2Qth year 
 of my age ; and may I, as I grow in years, so continue to increase 
 in goodness ; for, as my exit must every day draw nearer, so may 
 I every day become more enamoured with the prospect of the 
 happiness of another world, and more entirely dead to the 
 follies and vanities of this transitory world." 
 
 The next entry, June 21, is a curious comment on this : 
 
 "June 2ist. Attended the funeral of Master Goldsmith at 
 Waldron ; this was the merriest funeral that ever I saw, for I can 
 safely say there was no crying." 
 
 There is, indeed, throughout Mr. Turner's Diary, a comical 
 contradiction of precept and action. The writer is a sage and 
 moralist in theory ; in practice he is but we will leave him to 
 name himself : 
 
 " Aug. 22nd. I sett off for Piltdown, where I saw Charles 
 Diggens and James Fowle run twenty rod for one guinea each. I 
 got never a bet, but very drunk. " 
 
 " Tuesday, 23rd. Came home in the forenoon, not quite sober ; 
 at home all day, and I know I behaved more like an ass than any 
 human being doubtless not like one who calls himself a Christian. 
 Oh ! how unworthy am I of that name!" 
 
 The reader, perhaps, has had enough of these lapses from 
 sobriety and self-criminations. Let us turn to another page in 
 Mr. Turner's Diary, in which, with a frankness very unusual in 
 our Sussex diarists, he introduces us into his family interior and 
 imparts -to us his domestic troubles. He had taken to himself a 
 wife soon after his arrival at East Hothly, and we presume that 
 she was a native of that place, for he refers to his mother-in-law, 
 Mrs. Slater, as a " very Xantippe," with a "great volubility of
 
 36 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 tongue," " especially if I am the subject." This lady was one of 
 the stirrers-up of dissension between Mr. and Mrs. Turner. 
 Another cause of conjugal irritation was Mrs. T.'s inclination 
 to visit her friends at Lewes, on occasions when her absence from 
 home [was inconvenient to Mr. T. "I have," he writes on one 
 occasion, "several journeys to go next week, which I must post- 
 pone, on account of her absence. But, alas ! what can be said 
 of a woman's temper and thought ? Business and family ad- 
 vantage must submit to their pride and pleasure. But tho' I 
 mention this of women, it may perhaps be as justly applyed to 
 men ; but most people are blind to their own follies." 
 
 The way in which these journeys were made by Mr. Turner's 
 better-half would astonish ladies of the present day. In the first 
 place, a horse had to be borrowed, and then both man and woman 
 had to mount it : the latter riding on a pillion behind her lord. 
 And sometimes Master Dobbin was indisposed to bear the double 
 load, and behaved accordingly : 
 
 " My wife having hired a horse of John Watford, about four 
 o'clock we set out on our journey to Hartfield, and as we were riding 
 along near to Hastingford, no more than a foot's pace, the horse stood 
 still, and continued kicking-up until we was both off,, in a very dirty 
 hole (but, thanks be to God, we received no hurt). My wife was 
 obliged to go in to Hastingford House, to clean herself. My wife and 
 I spent the even at my father Slater's. We dined off some ratios 
 [rashers] of pork and green sallard." 
 
 Mr. Turner often particularises the dishes off which he dined, 
 and certainly they were not epicures in those days. This is a 
 Sunday's meal: "Sept. i8th. My whole family at church 
 myself, wife, maid, and the two boys. We dined off a piece of 
 boiled beef and carrots, and currant suet pudding." 
 
 It will be observed that the whole household boys, maids, 
 and all dined together, a custom long disused. 
 
 Up to this point that is, some three or four years after 
 marriage the domestic happiness of the Turners had not been
 
 THE SUSSEX DIARISTS. 37 
 
 much disturbed, except by Mrs. Slater's tongue and her daughter's 
 frequent illness. But now we come to a very tragic entry : 
 
 " This day how are my most sanguine hopes of happiness 
 frustrated ! I mean the happiness between myself and wife, which 
 hath now continued for some time ; but, oh ! this day it has become 
 the contra ! I think I have tryed all experiments to make our life's 
 happy, but they have all failed. The opposition seems to be naturally 
 in our tempers not arising from spitefulness ; but an opposition that 
 seems indicated by our very make and constitution." 
 
 John Milton himself could have set down no stronger reason 
 for that right of divorce for which he pleaded so eloquently, and, 
 in his days, ineffectually ! And from this time there is a continual 
 recurrence of these doleful entries. " Oh!" Mr. Turner breaks 
 out on Nov. 3, " how transient is all mundane bliss ! I who, on 
 Sunday last, was all calm and serenity in my breast, am now 
 nought but storm and tempest. Well might the wise man say, 
 ' It were better to dwell in a comer of the house-top, than with a 
 contentious woman in a wide house.' " 
 
 He had, however, his intervals of calm, and seems to have 
 enjoyed them. Thus, " 1751, Jan. 9, Mr. Elless (his successor 
 in the school), Marchant, myself, and wife sat down to whist about 
 seven o'clock, and played all night ; very pleasant, and, I think I 
 may say, innocent mirth, there being no oaths nor imprecations 
 sounding from side to side, as is too often the case at 
 cards," 
 
 And, again, Feb. 2, in the same year, " We supped at Mr. 
 Fuller's, and spent the evening with a great deal of mirth, till 
 between one and two. Tho. Fuller brought my wife home upon 
 his back. I cannot say I came home sober, though I was far from 
 being bad company. I think we spent the evening with a great 
 deal of pleasure." 
 
 Cards all night, and merriment till between one and two in 
 the morning, do not say much for the habits of the day ! to say 
 nothing of carrying home ladies pick-a-back ! But this is nothing
 
 38 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 to what took place on the succeeding 22nd and 25th of 
 February : 
 
 "About 4 p.m. I walked down to Whyly. We played at bragg 
 the first part of the even. After ten we went to supper, on four boiled 
 chicken, four boiled ducks, minced veal, cold roast goose, chicken 
 pasty, and ham. Our company, Mr. and Mrs. Porter, Mr. and Mrs. 
 Coates, Mrs. Atkins, Mrs. Hicks, Mr. Piper and wife, Joseph Fuller 
 and wife, Tho. Fuller and wife, Dame Durrant, myself and wife, and 
 Mr. French's family. After supper our behaviour was far from that 
 of serious, harmless mirth ; it was downright obstreperious, mixed 
 with a great deal of folly and stupidity. Our diversion was dancing 
 or jumping about, without a violin or any musick, singing of foolish 
 healths, and drinking all the time as fast as it could be well poured 
 down ; and the parson of the parish was one among the mixed multi- 
 tude. If conscience dictates right from wrong, as doubtless it some- 
 times does, mine is one that I may say is soon offended ; for, I must 
 say, I am always very uneasy at such behaviour, thinking it not like 
 the behaviour of the primitive Christians, which I imagine was most 
 in conformity to our Saviour's gospel. Nor would I be thought to be 
 either a cynick or a stoick, but let social improving discourse pass 
 round the company. About three o'clock, finding myself to have as 
 much liquor as would do me good, I slipt away unobserved, leaving 
 my wife to make my excuse. Though I was very far from sober, I 
 came home, thank God, very safe and well, without even tumbling ; 
 and Mr. French's servant brought my wife home, at ten minutes past 
 five" (probably, add the Editors of the Diary, on his back). 
 
 This is pretty well in the way of " fooling ; " but what follows 
 beats it : 
 
 "Thursday, Feb. 25th. This morning, about six o'clock, just as 
 my wife was got to bed, we was awaked by Mrs. Porter, who pretended 
 she wanted some cream of tarter ; but as soon as my wife got out of 
 bed, she vowed she should come down. She found Mr. Porter, Mr. 
 Fuller, and his wife, with a lighted candle, and part of a bottle of port 
 wine and a glass. The next thing was to have me down stairs, which 
 being apprized of, I fastened my door. Up stairs they came, and 
 threatened to break it open ; so I ordered the boys to open it, when 
 they poured into my room ; and, as modesty forbid me to get out of 
 bed, so I refrained ; but their immodesty permitted them to draw me 
 out of bed, as the common phrase is, topsy-turvey ; but, however, at
 
 THE SUSSEX DIARISTS. 39 
 
 the intercession of Mr. Porter, they permitted me to put on my , 
 
 and, instead of my upper cloaths, they gave me time to put on my 
 wife's petticoats ; and in this manner they made me dance, without 
 shoes and stockings, until they had emptied the bottle of wine, and 
 also a bottle of my beer. . . . About three o'clock in the after- 
 noon, they found their way to their respective homes, beginning to be 
 a little serious, and, in my opinion, ashamed of their stupid enterprise 
 and drunken preambulation. Now, let anyone call in reason to his 
 assistance, and seriously reflect on what I have before recited, and they 
 will join with me in thinking that the precepts delivered from the 
 pulpit on Sunday, tho' delivered with the. greatest ardour, must lose a 
 great deal of their efficacy by such examples." 
 
 Most unquestionably there are few in these days who will not 
 give a hearty approval to these sentiments of Mr. Thomas Turner. 
 Perhaps it was in a vein of satire that, immediately after 
 chronicling the above nocturnal orgies, our Diarist adds : " Sun- 
 day, March 3. We had as good a sermon as I ever heard Mr. 
 Porter preach it being against swearing." 
 
 Drinking would have been a topic more to the point. 
 
 We have before remarked on the greater freedom of inter- 
 course between different classes in country places in former days. 
 And here, in the above entries, is another instance : not very 
 edifying certainly, but forcible. 
 
 Nor was this an exceptional meeting. Another is entered on 
 the following March 7th, at which the same party, with the 
 addition of a Mr. Calverley and Mrs. Atkins, met to sup at Mr. 
 Joseph Fuller's, " drinking," says our diarist, " like horses, as the 
 vulgar phrase is, and singing till many of us were very drunk, and 
 then we went to dancing and pulling of wigs, caps, and hats ; and 
 thus we continued in this frantic manner, behaving more like mad 
 people than they that profess the name of Christians." 
 
 Three days after this they sup at Mr. Porter's, with a repetition 
 of the same excesses, except that (perhaps in deference to the 
 recent exhortations from the Rev. gentleman's pulpit) " there was 
 no swearing and no ill words, by reason of which Mr. Porter," he 
 says, " calls it innocent mirth, but 1 in opinion differ much there 
 from."
 
 4O GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 The next day Mr. Thomas Turner was "at home very 
 piteous," and certainly deserving no pity. For, yet once more, on 
 the following Friday, the orgies were renewed at his own house, 
 and then, he adds, " all revelling for this season is over ; and may 
 I never more be discomposed with so much drink, or by the noise 
 of an obstreperious multitude, but that I may calm my troubled 
 mind, and sooth my disturbed conscience." 
 
 A more striking illustration of the grossness of the manners 
 of the age will scarcely be found, even in the pages of Fielding 
 or Smollett. That the clergyman of the parish, and a man of 
 learning, as Mr. Porter evidently was, should have joined in such 
 scenes shows to what a low point " the cloth " had sunk, and that 
 the Trulli'bers and Thwackams and Squareums of fiction were not 
 mere " inventions of the enemy." 
 
 Thomas Turner did not take the same trouble as Samuel 
 Pepys did to conceal what he wrote. He had not the same 
 reasons for doing so, for he was not the servant of a jealous 
 Government nor did he live in a scandalous Court, which might 
 not have been too well pleased to have its doings handed down to 
 posterity. He wrote his Diary in a fair legible hand, in some 116 
 " stout memorandum books," and the manuscript went down to 
 his son and his grandson, by the latter of whom it has been given 
 to the world. But in Turner's own life-time he must have kept it 
 very close. His first wife, his " dear Peggy," we are certain, never 
 saw it, or it would scarcely have survived to the present day ! 
 He must have written it " on the sly," and it must have taken up 
 a good deal of his time. Yet he had a large business to attend 
 to. What were his motives, then, for keeping so voluminous a 
 Diary ? Why did he chronicle with such minuteness his own do- 
 ings and those of his neighbours not always of the most credit- 
 able kind? Why did he so often enter such good resolutions, 
 and alas ! why did he so frequently have to chronicle that he had 
 broken them? There can be little doubt that Thomas Turner 
 had a " tender conscience " that he really did grieve when he 
 drank too much, gambled away his money, and played the fool ; 
 and probably he had some idea that in recording his delinquencies
 
 THE SUSSEX DIARISTS. 41 
 
 he made some reparation for them and strengthened himself for 
 better things. He was also, it is plain, of an open, social, com- 
 municative temper in this resembling his great prototype, Pepys. 
 He did not live in a great city or see much of life ; but he got as 
 much as he could out of the little rural community in which he did 
 live. He was a lively actor in it, and he was an acute observer. 
 He was a good business man, too, in the habit of keeping accounts, 
 and, from making entries of his business dealings, there was but a 
 step to making entries of his personal affairs his pleasures and his 
 troubles his discretions and his follies. It was a diversion from 
 his more sedate occupations. There was, too, doubtless, a little 
 smattering of vanity in it. He was the hero of the drama at 
 once the victor and the sufferer. If he sinned, it was some conso- 
 lation that he also inflicted the punishment ; if he suffered (and 
 as he had a Xantippe for his mother-in-law there is no doubt he 
 did !) there was some solace in giving expression to it. If he 
 failed, he could condole with himself. If he succeeded, did he 
 not prolong the pleasure of success by setting it down in his 
 Diary? And then there was, as we have said, a little vanity 
 mixed up with it. It is not every man that can keep a Diary of 
 any kind ; and Thomas Turner's was not an ordinary Diary. He 
 had some literary taste and ability, and must have felt, as he made 
 his entries, that he was doing what no other man in his parish 
 perhaps in the County could do. He was, perhaps, prolonging 
 the memory of his name to other ages conferring on himself a 
 species of immortality ! We have reason to be thankful that he 
 did it. The result is, that we have a picture of rural manners in 
 the last century which is worth a whole library of learned essays 
 or sermons or fashionable novels, and that we can see here how 
 Englishmen of the middle classes actually passed their lives in 
 those small communities, composed of clergyman, Squire, a few 
 farmers and shopkeepers, and a large gathering of labourers and 
 of labourers' wives, sons, and daughters, which made up the 
 greater part of England too years ago how they worked and 
 played eat, drank, rode, and smoked, swore and prayed 
 quarrelled and amused themselves. Such a picture as this does
 
 42 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 Thomas Turner, general dealer, of East Hothly, give ; and, what- 
 ever his motives may have been for doing so, we are thankful that 
 he kept a Diary. 
 
 Now, to leave our speculations and resume our quotations. 
 
 The spirits of Thomas Turner rose and fell with business, 
 according as it was dull or brisk. In July, 1757, he chronicles 
 " a most prodigious melancholy time, and very little to do," adding, 
 in a moralising vein, " I think that luxury increases so fast in this 
 part of the nation, that people have little or no money to spare to 
 buy what is really necessary. The too frequent use of spirituous 
 liquors, and the exorbitant practice of tea-drinking, has corrupted 
 the morals of people of almost every rank." 
 
 The conjunction of spirituous liquors and "the exorbitant 
 practice of tea-drinking " as corrupting the morals of the people 
 will be a novelty in the eyes of tee-totallers of the iQth century ! 
 Mr. Turner makes this conjunction more than once, and, although 
 he was a seller of tea, evidently did not look upon it with favour- 
 able eyes. 
 
 On the previous Sunday a brief had been read in East 
 Hothly Church " to repair the groins and fortifications of the 
 town of Brighthelmstone, against the incroachments of the sea on 
 that coast, which, if not timely prevented, will in all probability 
 eat in and destroy the town, several houses having in a few years 
 been swallowed up by the sea." Times are changed with Brighton 
 as well as with tea ! 
 
 If it be any consolation to know that there were wet summers 
 in former days, it may be found in the following entry in July, 
 J 757 : " This is the 2Qth day on which we have had rain succes- 
 sively." And yet some people think that the sun always shone in 
 the olden summers. 
 
 Manners and morals go, as a rule, together. When the 
 former are gross, and Thomas Turner's diary is full of evidence 
 that they were such in the middle ranks of society 100 years ago, 
 we may be pretty sure that the latter were not very pure. The 
 matter-of-course tone in which Mr. Turner sets down certain, 
 family facts which, in the present day, supposing them to occur,
 
 THE SUSSEX DIARISTS. 43. 
 
 would be kept out of sight as much as possible, indicates that they 
 were comparatively ordinary occurrences. Thus he records, on 
 May z6th, 1764, that "My brother Moses came to acquaint me 
 of the death of Philip Turner, natural son of my half-sister, 
 Elizabeth Turner (the boy we had the care of, as also his main- 
 tenance, according to the will of my father) ; he died this morn 
 about five o'clock, of a scarlet fever, aged fifteen years." 
 
 And again, immediately after this, " In the morn I went over 
 to Framfield, and, after taking an account of the gloves, hatbands, 
 favours, &c., I set out for the funeral of Alice Stevens, otherwise 
 Smith, natural daughter of Ben Stevens, at whose house she died." 
 
 Upon these facts, occurring in families of good repute, the 
 Editors remark, " Natural children, one hundred years ago, were 
 considered the most natural things in the world." The example 
 was set by the higher classes. " Mistresses " were an established 
 part of the household of a great man 100 years ago, #nd when 
 they had lost their early bloom, the ladies were, according to 
 Macaulay, handed over to the domestic chaplains as wives. That 
 the conjunction was not so very unequal we may conclude from 
 some of the entries in this Diary in respect to the clergy amongst 
 
 them the following : " Mr. , the curate of Laughton, came 
 
 to the shop in the forenoon, and he having bought some things of 
 me (and I could wish he had paid for them), dined with me, and 
 also staid in the afternoon till he got in liquor, and being so com- 
 plaisant as to keep him company, I was quite drunk. How do I 
 detest myself for being so foolish ! " 
 
 The great nobleman in the neighbourhood of East Hothly 
 was the Duke of Newcastle, the first and last of the House of 
 Pelham who bore the title, and whose seat, Halland House, was 
 situated at Laughton, and was the scene of great festivities in 
 other words, of much dissipation, upon which Mr. Thomas 
 Turner does not omit to pass some severe and just strictures, 
 though, considering from whom they came, it is a little like the 
 pot calling the kettle black ! " Oh, how glad," he exclaims on one 
 occasion, " am I that the hurry and confusion is over at Halland, 
 for it quite puts me out of that regular way of life which I am so
 
 44 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 fond of, and not only so, but occasions me, by too great hurry of 
 spirits, many times to commit such actions as is not agreeable to 
 reason and religion ! " 
 
 Cock-fighting was at this period one of the "national" 
 sports. Ex. gr. : " Was fought, this day, at Jones's, a main of 
 cocks between the gentlemen of Hothly and Pevensey." 
 
 The grossness of manners that showed itself, in private life, 
 in inordinate drinking and " romping," and the carrying home of 
 each other's wives on their backs, was, as might be expected, not 
 without its public phase. Mr. Turner occasionally attended 
 Vestry meetings, and he does not speak of them in the most 
 flattering terms. Thus, " after dinner I went down to Jones, to 
 the Vestry. We had several warm arguments at our Vestry to-day, 
 and several vollies of execrable oaths oftentime redounded from 
 almost all parts of the room. A most rude and shocking thing at 
 publick meetings." 
 
 In the midst, however, of the hard drinking and swearing 
 and coarse immorality of the day, indications occur in Mr. Turner's 
 diary of the deeper current that was setting in. Literature 
 entered largely into the delights of our East Hothly trader, and 
 science put in an occasional appearance, though as yet she was a 
 wonder and a mystery. " There being at Jones's a person with an 
 electrical machine, my niece and I went to see it ; and tho' I have 
 seen it several years agoe, I think there is something in it 
 agreeable and instructing, but at the same time very surprising. 
 As to my own part, I am quite at a loss to form any idea of the 
 phceinomina." 
 
 Though Mr. Turner was not quite at home in scientific terms, 
 this entry is creditable to him, and is a great advance on Mr. 
 Marchant's admiration of the tricks of the " tumbler " at Hurst. 
 
 Mr. Turner also had his opinions in politics, and was not 
 afraid to read the Notth Briton, nor to express his approval of its 
 contents: "July 13, 1763. In the even read several political 
 papers called the North Briton, which are wrote by John Wilks, 
 Esq., Member for Ailesbury, Bucks, for the writing of which he 
 has been committed to the Tower, and procured his release by a
 
 THE SUSSEX DIARISTS. 45 
 
 writ of Harbus Corpus. I really think they breathe forth such a 
 spirit of liberty, that it is an extreme good paper." 
 
 Well done, country trader of a hundred years ago ! There 
 is many a country trader in the present day who would hesitate to 
 speak out so boldly as this ! It may be doubted, indeed, whether 
 the position of the country shopkeeper has not degenerated in the 
 last hundred years, both in respect to the amount of trade done 
 and the character of the men who carry it on. It is clear that 
 Mr, Thomas Turner, general dealer, of East Hothly, was a man 
 of some importance and standing. He and his wife associated, 
 as we have seen, on equal terms with the clergyman and the 
 clergyman's wife, and he was " hail fellow, well met " with the 
 gentry and farmers. He carried on a very extensive trade, and 
 it is recorded of his son and successor that he " turned over " 
 ^50,000, and, in one or two years, as much as ^70,000 a year : 
 the profits upon which, we may be sure, were much larger than 
 they would be at the present day. "It is," say the Editors of 
 this Diary, " certainly a fact that several County families in 
 Sussex can, if they are so disposed, trace their pedigree up to the 
 mercers of bye-gone times," We do not for a moment suppose 
 that they are so disposed ! Country mercers are not the men they 
 were : a large part of their custom has been diverted to towns, 
 now so numerous and accessible, and we question if the 
 County families of the future will be much recruited from their 
 ranks. 
 
 The indignation with which our East Hothly general-dealer 
 looked upon any intrusion on his ground is shown by the following 
 note, in which he refers to the first appearance in the parish of a 
 licensed hawker : 
 
 " July 6. This day came to Jones's a man with a cartload of 
 milinery, mercery, linen-draper)', silver, &c, to keep a sale for two 
 days, which must undoubtedly be some hurt to trade ; for the novelty 
 of the thing (and novelty is surely the predominant passion of the 
 English nation, and of Sussex in particular) will catch the ignorant 
 multitude, and perhaps not them only, but people of sense, who are 
 not judges of goods and trade, as indeed very few are ; but, however, 
 as it is it must pass."
 
 46 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 Novelty, the passion of Sussex in 1763 ! What would Thomas 
 Turner say now ? 
 
 We have said that the beginning and the middle of the last 
 century was a time of prosperity, though gross in manners and 
 low in morals. The state of crime shows it : " Monday, Aug. n, 
 1754. This day the Assizes at Lewes, and only one prisoner." 
 Thirty-two years later, after the American war, there was a different 
 tale to tell. " I preached," writes the Rev. Mr. Poole, " before 
 the Judge in the College Chapel at East Grinstead, the Church 
 being in ruins. A very full Assize and heavy calendar ; twenty- 
 six prisoners; nine condemned, and six for execution." Pos- 
 sibly for what would now be treated as light offences ; for 
 the penal code was Draconic, and Jack Ketch flourished 
 under it ! 
 
 Before we take up the thread of Mr. Turner's domestic 
 history, we will note one or two points of interest to the 
 archaeologist. In 1756 he attended a sale at Lewes, and the 
 mode of auction was, that the last bidder whilst a candle burned 
 was the buyer. The candle was lighted before four o'clock and 
 burnt till eight; four hours being occupied in the disposal of 
 property worth ^420 ! Pepys notices the same custom : 
 "Sept. 3, 1662, After dinner we went and sold the Weymouth, 
 Success, and Fellowship Hulkes, where it was pleasant to see how 
 backward men are at first to bid ; and yet, when the candle is 
 going out, how they bawl and dispute afterwards who bid the most 
 first. And here I observed one man cunnmger than the rest, 
 that was sure to bid the last man, and to carry it; and inquiring 
 the reason, he told me, that just as the flame goes out, the smoke 
 descends, which is a thing I never observed before, and by that 
 he did know the instant when to bid last." 
 
 Few of our readers, we take it, have ever heard of 
 " pandles." It was " the good old Sussex word (so says Mr. 
 Lower) for shrimps," which latter word is comparatively modem. 
 Mr. Turner writes : "In the morn Fielder brought our herrings, 
 but could get no pandles" 
 
 The fear of over-population had not yet come upon the
 
 THE SUSSEX DIARISTS. 47 
 
 nation. In fact, Mr Thomas Turner evidently thought that there 
 was room for a large increase : 
 
 " Nov. 14. This day was married, at our church, Mr Simonds 
 Blackman and Mary his wife (alias Mary Margenson). She being 
 under age, some months agoe they went into Flanders, and was 
 married at a place called Ypres ; but, as this marriage was not in all 
 respects agreeable to the laws of England, in regard to their issue 
 enjoying the gentleman's estate, they was married this day by a 
 licence, which styled her Mary Margison, otherwise Blackman. In 
 my own private oppinion, I think, instead of making laws to restrain 
 marriage, it would be more to the advantage of the nation to give 
 encouragement to it ; for by that means a great deal of debauchery 
 would, in all probability, be prevented, and a greater increase of 
 people might be the consequence, which, I presume, would be real 
 benefit to the nation ; and I think it is the first command of the 
 Parent and Governor of the universe, ' Increase and multiply.' and the 
 observation of St Paul is, that ' marriage is honourable in all men.' " 
 
 But then at this particular moment the mind of our Diarist 
 was again directed towards matrimony. He had lost his " dear 
 Peggy," and is as melancholy under the affliction of her death as he 
 was in her life-time under the infliction of her temper. There can 
 be but little doubt that he did value her highly, though his grief is 
 probably a little exaggerated when he says, " with the incomparable 
 Mr. Young " (" Night Thoughts "), " Let them who ever lost an 
 angel, pity me ! " Perhaps there was a twinge of remorse for 
 past entries to the prejudice of " dear Peggy " in the outbursts 
 that now meet us, or perhaps (and we think this is the fact), in 
 the absence of Mrs. Turner, his old temptation proved too strong 
 for him. There are signs of it : " I lodged at Joshua Bur- 
 rant's, and my brother and Mr. Tomlin lodged at my house " a 
 funny arrangement, this, but with the same consequences to both 
 parties, for " not one of us went to bed sober, which folly of mine 
 makes me very uneasy. Oh, that I cannot be a person of more 
 resolution." And immediately upon this we have the following : 
 
 " July 27. Very bad all the even. Oh, my heavy and troubled 
 mind ! Oh, my imprudence pays me with trouble ! "
 
 48 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 " July 28th. I am intolerable bad : my conscience tears me in 
 pieces." 
 
 " Aug. 5 . Almost distracted with trouble : how do I hourly find 
 the loss I have sustained in the death of my dear wife ! What can 
 equal the value of a virtuous wife ? I hardly know which way to turn, 
 or what way of life to pursue. I am left as a beacon on a rock, or an 
 ensign on a hill." 
 
 In his "grief and melancholy" Mr. Turner takes to "saw- 
 ing of wood " in his leisure hours, trade being dull, and time 
 hanging heavily on his hands. It was, -he says " a melancholy 
 time in trade " throughout the County, and he has " no friend 
 no, not one with whom I can spend an hour to condole and 
 sympathise with me in my affliction." In this frame of mind he 
 goes and dines with " my father Slater," and came home " I 
 cannot say thoroughly sober I think it almost impossible to be 
 otherwise [than drunk?] with the quantity of liquor I drank.'' 
 " But," he proceeds, " however much in liquor I was, my reason 
 was not so far lost but I could see a sufficient difference at my 
 arrival at my own house between the present time and that of my 
 wife's life, highly to the advantage of the latter. Everything then 
 was serene and in order ; now, one or both servants out, and 
 everything noise and confusion. Oh ! it will not do. No, no ! it 
 never will do." 
 
 Clearly, Mr. Turner was thinking about the wisdom of 
 taking unto himself another wife ! " If," he says, a little further 
 on, " if ever I do marry again, I am sure of this, that I will never 
 have a more virtuous and prudent wife than I have been already 
 possessed of ; may it be the will of Providence for me to have as 
 good an one ; I ask.no better." 
 
 We may set it down for a certainty that when a widower 
 begins to asseverate to himself or to his friends that he will never 
 get so good a wife as she whom he has just lost, and " asks no 
 better," he is very far on the road to a second marriage ! 
 
 Another consequence of " single blessedness " now breaks 
 upon his mind. " For want of the company of the more softer 
 sex, and through my over much confinement, I know I arn
 
 THE SUSSEX DIARISTS. 49 
 
 become extreme awkard, and a certain roughness and boisterous- 
 ness of disposition has seized on my mind, so that, for want of 
 those advantages which flow from society, and a free intercourse 
 with the world, and a too great delight in reading, has brought my 
 mind to that great degree of moroseness that is neither agreeable 
 to myself, nor can my company be so to others." 
 
 A more considerate man, to his friends, never breathed than 
 Thomas Turner ! If he marry again, it will clearly be for the 
 advantage of East Hothly society ! But then how repair the 
 loss of his " dear Peggy? " How find a counterpart to that incom- 
 parable one ? "I know not," thus he bursts forth, in his despair, 
 " the comfort of an agreeable friend and virtuous fair ; no, I have 
 not spent an agreeable hour in the company of a woman since I 
 lost my wife, for really there seems very few whose education and 
 way of thinking is agreeable and suitable with my own." 
 
 We have our doubts whether we ought to make this ex- 
 posure to the world of the weak side of a widower ! But then 
 why did Mr. Thomas Turner keep a diary ? However, we are 
 drawing to a close. Who can doubt to what all this woe and 
 lamentation tends ? Still, despite these scientific " approaches " 
 to the inevitable result, it comes upon us in the end rather sud- 
 denly. Perhaps our Diarist intended to be "sensational": 
 " Sunday, Dec. 9. After dinner Jenner and I walked to Lewes, 
 in order to see a girl I have long since had thoughts of paying my 
 addresses to, and he for company. I was not so happy, shall I 
 say, as to see her, or was I unfortunate in having only my walk 
 for my pains, which, perhaps, was as well ? " 
 
 Who can answer this question ? Still, the quserist's temper 
 was not improved by the failure of this first step, for his " cuz, 
 Thos. Ovenden " coming to see him, and staying to sup with him, 
 he thus tells us what he thinks of Mr. Thos. Ovenden : "I think 
 I never see a' more stupid young fellow in my life than my couz. 
 Thos. Ovenden : his discourse is one continued flow of oathes, 
 almost without any intermission." 
 
 Poor Thos. Ovenden ! He came across his " cuz." in an 
 unlucky moment. A little later, and his " flow of oathes " might 
 
 E
 
 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 not have been thrown away upon unappreciative ears. For, a day 
 or two later, our widower made another attempt, and this time all 
 went smoothly : 
 
 " March 28. In the afternoon rode over to Chiddingly, to pay 
 my charmer, or intended wife, or sweetheart, or whatever other name 
 may be more proper, a visit at her father's, where I drank tea, in 
 company with their family and Miss Ann Thatcher. I supped there 
 on some rasures of bacon. It being an excessive wet and windy 
 night, I had the opportunity, sure I should say the pleasure, or 
 perhaps some might say the unspeakable happiness, to sit up with 
 Molly Hicks, or my charmer, all night. I came home at forty 
 minutes past five in the morning I must not say fatigued ; no, no, 
 that could not be ; it could only be a little sleepy for want of rest. 
 Well, to be sure, she is a most clever girl ; but, however, to be serious 
 in the affair, I certainly esteem the girl, and think she appears 
 worthy of my esteem." 
 
 We suppose it was the fashion, 100 years ago, for wooers to 
 stay up all night with their fair ones ! It had its dangers, and 
 also its inconveniences, as appeareth by the following : " Saturday, 
 April 7. In the even very dull and sleepy ; this courting does not 
 well agree with my constitution, and perhaps it may be only taking 
 pains to create more pain." 
 
 Eeally this last expression is highly dramatic not unworthy 
 of a man who had read and appreciated Shakspeare ! 
 
 This, however, was only a passing cloud, to give a deeper 
 azure to the coming sky : 
 
 " Sunday, April 1 5 . After dinner I set out for Mailing, to pay 
 Molly Hicks, my intended wife, a visit, with whom I intended to go to 
 church, but there was no afternoon service. I spent the afternoon 
 with a great deal of pleasure, it being very fine, pleasant weather, and 
 my companion very agreeable. Now, perhaps, there may be many 
 reports abroad in the world of my present intentions, some likely con- 
 demning my choice, others approving it ; but, as the world cannot 
 judge the secret intentions of my mind, and I may therefore be cen- 
 sured, I will take the trouble to relate what really and truly are my 
 intentions, and the only motive from which they spring (which may be 
 some satisfaction to those who may happen to peruse my memoirs).
 
 THE SUSSEX DIARISTS. 51 
 
 First, I think marriage is a state agreeable to nature, reason, and 
 religion ; I think it the duty of every Christian to serve God and 
 perform his religious services in the most calm, serene, and composed 
 manner, which, if it can be performed more so in the married state 
 than a single one, it must then be an indispensable duty. . . . As 
 to my choice, I have only this to say : the girle, I believe, as far as I 
 can discover, is a very industrious, sober woman, and seemingly 
 endued with prudence and good nature, with a serious and sedate turn 
 of mind. She comes of reputable parents, and may perhaps, one 
 time or other, have some fortune. As to her person, 1 know it's plain 
 (so is my own), but she is cleanly in her person and dress, which I will 
 say is something, more than at first sight it may appear to be, towards 
 happiness. She is, I think, a well-made woman. As to her education, 
 I own it is not liberal ; but she has good sense, and a desire to improve 
 her mind, and has always behaved to me with the strictest honour and 
 good manners her behaviour being far from the affected formality of 
 the prude, on the one hand ; and on the other, of that foolish fondness 
 too often found in the more light part of the sex. For myself, I have 
 nothing else in view but to live in a more sober and regular manner, to 
 perform my duty to God and man in a more suitable and religious 
 manner, and, with the grace of the Supreme Being, to live happy in a 
 sincere union with the partner of my bosom." 
 
 This, we admit, is rather long and prosy. But we owe it to 
 Thomas Turner to give it verbatim et literatim. It is his justifica- 
 tion, to the world to all who read his Diary, and it is obvious that 
 he intended it should be read. He was not afraid to exhibit his 
 follies and weaknesses his resolutions and his failures to the 
 world. He had an inkling that there was something in the Diary 
 that " the world would not willingly let die," and he was quite 
 right. It is a very valuable picture of the times, and a very 
 amusing one of an individual man. There are not many such 
 genuine ones in the whole range of literature. We get from this 
 Diary a more lively conception of life and manners and morals in 
 the middle of the i8th century than from any book of history or 
 divinity that was ever writ. We cannot part from Thomas Turner 
 without acknowledging his rare merits his frankness, simplicity, 
 honesty, and desire to do what is right and proper, albeit he some- 
 times fails. This he does, indeed, to the very last, for, in the last 
 entry but one, taking " a ride to pay my intended wife a visit," after
 
 52 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 a " serious walk " he takes his leave at the very proper hour of ten 
 o'clock, but, " after parting with her, I went to take my horse, and, 
 happening into company [alack, that company was to Thomas 
 Turner, as to Jack Falstaff, the ruin of him !] I staid till ten 
 minutes past 12 and came home about four o'clock." 
 
 Let us hope that this was the last lapse, and that " his dear 
 Molly " kept him in better order than his " dear Peggy," and never 
 required to be taken home on Mr. Tho. Fuller's back ! He was 
 married to her by his old friend and boon, companion, Mr. Porter, 
 on the i pth June, 1765, and now, he writes, "thank God, I begin 
 once more to be a little settled, and am happy in my choice. I 
 have, it's true, not married a learned lady, nor is she a gay one ; 
 but I trust she is good-natured, and one that will use her utmost 
 endeavour to make me happy. As to her fortune, I shall one day 
 have something considerable, and there seems to be rather a 
 flowing stream. Well, here let us drop the subject, and begin a 
 new one." 
 
 And so we part with Thomas Turner. Here he dropped his 
 Diary, and did not commence a new one ; at least, none has been 
 preserved. Perhaps Molly found it out, and put a stop to such 
 waste of time, or she may have burnt it, finding some impertinent 
 
 reference to herself, or used it as waste paper, or but there, 
 
 let us rejoice that we have got so much as we have. The Diary, 
 the Editors of it tell us, was originally in at least 116 stout 
 memorandum books, and these, with the exception of a few, have 
 been preserved. They may be ranked amongst the literary 
 treasures of Sussex, of which, as we have already said, Thomas 
 Turner is the Pepys the first of the Sussex Diarists. 
 
 Walter Gale, schoolmaster at Mayfield, was a contemporary 
 of Thomas Turner, general dealer at East Hothly. Both 
 " flourished " in the middle of the last century ; both belonged to 
 the middle class of life ; and the educational gifts of each were of 
 much the same extent. The chief difference in their career was, 
 that Thomas Turner began as a schoolmaster and ended as a 
 trader ; whereas Walter Gale, beginning as an Officer of Excise, 
 ended as a schoolmaster. How he came to fail in the former
 
 THE SUSSEX DIARISTS. 53 
 
 capacity admits of very little ^doubt ; he shared in the general 
 failing of the age : an inordinate love of drink. He had been 
 discharged from his office, and he was not so enamoured of the 
 instruction of youth but that he was desirous to be replaced in it, 
 and, in an application to a friend with that view, he states that 
 " the many vicissitudes of fortune which I have experienced since 
 my being discharged from the office [of Exciseman] would con- 
 stitute a pretty good history." 
 
 Perhaps a pretty bad history would have been nearer the 
 mark. There can be little doubt that, though Walter Gale was a 
 clever man and could turn his hand, as his diary shows he did, to 
 a good many things, he was not at all fitted, by his habits or in- 
 clinations, for the office of a schoolmaster. But that office stood 
 at a very low ebb in the middle of the last century. It was a 
 period of general neglect and carelessness so far as the education 
 and morals of the lower indeed, it might be said of the middle 
 classes, were concerned. The old Grammar Schools and " Free 
 schools," so freely endowed in the first years of the Reformation, 
 had been suffered to fall into decay, or, where they still flourished, 
 it was owing, not to any general system of supervision, but to the 
 accident of some efficient man having been appointed as School- 
 master, as, for instance, Dr. Bayley at Midhurst, or John Grover 
 at Brighthelmstone. 
 
 It was not likely that a very efficient man would be obtained 
 at Mayfield (a parish at the north-eastern extremity of Sussex), 
 where the salary was 16 a-year, until increased by the bequest 
 of a house and garden which let for ;i8 a-year. No man 
 could support a wife or bring up a family on such a miserable 
 stipend as this ; but this difficulty was got over at Mayfield by 
 the election of a single man. The election lay with the Vicar 
 and principal inhabitants of the place, and the first " principal 
 inhabitant" who subscribed to Gale's appointment, John Kent, 
 not being able to write, made his mark ! The qualifications for 
 the office were, to possess " a genius for teaching," write a good 
 hand, and understand arithmetic well ; in addition to Avhich, he
 
 54 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 was " to be particularly careful of the manners and behaviour of 
 the poor children (it was a ' free school ') committed to his care." 
 
 How far Walter Gale acquitted himself of these duties, we 
 shall have an opportunity of judging by and bye. The school 
 must have heen a poor place ; for its master soon had occasion to 
 note " I found the greatest part of the school in a flow, by- 
 reason of the snow and rain coming through the leads." The 
 scholars were 2 1 in number, " the third part of which are sup- 
 posed to be writers " (that is, taught to write). 
 
 Walter Gale commemorated his appointment to his office by 
 the commencement of a Diary, one of the first uses (?) of which 
 is to chronicle a dream to the effect " that I should be advan- 
 tageously married, and be blessed with a fine offspring, and that I 
 should live to the age of 81, of which time I should preach the 
 Gospel 41 years." There is no evidence in the succeeding entries 
 that any of these prophetic intimations ever came to pass. But 
 in this and other entries there are signs of the superstition of the 
 times. One of Mr. Gale's earliest visitors at the school is " Mr. 
 Hassel, the conjuror," and the worthy pair soon adjourn to 
 Elliott's (the public-house, we presume) " where he (that is, the 
 conjuror,) treated me Cthe schoolmaster) with a quartern of gin, 
 and I gave him a dinner at Coggin's Mill " (Mr. Gale's place of 
 abode.) "Having," he proceeds, "dined the conjuror, we re- 
 turned to Elliott's, where he treated me as before." 
 
 " The conjuror," it seems, was at work on the map of a farm 
 belonging to Col. Fuller, and Mr. R. W. Blencowe, who edits 
 the Diary, remarks, "The profession of a conjuror a hundred 
 years ago was by no means uncommon, nor does it seem to have 
 been thought a discreditable one. A person of the same name was 
 in full practice as a cunning man in the neighbourhood of Tun- 
 bridge Wells very recently. One of the best known of his craft 
 was a man of the name of Saunders, of Heathfield, who died 
 about fifty years ago. He was a respectable man, and at one time 
 in easy circumstances ; but he neglected all earthly concerns for 
 astrological pursuits, and, it is said, died in a workhouse."
 
 THE SUSSEX DIARISTS. 55 
 
 Of the credulity of Walter Gale we find many instances, 
 amongst them the following : 
 
 " May loth, 1758. Received a testimony of a death in our 
 family within a twelvemonth, and, by the appearance of it, I suppose 
 it to be myself." 
 
 "April roth, 1759. My mother, to my great unhappiness, died 
 in the 83rd year of her age, agreeable to the testimony I had of a 
 death in our family on the loth of May last." 
 
 What strikes one in the Diary of the Mayfield schoolmaster 
 is the almost total absence of any reference to his school or 
 scholars. He engages in a multiplicity of tasks, from the drawing 
 of quilts, that is, the patterns of them, to the drawing of 
 wills ; he measures land, engraves tomb-stones, paints public-house 
 signs, designs ladies' needle work, &c., &c. ; but as to the 21 
 scholars whom he undertakes to teach to read, write, and keep 
 accounts, we hear very little ; and that little is not of a very 
 edifying character. Like Falstaff with his ragged soldiers, 
 Walter Gale would not march through Coventry with them : 
 
 " 26th. Old Kent came, and I went with him to Mr. Baker ; they 
 said they should have a ragged congregation of scholars, who should 
 sit together in the new gallery, and that they should insist on my 
 sitting with them ; to this I did not assent." 
 
 The very first reference to school duties, " began my school 
 at noon," followed by " I waited on Miss Annie Baker, of 
 whom I received a neckerchief to draw " shows the " divided 
 duties" that occupied Mr. Walter Gale's time and talent. He 
 could not, indeed, live on the miserable stipend allotted to him 
 as schoolmaster of the Free school of Mayfield, and had to 
 eke out a revenue by other means, one of which (and it was per- 
 mitted by the Trustees of the school) was to " enter on the 
 assistant hop business at Rotherfield." 
 
 The chief opponent of Mr Gale in these multifarious money- 
 getting pursuits was John Kent, " old Kent," as Gale irreverently
 
 56 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 calls him, the same who put his cross to the rules laid down for 
 the management of the school ; and no small part of the Diary is 
 occupied with the quarrels between the two. Gale having ac- 
 companied a neighbour on what was evidently a drinking bout, 
 and the worthy pair having lost their road, and Gale slipped from 
 a high bank, "but received no hurt," "Old Kent came to the 
 knowledge of the above journey, and told it to the Rev. Mr. 
 Downall, in a false manner, much to my disadvantage ; he said 
 that I got drunk, and that that was the occasion of my falling, and 
 that, not being content with what I had had, I went into the town 
 that night for more." 
 
 And, shortly afterwards, " The old man entered the school 
 with George Wilmhurst and Eliz. Hook, and said they should be 
 taught free. I asked him how many I was to teach free ; without 
 any further ado, he flew into a violent passion. Among other 
 abusive and scurrilous language, he said I was an upstart, runna- 
 gate, beggarly dog, that I picked his pocket, and that I never 
 knew how to teach a school in my life. He again called me 
 upstart, runnagate, beggarly dog, clinched his fist in my face, and 
 made a motion to strike me, and declared he would break my 
 head. He did not strike me, but withdrew in a wonderful heat, 
 and ended all with his general maxim, ' The greater scholler, the 
 greater rogue.' " A maxim worthy of the age ! 
 
 The division of the scholars into free boys and such as were 
 paid for by their friends, was one of the causes that ruined so 
 many Grammar Schools and Free schools. The free boys those 
 on the foundation were neglected by the Master, and came to 
 be looked down upon by the other scholars, until at last many a 
 public school, like that at Midhurst, had not a scholar on the 
 foundation and was shut up altogether. 
 
 We have said that Walter Gale, in spite of his dream of 
 advantageous marriage and fine offspring, remained a bachelor, all 
 his life. But it was not by reason of indifference to the sex. 
 Ex. gr. : " I set out out for Frantfield Fair with a roast pig for 
 my sister Stone. Came to her, and there drank tea with the 
 ncomparable Miss Foster."
 
 THE SUSSEX DIARISTS. 57 
 
 We are rather surprised that we do not hear any more of 
 " the incomparable Miss Foster !" But she passes out of sight 
 like a fairy vision, or 
 
 u Like a snow-flake on the river, 
 One moment seen then lost for ever." 
 
 Admiration of a single lady might be allowed to the Mayfield 
 Dominie even by " old Kent ;" whereas it was scarcely fair to 
 rouse the jealousy of a fellow-pedagogue, and he, too, so estimable 
 a character as John Grover, of Brighthelmstone. Yet, by the 
 following entry, Walter Gale seems to have been " guilty of as 
 great a sin " : 
 
 " I set off for Brighthelmstone, and came at noon to Mailing- 
 street, and went to the Dolphin. Kennard told me that Burton's 
 successor had had a great many scholars, but that their number began 
 to decrease, by reason of his sottishness, and he offered, if their dislike 
 of him should increase, to let -me know of it. The rain clearing off 
 at three o'clock, I set out for Brighthelmstone, passing through South- 
 over, but being advanced on the hills, the rain returned, and drove 
 me for shelter under a thin hawthorn hedge, and I was obliged to 
 return to Grover's, where I drank tea, and discoursed merrily, but 
 innocently, with his wife, notwithstanding which, Grover was so 
 indiscreet as to shew some distaste at it, and to have great difficulty 
 to keep his temper." 
 
 It did not take much to draw Master Gale from his school 
 duties. Thus, " Left off school at 2 o'clock, having heard the 
 spellers and readers a lesson a piece, to attend a cricket match of 
 the gamesters of Mayfield against those of Lindneld and Chailey." 
 This is a singular application of the word " gamesters." 
 
 No small part of the Diary is taken up with jaunts to fairs, &c., 
 and convivial meetings, in which not a little beer, brandy, milk, 
 punch, cherry brandy, elderberry wine, &c., is consumed, and Mr. 
 Gale is none the better for it in health or reputation. There is not 
 a total absence oi reference to books ; but the literary taste of Mr. 
 Gale was not of so high a character as that of Thomas Turner. 
 Here is the chief entry : " Mr Rogers came to the school, and
 
 58 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 brought with him four volumes of Pamela, for which I paed him 
 43. 6d., and bespoke Duck's Poems for Mr. Kine, and a Caution 
 to Swearers for myself (!) He wanted to borrow of me the three 
 volumes of Philander and Silvia, which I promised to lend him. 
 I went to Mr. Baker's for the list of scholars, and found him 
 alone in the smoaking-room ; he ordered a pint of mild beer for 
 me, an extraordinary thing. Left at Mr. Rogers' the three 
 volumes of Love Letters from a Nobleman to his Sister." 
 
 The majority of these works do not bespeak a very refined 
 taste, and none of them have anything to do with scholarship. 
 In fact, it is clear that Master Walter Gale's heart was not in his 
 school, nor was his time given to his scholars. He took to 
 teaching, like too many Masters of his day, to earn a living, and 
 he was accepted for want of a better man and because little real 
 interest was felt in the education of the people. A great many 
 people believed, in the last century, and the belief came down to 
 our own times, though now pretty well extinct, that the working 
 classes were better without reading and writing that such things 
 did more harm than good. As then taught, perhaps, there was 
 some truth in it. In one of the altercations between " old Kent " 
 and the schoolmaster of Mayfield, the former said that " I (Walter 
 Gale) spent my time in reading printed papers, to the neglect of 
 the children ; and that I was covetous * * * that the 
 children did not improve, and that he would get an old woman 
 for 2d. a- week that would teach them better." To which the 
 Master replied, that " many of them (the boys) were extremely 
 dull, and that I would dene any person that should undertake it 
 to teach them better." 
 
 Altogether, the glimpse we have in this Diary of the Free 
 School of Mayfield is not calculated to raise our ideas of the 
 education of the people in the middle of the i8th century ; and 
 if it were general, as there is reason to believe it was, it cannot be 
 a matter of surprise that at the beginning of the igth century 
 England stood, educationally, very low ; that the great mass of 
 the people did not know how to read or write, and that, morally 
 and religiously, the nation was rather going back than fonvard.
 
 THE SUSSEX DIARISTS. 59 
 
 Mr. Gale outlived his old antagonist, John Kent. But a day 
 of reckoning was to come at last, and on the i8th of October, 
 1771, it was unanimously resolved by the then Vicar and four 
 parishioners " that he be removed from the School for neglecting 
 the duties thereof," and, on the roth April following, that he " be 
 not paid his salary due till he has absolutely put the schoolhouse 
 in such a condition as to the form of it as it was at the time of 
 his entering irpon such house." 
 
 From which it may be inferred that neither the school- 
 master nor the school-house of Mayfield was very efficient in the 
 years 1771-2. 
 
 That Walter Gale was not an exceptional teacher of youth in 
 the 1 8th century, the Editor of his Diary (Mr. R. W. Blencowe) 
 gives many evidences of; and he concludes with the following 
 characteristic anecdote : " Two or three years ago a friend of 
 
 the Editor visited the school of in no distant part of 
 
 England ; and, observing some deep-coloured stains upon the 
 oaken floor, inquired the cause. He was told that they were 
 occasioned by the leakage of a butt of Madeira which the master 
 of the Grammar School, who had grown lusty, not having had 
 for some time any scholars who might afford him the opportunity 
 of taking exercise, employed himself upon a rainy day in rolling 
 up and down the school-room for the purpose of ripening the 
 wine and keeping himself in good condition." 
 
 Upon which we may remark, with some degree of satisfaction, 
 " These things are ordered differently in England " in the present 
 day. 
 
 It may be questioned whether " Timothy Burrell, Esq., 
 Barrister-at-Law, of Ockenden House, Cuckfield," who kept a 
 Journal and Account-Book from the year 1683 to 1714, despite the 
 excellence of his character, his good family, learning, and social 
 position, deserves to be ranked among the diarists of Sussex. 
 Most certainly the Journal and Account-Book on which his claims 
 to do so rest, fall in interest far below the diaries of the Rev. 
 Giles Moore, Anthony Stapley, Thomas Turner, and Walter 
 Gale. It consists chiefly of bald entries of monies paid and
 
 60 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 received ; of the presents which were sent to him (often, doubtless, 
 in acknowledgment of legal advice) by his friends and neighbours, 
 rich and poor ; of the wages of servants, the price of grain, &c. 
 Occasionally, however, Mr. Timothy Burrell enters into, to him, 
 more interesting and domestic matters, and on these occasions, 
 like the Rev. Giles Moore, he makes use of the Latin language. 
 Thus (as rendered into English by Mr. R. W. Blencowe), 
 " I severely reprimanded John Packham for hfs continual 
 drunkenness, and at last I turned him out of my house, of 
 which he had had the free run for five years : a drunken 
 extravagant fellow ! " And, touching on more delicate ground, 
 he thus records a family trouble : " My sister quarrelled with 
 me, and was insolent to me, and I was somewhat, not to say 
 too much, irritated with her ; the consequence was, that for two 
 days my stomach was at intervals seriously affected. I took 
 Tipping's Mixture, and one or two doses of hiera picra " (still a 
 favourite medicine, says Mr. Blencowe, who edited this Journal 
 for the Sussex Archaeological Society, with the common people of 
 Sussex). And, if sometimes Mr. Timothy Burrell could call his 
 sister to account for insolence, he also shows that he was not 
 blind to his own defects of temper. Ex. gr. : " I was rather too 
 impatient with my servant for having put too much salt in my broth." 
 
 The larger number of entries are, however, of the business- 
 like and homely character we have adverted to, and one or two of 
 these will serve to illustrate the rest. As showing the price of 
 wheat, in October, 1709, Mr. Burrell enters, " I bought two 
 bushels of wheat for i6s., and then two bushels more for 175. 
 The two bushels, with the bag, weighed 1348)5. Since that wheat 
 has fallen to 8s. a bushel." And then he adds : " Query, what 
 returned from the miller? i2ilbs. So the toll paid was 13835., 
 which was reasonable for double toll, which Sturt saith might have 
 been i6d. the bushel." 
 
 " Bringing grist to the mill " is still a Sussex proverb ; but the 
 days of taking toll in this way for grinding small parcels of wheat 
 are well-nigh gone ; and the old jokes at the expense of " honest 
 millers " are obsolete.
 
 THE SUSSEX DIARISTS. 6 1 
 
 Mr. Burrell records the receipt, in 1698, of "the three first 
 Flying Posts," the newspaper of that day, which was thus recom- 
 mended to purchasers : " If any gentleman has a mind to oblige 
 his country friend or correspondent with his account of public 
 affairs, he may have it (that is, the ' Flying Post ') for 2d., of 
 G. Salisbury, at the 'Rising Sun,' Cornhill, on a sheet of fine 
 paper, half of which being blank, he may write his own private 
 business, or the material news of the day." This offer of a choice 
 between the news of the newspaper and that of the purchaser 
 betokens, at least, modesty in the journalist of the age ! 
 
 On one occasion, in 1699, Mr. Timothy Burrell, after visiting 
 at the Comb or Highden, the residences of his relations, the 
 Bridgers and the Gorings, records that he paid the following sums 
 in "vails": "Mr. Johnson, IDS. gd. (half-a-guinea) ; chamber- 
 mayd, ios. ; cook, los. ; coachman, 53.; butler, 53.; chief gar- 
 dener, 53. ; under cook, 23. 6d. ; boy, 23. 6d. ; under-gardener, 
 2S. 6d. ; nurse, 23. 6d. Total, 3 os. gd." Rather a heavy 
 price the " vails " of those days for the pleasure of visiting 
 one's friends or relations ! 
 
 In one respect the journal of Mr. Timothy Burrell surpasses 
 those of his Sussex fellow-chroniclers. It is an illustrated one. 
 Mr. Burrell evidently had a talent for pen-and-ink sketches, and 
 there is scarcely an object named or subject referred to by him but 
 it finds a " counterfeit presentment " in the margin of his journal. 
 Pipes, spoons, fiddles, spades, rakes, hats, honey bees, horns, 
 bottles, jugs of all sizes, pigs, cows, cocks and hens, horses, trees, 
 tables, bells, barrows, carts, books, candles and candlesticks, and 
 even neckties and shirts, figure on the margin of the Journal, 
 and the likenesses of " Nanny West " and " Mary Slater " when 
 he paid them their wages all these and numerous other 
 objects to which reference is made in the Journal are limned 
 with a tolerably faithful and skilful hand. One of the most 
 ambitious attempts at Art is a sketch of his own residence 
 at Cuck field, Ockenden House, which, by-the-bye, still stands 
 whether in its integrity or not, we cannot say and was, 
 up to the last two or three years, occupied by a member of the
 
 62 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 Burrell family. Another pretentious flight, and with a touch of 
 humour in it, is that of a barrel of liquor on its stallage, and with 
 a vessel below the tap ready to receive the contents. This is in 
 illustration of the Latin entry: "Nov. Pandoxavi." A fishing - 
 net, with the captured fish, and two hind-wheels of the family 
 coach, " made by Juniper," and the window on which the first 
 window-tax, a most objectionable tax then just introduced, 
 was paid, also find a place in this most original of journals. 
 
 Two of the most curious of the illustrations, and which Mr. 
 Timothy Burrell could scarcely have intended for the public eye, 
 accompany the following entries : " For a payr of fine scarlet 
 stockings for my girle, 33." " I bought of a Scotchman a payr of 
 pink scarlet stockings for my girle." To each of these entries is 
 attached a representation of a very shapely foot and leg, which 
 we may presume to be that of Miss Burrell, the draughtsman's 
 only daughter " my girle " ; the limb being carried to a little 
 above the garter-line, and the garter itself made a very con- 
 spicuous object. The Scotch pair of stockings is distinguished by 
 the tartan, very neatly drawn. 
 
 Mr. Burrell continued this practice of illustrating his journal 
 up to the very last. Only a fortnight before his death an entry of 
 a hog which was shut up to fatten is accompanied by a draw- 
 ing of the animal, but which, says Mr. Blencowe, without the con- 
 text no one would imagine was intended to represent it. 
 
 One of the most prominent features of Mr. Timothy Burrell's 
 Journal, and it marks the benevolence of his character and 
 illustrates the closer relations which once existed between the 
 higher and the lower classes in England, is the lists of guests, 
 from the humbler classes of society, whom he invited to dine 
 with him at Christmas and the bills of fare that he provided for 
 them. He commenced this custom in 1691, and he kept it up to 
 the year before his death (1717). The following are the bills of 
 fare for the Christmas dinners of 1706 : 
 
 " 1st January, 1706. Plumm pottage, calves' head and bacon, 
 goose, pig, plumm pottage, roast beef, sirloin, veale, a loin, goose,
 
 THE SUSSEX DIARISTS. 63 
 
 plumm pottage, boiled beef, a clod, two baked puddings, three dishes of 
 minced pies, two capons, two dishes of tarts, two pullets." 
 
 " 2nd January, 1706. Plumm pottage, boiled leg of mutton, 
 goose, pig, plumm pottage, roast beef, veal, leg, roasted, pig, plumm 
 pottage, boiled beef, a rump, two baked puddings, three dishes of 
 minced pies, two capons, two dishes of tarts, two pullets." 
 
 It will be remarked that plum-pudding, without which no 
 Christmas-day festivities would be now complete, does not figure 
 in Mr. Timothy Burrell's bill of fare. Its place is supplied by 
 " plumm pottage," (sometimes called plumm broth) which occurs 
 thrice in each bill, and which, no doubt, stood in the place of and 
 was the embryo of its more famous successor. Minced pies had 
 arrived at maturity ; but plum puddings had yet to be invented ! 
 
 The Journal of Mr. Timothy Burrell, Barrister-at-Law, 
 " Counsellor Burrell " was his more common title amongst his 
 neighbours, was brought to a close on the 25th July, 1715, 
 when he gave over the cares of housekeeping to a Mr. Trevor, 
 who had married his only daughter, Elizabeth. The death of 
 this lady, after a short and very unhappy married life, hastened, 
 it is believed, the death of her father, who expired on the 26th 
 of December, 1717, at the age of 75, and lies buried in Cuckfield 
 Church ; and with him we will bring this chapter of Sussex Diarists 
 to a close.
 
 THE SUSSEX IRON-MASTERS. 
 
 TT is not an easy task to call up again a picture of Sussex when 
 its Weald was the seat of extensive iron works when the ore 
 was dug and smelted in Sussex, when the fuel was grown in 
 Sussex, and when the iron was manufactured in Sussex. Let the 
 reader try to conceive the activity and noise and bustle that must 
 have attended the working of 42 forges or iron-mills, and the 
 blowing of 27 furnaces, These existed little more than 200 years 
 ago in 1653 in the Weald of Sussex, in a district where all is 
 now as quiet and as peaceful as it was in Arcadia. As the modern 
 traveller walks or rides through such villages as those of Waldron, 
 Robertsbridge, Lamberhurst, Horsted Keynes, Ardingly, Mayfield r 
 Maresfield, Ewhurst, and Ashburnham, or rambles through the 
 remains of Tilgate and St. Leonard's forests, and as his eyes and 
 ears take in only the sights and sounds of rural life the slow- 
 going plough, the browsing sheep, and the heavy-looking labourers, 
 how difficult is it to conceive that these places have known any 
 other kind of life than that in which they now slumber ! And yet 
 these were the places which supplied " His Majesty's stores " with 
 guns and shot in the days when Rupert and Monk and the Duke 
 of York thundered day after day against . Van Tromp and De 
 Ruyter, nay, it was the forges and furnaces of these Sussex 
 villages which furnished the ships of the Drakes and Hawkins and 
 Frobishers with the artillery which they used so well against 
 the floating castles of the Armada.* Sussex was then the 
 
 * In the Inventory taken of the goods of the Lord High Admiral Seymour, 
 when he was impeached for high treason (temp. Edward 6th), are included a 
 number of furnaces and forges possessed by him in the forest of Worth, Sussex, 
 with the number of men "founders, ffylers, coleyers, miners, gon-founders," 
 &c., who worked them. One item will show the warlike nature of the manu- 
 facture : " Ffyrste, a duble ffurnace to cast ordynaunce, shotte, or rawe iron, 
 wt all implements and necessaries appertenyng unto the same : Item, there ys 
 in sowes of rawe iron, exij. ; Jtm., certain pieces of ordynaunce, that is to say, 
 culverens, xiv. ; dim culverens, xv. ; Itm, of shotte for the same, vi. tonne, 
 v. ct. ; Itm., ordynaunce caryed from thens to South wark, and remanyeth ther 
 as foleth : sakers, xv. ; ffawkonn, vj. ; mynnyons, ij. ; and dim. culverens, j ; 
 Itm., in shotte for the same delyvercd at the h. std., xiij. toune ; Itm, in myne 
 or ower at the furnace, redye receved, xvjc. lode ; Itm., in myne, drawen and 
 caried, Mixx. lode ; Itm., in whode, viijc. corde."
 
 THE SUSSEX IRONMASTERS. 65 
 
 Wales and the Warwickshire of England the centre of the 
 country's iron-works. Foreign countries sought eagerly for its 
 cannon its culverines and falconets. Its richly-decorated fire-backs 
 and fantastic andirons or "dogs," as they were called in com- 
 mon parlance, were the pride of lordly mansions. London had 
 to send hither for the railings that went round its great 
 Cathedral ; and Sussex ploughshares, and " spuds/' and other 
 agricultural implements and articles of hard-ware, were sent 
 all over the Kingdom. Fancy the glare and noise and activity 
 that must have gone on in and around these 42 forges and iron 
 mills the digging and carting of ore the cutting down and drag- 
 ging in of trees the blowing of furnaces, the ding of hammers, 
 the clatter of mill-wheels, turned by merry little streams ; to say 
 nothing of the building of workshops for the men, cottages for 
 their families, and mansions for the masters. 
 
 Of all this busy and active scene, what remains to indicate to 
 the passer-by that it once existed ? Here and there a name, like 
 Cinder-hill, at Chailey, or Mill-place, at East Grinstead, to raise a 
 faint suspicion of uses of which no sign or vestige now remains. 
 Nature has resumed her original rights. Ceres has driven out 
 Vulcan. The only forge is that of the village blacksmith ; the 
 stream turns the wheel of no iron mill raises no hammer 
 works the bellows of no furnace only harbours a few medi- 
 tative trout, which are persecuted by a few deluded anglers ; 
 the ore lies undisturbed in the ferruginous soil, and the 
 forest is once more safe from the woodman's axe. The skies are 
 unsullied, the air is pure. All is peaceful rural and very slow 
 and sleepy. The fierce tug of life, the strife for gold in the shape 
 of iron, has passed away, with its noise and smoke and dirt, to 
 other districts, the denizens of which that is, such as can afford 
 it escape as often as they can from their Pandemoniums to the 
 peaceful, rural villages of Sussex, ignorant, perhaps, for the most 
 part, that they are coming to the ancient homes of the mine, the 
 furnace, the forge, and the mill 
 
 But are there no records of these old Sussex ironmasters? 
 of the Burrells, the Fullers, the Challoners, and the Gales ? Are 
 
 j
 
 66 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 there no memorials of the life they lived, of the houses they built 
 and the fortunes they made of their ups and downs in life ? 
 
 Thanks to the labours of modern archaeologists, a few 
 relics have been preserved, " few and far between." Of the 
 works that existed at different periods, and Mr. Lower believes 
 that they date from the first century of the Christian era, there 
 are several lists, and in a few cases with the names of the families 
 who owned them. But we only know of two Sussex iron-masters 
 who left any personal records for the information of those who 
 came after them : and these are Leonard Gale, and his son and 
 namesake, the owner of Crabbett House, Worth. 
 
 From the journals of these two, contributed to the Sussex 
 Archaeological Society's Collection by Mr. R. W. Blencowe (to 
 whom the MS. was lent by Mrs. Morgan, of Cuckfield), we will 
 try to select a few facts that will illustrate an extinct class of 
 men : the Ironmasters of Sussex. 
 
 Leonard Gale was not Sussex born or bred. "I was born," he 
 says, "in the Parish of Sevenoaks, in Kent, in 1620." " My mother 
 was the daughter of one George Pratt, a very good yeoman, living 
 at Chelsford." There was a family of five sons and one daughter, 
 and the whole of these, with the exception of Leonard and a 
 brother, were swept off by the plague. The brother went to sea 
 and died. Leonard, the sole survivor of this large family (and 
 this is only a sample of the days of plague and small pox and 
 other enemies of the human race) began life with ^200, and in 
 two years and a half " ran out^i5o of it " not, as he pathetically 
 says, " with ill husbandage, for I laboured night and day to save 
 what I had left to me, but bad servants and trusting was the ruin 
 of me." 
 
 So that times have not changed in these respects, for could 
 not many a man say the same thing now in 1878? But Leonard 
 Gale had the true stuff in him. He was a deeply religious man 
 of the Puritan type. " Then," he says, " I was in a great strait 
 and knew not which way to steer, but I cryed unto the Lord with 
 my whole heart and with tears, and he heard my cry, and put into 
 my mind to try one year more, to see what I could do, for I
 
 THE SUSSEX IRONMASTERS. 67 
 
 resolved to spend nothing but mine own, and I resolved always to 
 
 ' keep a conscience void of offence towards God and towards 
 men.' " 
 
 " Then," he proceeds, " I took a boy to strike and to blow 
 for me, and a man to work by the piece, but kept no maid nor 
 woman in my house ; and then I so thrived that, within two years 
 and a half, I got back all that I had lost before, so that, by the 
 time I came to 21 years of age, I had lost ^150 and got it again, 
 and I began to be looked upon as a thriving man, and so I was, 
 for all the time I kept a smith's forge I layd by ;ioo a-year, one 
 with another, and being burdened with free quartering of soldiers, 
 I left off, and came down into Sussex, after one Spur, who owed 
 me between 40 and ^50, and he being in a bad capacity to 
 pay me, though he did afterwards pay me all. Before I went home 
 again, I took St. Leonard's forge, and so kept a shop to sell iron, 
 and let out the smith's forge. ... I had not been in the 
 country one year, but Mr. Walter Burrell, whom I looked upon as 
 my mortal enemy, sent to speak with me, and when I came to him 
 he told me he heard a very good report of me, and desired to be 
 acquainted with me, and he told me if I would let his son Thomas 
 come into partnership with me, he would help me to sows nearer 
 and better and cheaper than I had bought before. I told him I 
 wondered to hear such things from him, for 1 heard he was my 
 mortal enemy, because I took that forge, and I told him that if he 
 would let me go partners with him in the furnace, he should go 
 partners with me in the forge. He desired time to consider of 
 it, and he rode presently into Kent to enquire of me, and found 
 such an account of me, that he told me I should go partners with 
 him in all his works." 
 
 After a partnership of ] 5 years with the Burrells (the pro- 
 genitors of the owners of Knepp Castle, West Grinstead, and 
 Ockenden House, Cuckfield), Leonard Gale became the .sole 
 proprietor of Tinsloe forge, one of the best in Sussex. At 46 
 years of age, having made, in 30 years, about ^5,000 or ^6,000, 
 he thought it time to marry, " and chose (to use his own words 
 to his sons) this woman, your mother, the daughter of Mr.
 
 68 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 Johnson, with whom I had ^"500 and one year's board with her." 
 A singular provision this, and which, we believe, is now unknown 
 to newly-married couples in England. 
 
 Things now prospered so well with Leonard Gale that at 66 
 years he had improved his estate to at least ;i 6,000, "which is," 
 he remarks, " ^500 a year, one year with another, which is a very 
 great miracle to me how I should come to so great an estate, con- 
 sidering my small dealings, the bad times, and my great losses by 
 bad debts, suits of law, and by building." A proof, this, that 
 fortunes were not so rapidly accumulated, even by Sussex iron- 
 masters, 200 years ago, as they are now. 
 
 Leonard Gale had five children, and, addressing his two sons, 
 Leonard and Henry, he gives them some advice which throws a 
 light on his own character and also on the times. " Be not," he 
 charges them, " too familiar with your vile neighbours, as I have 
 been, and you now see how they hate me" It is clear from this that 
 there was a Nemesis of prosperity 200 years ago ; and that the man 
 who rose from the lower classes, be his virtues what they might, 
 had his enviers and detractors. " Next, suffer no man to inclose 
 any land nor build houses on the waste." Here shines out the 
 old spirit of resistance to encroachment, came it from high or low. 
 " Next, I charge you never to suffer that lane to be inclosed by 
 Woolbarrow or Sears, or anyone else, for you see I have made 
 them take away the gates, but they leave the posts standing, 
 thinking to set them up again when I am dead. But you may 
 safely cut down the gates, for it was never inclosed but by old 
 Sears, who took delight to damm up highways to his own ruin ; 
 and so it was observed by his own neighbours, for he never 
 thrived after he took in Langley-lane, and turned the Crawley 
 footway, and to my knowledge he never thrived after he took in 
 this lane." A piece of rural superstition for which some allowance 
 may be made, for it has doubtless kept open many a pleasant 
 path. 
 
 And now comes another " sign of the times : " " Next, I 
 advise you to have a great care of ill and debauched company, 
 especially wicked and depraved priests, such as are at this present
 
 THE SUSSEX IRONMASTERS. 69 
 
 time about me, as Lee and Troughton, of Worth ; never give any 
 of them any entertainment, nor none of their companions, for 
 they are most vile and wicked men to my knowledge." 
 
 And, returning to the same point, he says : " Next, my advice 
 is, that whatever estate either of you ever attain to, yet follow 
 some employment, which will keep you from abundance of 
 expenses and charges, and take you off from evil thoughts and 
 wicked actions ; and observe the mechanic priests, which have 
 nothing to do but to come to church one hour or two on a 
 Sunday, and all the week besides they will eat and drink at such 
 men's houses as you are ; but avoid them ; but love and cherish 
 every honest, godly priest, wherever you find [them ; and, above 
 all, hold fast the ancient Protestant religion, for a better religion 
 cannot be found out than that is, only I could wish the abuses 
 were taken away, and wicked men found out, and punished, or 
 turned out" 
 
 There can be no doubt that there was much of the old 
 Puritan spirit in Leonard Gale the senior. And he closes his 
 parental advice as follows : " Next, my advice is, that you avoid 
 swearing, lying, drunkenness, whoring, and gaming, which are the 
 ruin of all men's estates, that are ruined in this nation, and pride 
 of apparel, which is a great consumer of men's estates in this 
 kingdom." 
 
 Neither did Leonard Gale, in his last advice, lose sight of the 
 " main chance " : " If you can get," he says, " one of the 
 Cowden furnaces, it will be very well, for I do assure you that, if 
 I were but 40 years old, I would, by God's help, get a good 
 estate by this employment, for I have within these 20 years 
 cleared near ^300 per annum out of that very forge." 
 
 Leonard Gale died in 1690, leaving the larger share of his 
 estate to his son Leonard, who had received a liberal education 
 and was called to the bar, but did not practice. In 1698 he pur- 
 chased the house and estate of Crabbett, in the parish of Worth, 
 for ; S,ooo, and took his position among the gentry of the County, 
 the son of the blacksmith being, as Mr. Blencowe remarks, elected 
 one of the Members for East Grinstead in 1710. He, too, like
 
 70 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 his father, was a deeply religious man, and he, too, had his 
 annoyances in life some of them proceeding from " those inferior 
 beggarly fellows," as he calls them, who had been the plague of 
 his father, and who, it appears, had brought about the ruin of the 
 previous owner of Crabbett, Mr. John Smith. 
 
 At 52 years of age Leonard Gale had so far successfully 
 carried out his father's precepts as to be " now worth, at 
 Michaelmas, 1724, at a reasonable computation, ^40,667, though,'* 
 he adds, " I have been guilty of a great many oversights in missing 
 good bargains and taking bad (particularly the Mayfield estate), 
 and not for want of care, but of understanding ; but I will not look 
 back upon what is passed, but with a thankful heart daily praise 
 Almighty God for what I have." 
 
 He had married, and had a large family, and the terms in 
 which he records this event of his life are very simple and 
 touching. "I marryed with Mrs. Sarah Knight, my mother's 
 sister's only daughter, after I had made my court to her two or 
 three years ; by her I had a plentiful fortune : we were marryed 
 in the parish church of Charlwood, by Mr. Hesketh, the rector. 
 She was truly my own choice, and I am extremely well satisfied 
 with it ; and do verily believe that for truth and sincerity, kind- 
 ness and fidelity, humility and good nature, she has few equals. 
 I am sure none can exceed her ; and I pray God to continue us 
 long together in health and prosperity, and to crown us with all 
 those blessings which he has promised to those that serve Him, 
 and walk in His ways." One of the entries of the journal tells us 
 that on Nov. 18, 1703, "My wife went to London in the Rye- 
 gate stage-coach," and whilst there occurred the great storm 
 chronicled by De Foe, and by which, amongst other places, 
 Brighthelmston was " miserably torn to pieces," and many of its 
 fishing boats lost, with their crews. 
 
 A considerable portion of Leonard Gale's journal is occupied 
 with records of family calamities in the deaths of the children 
 born to him. Indeed, in all these old diaries and journals a 
 striking feature is the ravages of death amongst children and 
 young people. The small-pox had something to do with it ; but
 
 THE SUSSEX IRONMASTERS. 71 
 
 there is good ground for concluding that bad drainage lay at the 
 root of the mischief. Leonard Gale outlived all his sons, only one 
 of whom, in fact, lived to man's estate. The family became 
 extinct, in the male line, in the third generation from the Kentish 
 blacksmith. In the female line there are still descendants of it, 
 in the Blunt and Clitherow families. 
 
 The memoir of Leonard Gale closes with an account of the 
 marriage of his daughter, " A woman," he says, " of excellent 
 accomplishments, and who will, I doubt not, prove an ornament 
 to her sex, to her parents, and the family she is grafted in." She 
 married James Clitherow, Esq., and received a portion of ^8,000, 
 and had ; i, 200 a-year settled on' her and her heirs, "of which 
 ;6oo per annum is for her jointure." 
 
 Though the bride was so well provided for, the wed- 
 ding was a sober one, and offers a strong contrast in this 
 respect to modern nuptials. As Mr. Blencowe says, "No 
 carriage with four horses and smart post-boys in those days was 
 waiting at the door to carry the happy pair away to Tunbridge 
 Wells or the Isle of Wight ; the bride and bridegroom returned 
 quietly to her father's house, where they remained a week, and a 
 fortnight after that her mother accompanied her to her new home 
 at Boston House." 
 
 Leonard Gale died in 1750, and was buried in Worth Church. 
 He left estates of the value of about ,1,110 a-year, which were 
 divided among his three daughters. One of the latest entries of 
 his journal indicates the character of the man : " I am now in 
 the 5 8th year of my age, and my memory is sensibly growing 
 worse, for I have made some mistakes in my accounts within the 
 last three years of above ^150, which I cannot possibly find out 
 after my utmost endeavours." 
 
 The Gales must have witnessed the decline of those iron 
 works to which they owed their fortune. The growing scarcity of 
 wood, and the opening of coal mines in Wales and other parts of 
 the kingdom, where iron ore was in close proximity to them, were 
 fatal to the Sussex works, which gradually grew fewer and fewer, 
 until the last of them, at Ashburnham, was closed in 1809, the im-
 
 72 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 mediate cause of it being the failure of the foundry-men, through 
 intoxication, to mix chalk with the ore, by reason of which it 
 ceased to flow, and the blasting was stopped, and it was never re- 
 newed again. So ended, ignominiously, the Sussex iron-works. 
 Their very sites are now for the most part only a matter of tra- 
 dition : the streams which turned the wheels by which the furnaces 
 were " blown " are only visited by the angler ; the pits from which 
 the ore was dug are bosky dells, dear to the naturalist ; the furnaces 
 are cold the forges silent. The Sussex iron-works are, like the 
 Gales, who assisted to work them, extinct. Whether they will ever 
 be revived depends on the problem now in course of being solved : 
 is there coal in Sussex ? * If there be, perhaps some new iron- 
 master will write a journal for future ages like the Gales ! 
 
 * Since the above was written it has been solved fortunately for the lovers 
 cf the picturesque in the negative : the attempt to find coal by boring at 
 Nethcrfield, in East Sussex, leading to no result.
 
 73 
 
 THE SUSSEX SMUGGLERS. 
 
 A1TITHIN little more than a century, Sussex has seen two classes 
 of smugglers flourish on her coast. The first were exporters 
 of an English production wool which English legislators were 
 foolish enough to try to keep at home under the idea of " protect- 
 ing " the woollen manufacturers, and so there was a regular war 
 along the southern coast (encouraged, it was asserted, by members 
 of the higher classes who owned sheep-farms) between the 
 smugglers of wool to France and Holland, and the supervisors, 
 " surveyors," and " riders " who were appointed to prevent the 
 exportation of wool. The second and later class of smugglers 
 were importers of foreign goods chiefly tea, spirits, tobacco, and 
 silk the duties on which were so enormous as almost to prohibit 
 the use of them, indeed, some manufactured articles were 
 prohibited altogether. If it had not been for the smuggler in 
 the latter years of the last century and the beginning of the present 
 century, a large proportion of the population of England would 
 have had to go without a good many articles now looked 
 upon as necessaries of life. The smuggler supplied the farmer 
 with spirits, and the farmer's wife with tea. He supplied 
 the fine lady with silk and lace, and the fine gentleman with 
 Bandana handkerchiefs. Huskisson, who sa\v the folly of the 
 system long before the days of Cobden and Bright, told the 
 House of Commons once that the only way to put down 
 smuggling was to take off duties ; otherwise it would defeat all 
 their supervisors and blockade men. " Hon. Members," he went 
 on to say, " were well aware that Bandana handkerchiefs were 
 prohibited by law, and yet," he continued, at the same time draw- 
 ing forth a Bandana from his pocket amidst the roars of the 
 House, " I have no doubt there is hardly a gentleman in the 
 House who has not got a Bandana handkerchief."
 
 74 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 So, from 1671 to 1787, all the severity of the law could not 
 prevent the exportation of British wool. Calais was often full of it 
 40,000 packs at a time. A law was passed that no person living 
 within 15 miles of the sea in Sussex or Kent should buy wool with- 
 out entering into sureties not to sell it to any people within 15 miles 
 of the sea. It was of no avail. In 1698 the Supervisor of Sussex 
 and Kent (Mr. Henry Baker) wrote to the authorities to say that 
 in a few weeks 160,000 sheep would be shorn in Romney Marsh, 
 and that the greater part of their fleeces would be " sent off hot 
 into France." Warrants were sent down to arrest the wool smug- 
 glers at Romney, and some wool was seized on the horses' backs ; 
 but the smugglers assembled 50 armed horsemen attacked the 
 supervisor, rescued his prisoners, and pursued him and his officers 
 till they were glad to make their escape to Guildford. More officers 
 were appointed, but with little or no effect. " Large gangs of 
 twenty, forty, fifty, and even one hundred, rode, armed with guns, 
 bludgeons, and clubs, throughout the country, setting everyone at 
 defiance, and awing all the quiet inhabitants. They established 
 warehouses and vaults in many districts, for the reception of their 
 goods, and built large houses at Seacock's Heath in Etchingham 
 (built by the well-known smuggler, Arthur Gray, and called 
 " Gray's Folly "), at Fix Hall and the Four Throws, Hawkhurst, 
 at Goudhurst, and elsewhere, with the profits of their trade." 
 
 " The illicit exportation of wool," says Mr. W. D. Cooper, in 
 his paper on "Smugglers in Sussex," " was never stopped ;" and 
 when a new kind of "fair trade" commenced, and it became 
 profitable to import as well as export, the men and machinery 
 were ready for it in Sussex. The nature of the goods smuggled 
 doubtless had some effect on the class of men engaged in it. The 
 wool smugglers were men of substance, and landowners and farmers 
 were interested in the illegal exportation of wool to France. 
 But the smugglers of brandy, hollands, gin, tea, &c., into England, 
 were a lower class; and a brutality showed itself in some 
 of their proceedings which ultimately raised the whole 
 country against them. As early as 1737 an engagement, with loss 
 of life, had taken place at Bulverhithe, near Hastings, between the
 
 THE SUSSEX SMUGGLERS. 75 
 
 | 
 
 Custom Officers and some of the murderous gangs with which 
 the County was over-run, and for the next ten years there 
 was a guerilla war between the smugglers of Sussex and Kent and 
 the officers of the Government, in which for the most part the 
 smugglers had the advantage, frequently making the officers 
 prisoners, disarming and cruelly cutting them with their swords, 
 and riding off triumphantly with their goods. 
 
 The state of the Sussex roads at this time will furnish some 
 clue to this defiance of the law. They were all but impassable, 
 " The foul ways in Sussex " were proverbial. In 1703, the King 
 of Spain, who paid a visit to Petworth House the seat of the 
 Percies and the finest house in the County was six hours in 
 travelling the last nine miles. Gentlemen and ladies were drawn 
 to Church by oxen ; and so recently as 1818 Bishop Buckner 
 advised a gentleman whom he had ordained in the November of 
 that year as the curate of Waldron to lose no time in going there, 
 for in the course of a very short time he would find it impossible 
 to do so ! By some true Conservatives of the times this state of 
 things was rejoiced in ; and it is a fact that when the highway 
 from London to Brighton, through Cuckfield, was projected, it 
 was petitioned against by the residents of Hurstpierpoint, and 
 diverted from that place, on the ground that it would be the 
 means of bringing down cut-throats and pick-pockets from 
 London ! The impassable roads were also looked upon by some 
 Sussex people as a protection against foreign invaders ! 
 
 This is a diversion ; but it explains a state of things otherwise 
 incredible : a guerilla war carried on within 60 miles of London, 
 and an organised resistance to the Government, in which towns 
 were besieged, battles fought, Custom Houses burnt down, and 
 the greatest atrocities committed. 
 
 The gang chiefly guilty of the latter was known as " The 
 Hawkhurst gang," Hawkhurst being a village in Kent But its 
 leaders were Sussex men, and some of them in a respectable 
 station of life. Such was Perin, a native of Chichester, who had 
 been a master carpenter in that city for some years, until, being 
 deprived of the use of his right hand by a stroke of the palsy, he
 
 j6 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 became a purchaser of French goods for smugglers, and was on 
 board a cutter off the Sussex coast with a large quantity of 
 brandy, tea, and rum, when the vessel was captured by the 
 Revenue Officers and its cargo taken to Poole, in Dorsetshire. 
 
 Perin and the crew of the smugglers made their escape in a 
 boat. 
 
 On Sunday, October 4, 1747, the smugglers of Sussex and 
 Kent met in force in Charlton Forest (the Duke of Richmond's 
 hunting ground, near Chichester), and resolved, upon Perm's 
 suggestion, to attack and break open the Poole Custom House. 
 A portion of the gang, under the same Thomas Kingsmill who 
 now headed the attack on Poole, had shortly before attacked Goud- 
 hurst, in Kent, and only been repelled by a regular force of militia 
 after having three of their men killed and several others wounded. 
 Others were taken and executed ; but Kingsmill escaped, and 
 acted as the leader in the attack on Poole. Assembling at 
 Rowland's Castle, in Hampshire, armed with swords and firearms, 
 they marched on Poole, which they reached at 1 1 at night, and, 
 receiving intelligence that, owing to the ebb tide, the sloop lying 
 off the town could not bring her guns to bear, they proceeded to 
 the Custom House, broke it open, loaded their horses with goods, 
 and rode off, first to Fordingbridge and thence to Brook, where 
 they divided their booty and dispersed. 
 
 Now follows the tragic part of the affair. A reward was 
 offered for the apprehension of the perpetrators of this daring act, 
 but for some months with no avail. At length, a man named 
 Diamond was captured and lodged in Chichester Gaol. The chief 
 witnesses against this man were a Custom House officer named 
 Galley and a shoemaker of Fordingbridge named Chater. On 
 the i4th of February these two were on their way to Major 
 Batten's, a Magistrate at Stanstead, near Chichester, to have their 
 evidence taken, when they were induced to stop at the White 
 Hart, at Rowland's Castle, in Hampshire, for refreshment, and 
 here something fell from them which led the landlady to suspect 
 the business they were travelling on. It shows how strongly the 
 popular feeling was in those days with the smugglers that
 
 THE SUSSEX SMUGGLERS. 
 
 77 
 
 this woman should have sent for two oi the men engaged 
 in the late outrage, named Jackson and Carter, and com- 
 municated her suspicions to them. They sent for others of 
 the gang, and Galley and Chater being made drunk they were 
 put to bed, and then, in the middle of the night, were 
 woke up, brought out, and, having been placed on a horse, their 
 feet were tied under its belly, and a journey commenced, which, 
 perhaps, is unparalleled for barbarity in a civilised country. As 
 they rode along, the smugglers lashed the unfortunate men with 
 their long whips, until, in their agony, they fell with their heads 
 under the horse's belly, and so the journey was continued, until 
 Lady Holt Park was reached, and here Galley was taken from the 
 horse in order to be thrown down a well. Changing their purpose, 
 however, the brutes replaced the wretched man on the horse, and 
 then, re-commencing their torture of him, whipped him to death 
 on the Downs, and there dug a \jfhole and buried him. Chater 
 was still alive, and was reserved for further sufferings. Being 
 taken from the horse and chained in a turf-house, he was here 
 brutally cut about the eyes and nose with a knife ; and then, in 
 the dead of night, he was taken to Harris's Well a noose tied 
 round his neck by Tapner (a native of Aldrington, near Brighton), 
 and he was ordered to get over the palings to the well. Having 
 done so, his murderers tied one end of the rope to the pales, and 
 pushed the miserable man into the well. The rope, however, was 
 too short to strangle him, so, after hanging some time and being 
 still alive, he was drawn up, untied, and then thrown head-fore- 
 most down the well. Still he was not dead. His groans were 
 audible, and, to stifle these and finish the horrible deed, the 
 smugglers tore up the rails and gateway round the well and threw 
 them and large stones upon their victim till he expired. 
 
 These atrocious murders were not long undiscovered; though 
 the discovery of them was by accident. Whilst a gentleman 
 named Stone was hunting on the Downs, his dogs unearthed the 
 body of Galley, and six miles off, in the well, was found the corpse 
 of Chater. Such a crime as this could not be allowed to go 
 unpunished. Seven of the fourteen men engaged in it were cap-
 
 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 ed before Christmas (1748), and a Special Commission was 
 ued for their trial at Chichester, in January, 1749. The whole 
 them were convicted, either as principals or accessories in the 
 irders, and six of them (namely, Tapner, two men named Mills, 
 her and son, John Cobby, and John Hammond all Sussex 
 in and William Carter, a native of Hampshire) were executed 
 ne of them in chains, as Tapner, on Rook's Hill, near 
 ichester, and Cobby and Hammond on Selsey Island. The 
 r enth convict, Jackson, escaped a similar fate by dying in prison. 
 The daring character of these men, and the danger which 
 vellers ran from them, is illustrated by a circumstance in con- 
 :tion with these trials. One of the men executed, Richard 
 11s, had another son besides the one who suffered with him, and 
 s worthy, being at liberty at the time of the trial, actually pro- 
 sed to his associates to stop the Judges as they were travelling 
 *r Hind Heath and to rob them ! In company with the Judges 
 re officers of the Court and Counsellors, altogether enough to 
 six coaches, each drawn by six horses, so that the smugglers 
 mght the risk was too great ; and the Judges escaped this danger 
 
 1 the country a very great scandal. 
 
 So far, however, from the execution of these men acting as a 
 rning, a crime of the same character was, shortly afterwards, 
 emitted with the same circumstances of brutality almost on 
 ; same ground. The son of Mills above referred to, meeting one 
 iwkins, whom Mills and a party of fellow smugglers suspected 
 stealing two bags of tea, they accused him of it, and, on his 
 aying it, they flogged and kicked him to death, and then, car- 
 ng his body to a pond in Parham Park, twelves miles off, sunk 
 there. Mills the third of the family who so suffered was 
 this crime hung in chains on Slindon Common, and others of 
 ; gang were convicted at the same Assizes as highwaymen, and 
 scuted. 
 
 Still there were some of the leaders in the attack on Poole at 
 ge amongst them, Perin, the concocter of it, and Kingsmill, 
 
 2 leader. Both of them were, however, betrayed by one of 
 sir gang and captured and convicted, with two others, named
 
 THE SUSSEX SMUGGLERS. 79 
 
 Glover and Fairhall. Their behaviour at their trial was most 
 insolent. Fairhall threatened one of the witnesses, and when 
 Perin, whose body was directed to be given up to his friends, was 
 lamenting the fate of his associates, not so favourably treated, 
 Fairhall exclaimed : " We shall be hanging up in the sweet air, 
 when you are rotting in your grave." The night before his 
 execution, Fairhall kept smoking with his friends till he was 
 ordered by his keeper to go to his cell, when he exclaimed : 
 " Why in such a hurry? cannot you let me stay a little longer 
 with my friends ? I shall not be able to drink with them to 
 morrow night." Kingsmill was only twenty-eight, and Fairhall 
 only twenty-five years of age, at the time of their death. 
 
 The Hawkhurst gang was thus broken up, some of its 
 leaders " hanging up in the sweet air," and others seeking safety in 
 flight to France or Holland. But the "trade" still went on ; its 
 profits were too great to be given up, and to some wild spirits it 
 had an attraction even in the perils that attended it. So for 
 nearly another 100 years, nearly, in fact, up to our own time, 
 smuggling was carried on, with more or less success, along the 
 Sussex coast ; and there were few persons who, 30 or 40 years 
 ago, were not brought, in some way or other, in contact with the 
 men who carried it on. Stories of them and their adventures 
 were a staple topic of conversation, and smuggling anecdotes the 
 good luck or ill-luck of former townsmen still live in the 
 memories of Sussex men of this generation. It is amusing to 
 find Mr. W. D. Cooper, himself a Hastings man, whilst recording 
 some of the doings of his smuggling fellow-townsmen, in the Sussex 
 Archaeological Collections, not 20 years ago, cautiously explaining 
 that " it would be improper to enter into any details which 
 might involve the characters of those still alive"! We ourselves 
 have a vivid recollection of an incident which our immediate 
 predecessor in the proprietorship of the Brighton Herald was in 
 the habit of narrating. He was taking a stroll along the Shore- 
 ham-road somewhat late at night when he suddenly heard the 
 tramp of horses and saw a long file of mounted men approach 
 him. He stood still in wonderment, not unmingled with alarm,
 
 80 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 when one of the riders, quitting the ranks, rode up to him and 
 presented a pistol at his head. At that moment the hero of the- 
 adventure recognised the horseman as an intimate acquaintance 
 and uttered his name. At the same moment the leader of the 
 smugglers, for it was a large body of these men, engaged in 
 " running " the contraband cargo of a vessel off the coast, 
 
 recognised him, and exclaimed, "By , if you had not spoken, 
 
 , I should have shot you." They had taken him at first for a 
 
 Revenue Officer, and if he had been one it would have gone hard 
 with him. As it was, there was a laugh, a shake of the hands, 
 and the party rode off. 
 
 It is difficult to say to which of the long lines of coast that 
 lie to the west and east of Brighton the credit, or discredit, of 
 carrying on the " Fair Trade " with the greatest daring and 
 resolution should be given. Both were favourably circumstanced 
 for it, in the ruggedness of the coast, the sparseness of the 
 population, the badness of the roads, and the total absence of 
 police. From Worthing to Selsey there was a long line of flat 
 coast on which boats could be " beached " at any time, and their 
 tubs or bales landed from a lying-off Dutch or French lugger, 
 and there was a wild and almost unpopulated country lying 
 behind the few small towns or villages which, like Steyning, and 
 Shoreham, and Bramber, lay nearer to the coast. It was, as we 
 have seen, in the wild country between Chichester and Worthing 
 taking in Charlton Forest, Slindon, Parham, &c., that the Hawk- 
 hurst gang organised their attack on Poole, and afterwards con- 
 summated their crime by the murder of Galley and Chater. But 
 the signal punishment which these atrocities brought down 
 upon the chief actors in them seems to have checked their 
 proceedings for a time in this quarter, at least, they were 
 not carried on in the same daring spirit. The improve- 
 ment, too, in the roads of the Western part of Sussex, about 
 this time chiefly by the agency of Sir Walter Burrell may 
 have had something to do in arresting smuggling. However 
 that may be, in the latter part of the last century, and the begin- 
 ning of this, it is in the eastern part of Sussex that we find
 
 THE SUSSEX SMUGGLERS. 8 1 
 
 the smugglers most active and daring. The Hastings men took 
 the lead in it, and, following in the footsteps of the famous Viking 
 from whom their town presumedly takes its name, joined piracy to 
 smuggling. 
 
 In 1758 Nicholas Wingfield (Wingfield is still a good Sussex 
 name) and Adams Hyde, masters of two Hastings cutters, had 
 the audacity to board a Danish ship, on which was the Ambas- 
 sador to Denmark from Spain, and carried off a portion of its 
 cargo. For this they were tried, convicted, and executed as pirates. 
 So far from the Hastings men being deterred by this example, 
 for the next seven years vessels coming up Channel were exposed 
 to the piratical attacks of a gang known as " Ruxley's crew," most 
 of the members of which lived at Hastings, and who did not 
 hesitate, when resisted, to add murder to piracy. Thus, the master 
 of a Dutch hoy, called " The Three Sisters," was " chopped 
 down " with an axe, and the perpetrators betrayed themselves by 
 boasting "how the Dutchman wriggled when they cut him on the 
 back-bone ! " To put down this gang it was thought necessary to 
 send a detachment of the Inniskilling Dragoons, 200 strong, to 
 Hastings, and a man-of-war and a cutter were stationed off the 
 town to co-operate with the military ! If the town had been in 
 the hands of the French, and about to be besieged, more warlike 
 measures could scarcely have been taken. Nay, so fearful were 
 the authorities of their unscrupulous fellow-towtismen who favoured 
 "Fair Trade" and piracy, that the soldiers had strict orders 
 to conceal the object for which they'lvad been sent down; and 
 because the Mayor of Hastings would not divulge this he was 
 attacked, and ran considerable danger of being murdered. Then 
 it was considered time to act. Several men were arrested, brought 
 to trial for piracy, and four of them hung. 
 
 This was in 1769, and yet ten years afterwards we have the 
 strongest proof that smuggling was carried on as actively as ever 
 along the Sussex coast. A new Act had been passed against it, 
 and, in a pamphlet issued by the authorities to enforce the law 
 (called "Advice to the Unwary," 1780), it is stated that the 
 practice of smuggling had made such rapid strides from the sea 
 
 G
 
 82 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 coast into the very heart of the country, pervading every city, 
 town, and village, that universal distress had been brought on the 
 fair dealer. The quantity of spirit distilled at Schiedam, to be 
 smuggled into England, was estimated at 3,867,500 gallons, and 
 five or six millions of pounds of tea were yearly imported in the 
 same way from France. For the management of the transactions 
 connected with the " trade," the Sussex smugglers had regular 
 resident agents at Flushing ; and these official representatives of 
 Sussex smugglers continued to be appointed up to 30 years 
 ago ! * 
 
 The exportation of wool had ceased, but the high duties on 
 tea, silks, tobacco, and spirits left plenty of work for the smuggler 
 in the introduction of those articles into the country without 
 payment of duties ; and, when successful, the' profit was so great 
 that plenty of men were ready to risk their lives for it. So the 
 work went on, not only through the whole of the war with 
 France, from 1793 to 1815, but up to 1840 ; and during that 
 period scarcely an Assize went by without some trial taking 
 place for more or less heinous offences arising out of it ; whilst 
 the loss of life in the constant conflicts between the blockade- 
 men and the smugglers was incessant, and sometimes heavy on 
 both sides. 
 
 " In May, 1826," writes Mr. W. D. Cooper in the paper on 
 " Smuggling in Sussex," from which we have before quoted, " a 
 smuggling galley, chased by a guard boat, ran ashore near the 
 mouth of Rye Harbour, and opened fire on the guard. The 
 
 * The cool audacity of these men is illustrated by a piece of intelligence 
 communicated to the Ghichester Journal and Hampshire and Wiltshire Chronicle 
 of October 6, 1783, under the head of "Lewes, Sept. 29." It is as follows : 
 " One night last week Mr. Marson, Excise Officer at Newhaven, was seized by 
 six or eight smugglers, who escorted him to their main body, composed of near 
 200, assembled at the sea-side, liy whom the Exciseman, was tried for Ms life, on a 
 charge of aiding and abetting in wantonly shooting a smuggler some time since, 
 when, happily for him, he was acquitted by a majority of ten and suffered to 
 depart unhurt." This was, indeed, turning the tables ! Only try to conceive 
 the state of things when smugglers apprehended and tried for their lives Excise 
 officers !
 
 THE SUSSEX SMUGGLERS. 83 
 
 blockade-men from Camber Watch-house came to the spot, and 
 seized one of the smugglers, when a body of not less than two 
 hundred armed smugglers rushed from behind the sand-hills, com- 
 menced a fire on the blockade-men, killing one and wounding 
 another, but were ultimately driven off with the capture of their 
 galley, carrying off, nevertheless, their wounded. On another occa- 
 sion, four or five smugglers were killed whilst swimming the military 
 canal at Pett-horse Race, having missed the spot where it was 
 fordable. On April 13, 1827, about twenty smugglers went down 
 to the eastward of Fairlight ; a struggle ensued ; the smugglers 
 wrested some muskets from the blockade men, beat them with the 
 butt-ends, and ran one through with a bayonet. The smugglers at 
 length retreated, leaving one of their number dead j another was 
 found afterwards, having been apparently dropped by the 
 smugglers ; a third, some distance on the way to Icklesham, the 
 body scarcely cold ; the rest of the wounded men were carried off 
 by their companions ; and I have been informed that one of the 
 party alone carried one of his fellows on his back from the scene 
 of the conflict at Fairlight to his residence at Udimore, a distance 
 of six miles at least." 
 
 It was, indeed, one of the best traits in these lawless men that 
 they always carried off their wounded comrades ; and we will do 
 them the credit to attribute it to a fellow-feeling on their part, 
 and not to the fear of being " split upon " by their captured 
 comrades. 
 
 One of the latest of the smugglers' battles, for such they 
 often really were, in Sussex, was fought in 1828, near Bexhill. A 
 lugger having landed its illicit cargo between that village and the 
 little public house at Bo-Peep, a party of smugglers, armed with 
 " bats " (large clubs), rushed down to the beach, and, placing it in 
 carts, on horses, and on men's backs, made straight to Sidley 
 Green. But here they were overtaken by a Blockade force of 40 
 men, and the smugglers halting, and drawing up in a line, a regular 
 engagement took place. With such resolution did the smugglers 
 fight on this occasion, that they repulsed their assailants, after 
 killing Quarter-master Collins, and severely bruising several others.
 
 84 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 In the first volley from the Blockade an old smuggler named 
 Smethurst was shot dead, and his body was found the next 
 morning, his " bat " still grasped in his hand, but almost hacked 
 to pieces by the cutlasses of the Blockade-men. As usual, all the 
 wounded smugglers were carried off. 
 
 For this fatal affair eight men were tried at the Old Bailey, 
 and, pleading guilty, received sentence of death. But the sentence 
 was eventually commuted to transportation. 
 
 Two smugglers were shot dead near Hastings in 1831, and 
 another at Worthing in 1832, in an affray in which between 200 
 and 300 smugglers were engaged. In 1833, the Chief Boatman 
 of the Blockade was killed at Eastbourne, and on this occasion 
 the smugglers, forming in two lines down to the beach, kept up 
 the fight until the whole cargo had been run, in spite of having 
 several of their party wounded. On none of these occasions were 
 any of the men engaged discovered. Indeed, as a rule, the 
 smugglers were *' true " to each other. 
 
 The last occasion on which life was lost in a smuggling affray 
 on the Sussex coast was in 1838, when a poor fiddler named Monk 
 was shot dead by the Coast Guard at Camber Castle. Since then no 
 blood has been shed in smuggling transactions, and, in fact, smug- 
 gling may be said to have died a natural death. No farmer would 
 now connive at a fraud on the Government by allowing his barns 
 to be filled with kegs of brandy, or his horses to be " borrowed," 
 a frequent practice in the olden times, or even by leaving his 
 gates unlocked for their passage ; all of which things were at one 
 time usual. Nor would any respectable tradesman now buy 
 lace or silk which had not come through the regular channels of 
 commerce and paid the duty to which they are subjected. In 
 fact, the smugglers, as a body of men acting to some extent in 
 the interests of the public, by keeping open commercial dealings 
 with other nations which would otherwise have ceased altogether, 
 and who certainly were looked upon with a good deal of sympathy 
 by the general community, belong to the past. Traditions of the 
 spots where they concealed their goods (one of them, a hole near
 
 THE SUSSEX SMUGGLERS. 85 
 
 Falmer Pond),* or where they suffered for their crimes, still 
 remain, but every year they become fainter. It is difficult, indeed, 
 in the present day, when, thanks to Free Trade, commerce has 
 free scope, to form an idea of the extent to which illicit dealings 
 with the opposite coast were carried on, even by the res- 
 pectable classes, and how it perverted men's notions of right 
 and wrong. The smuggler was a popular man, except where, as 
 in the Chater and Galley case, he committed atrocious crimes ; 
 he had the majority of his fellow-subjects with him, though the 
 law was against him. He was carrying on a hazardous game that 
 was all. If he was successful, people looked upon and talked of 
 him as a fine fellow ; he had " done " the Exciseman, nothing 
 more. As for defrauding the revenue or gaining an unfair advan- 
 tage over his fellow-subjects who paid duty on their goods, nobody 
 thought of reproaching him with that or of denouncing him as a 
 public robber, and thus respectable tradesmen entered into smug- 
 gling transactions in those days, as respectable people in these 
 days gamble in shares. Fifty or sixty years ago some of the lead- 
 ing tradesmen of Brighton, Worthing, Hastings, Rye, and other 
 towns along the coast took the goods that were "run" by the 
 Fair Traders, and some of them made fortunes, and some 
 of them indeed, most of them were ruined. The 
 effect of this gambling, to call it by the mildest term, 
 may be conceived. The very foundations of public morality 
 were sapped ; a war was carried on between the Govern- 
 ment that acted, or professed to act, for the people, and the 
 people themselves ; and the sympathies of the public were 
 against the Government. It was a fine thing in the estimation of 
 
 * Very curious places were sometimes chosen by the smugglers to conceal 
 their goods in. The Vicar of a country parish not far from Brighton wanted 
 to visit his Church rather earlier than usual one Sunday morning, and 
 was met by all kinds of excuses and obstructions from the Sexton for not finding 
 the key, until at last it came out that the sacred edifice was full of kegs of 
 brandy ! And they bad to be cleared out before Service could be proceeded with. 
 Of course, the Revenue Officers did not think of looking for spirits of this kind 
 in the Parish Church !
 
 86 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 numbers of men to defy it to go out in armed bands to resist 
 the officers of the Crown and to fight with, and sometimes to 
 murder, these officers. Many of the men who did this were 
 known and applauded as fine fellows, and were, in fact, men of 
 great courage and resolution and talent, and who, acting in a law- 
 ful cause, would have won honour and fame. Their daring acts 
 were talked of with a sort of admiration, and even when they 
 were brought to justice, and deservedly suffered for such acts of 
 brutality as those of the Tapners and the Mills and the Perins, 
 they were looked upon in a different light from the ordinary cri- 
 minal. Up to the present day it is-held to be no disgrace to have 
 had these men for your ancestors rather the reverse ! The smug- 
 glers are still heroes in people's opinion, though, fortunately, the 
 race is extinct. Free Trade has put it down, and if we had no 
 other cause to thank the men who, like Huskisson and Cobden, 
 Gladstone and Peel, have given us Free Trade, we should thank 
 them for this : that they have removed such a blot on the social 
 body as the Sussex Smuggler.
 
 THE SOUTH-DOWN SHEPHERD. 
 
 TF any class of men in Sussex have escaped the touch and 
 changes of time, it is surely the shepherd of the South 
 Downs. Not only is his occupation one that does not change, 
 and does not admit of change, or of very little change, but the 
 spot where he pursues it remains necessarily the same. Ages go 
 by, fashions come and go, and revolutions sweep over him, and 
 he takes no note or heed of them ; and they have no word or 
 work for him. No matter who is master in the land, king, or 
 lords, or people, they do not want and yet cannot do without the 
 shepherd. The sheep must be tended on the hills, and the man 
 who does it is equally respected and disregarded by all parties. 
 He is part of the flock. He does not constitute a class ; his 
 numbers are too few for that ; he is but a unit in the great total 
 of humanity. He stands apart out of the crowd is an ex- 
 ceptional being, and retains his place and his characteristics his 
 peace and his solitude when all around him is in a state of flux 
 and mutation. 
 
 It would be a great mistake, however, to suppose that the 
 shepherd of the Downs is like other shepherds, or rather, 
 perhaps, we should say, that shepherds in other parts of the world, 
 or even in our own England, are, or have been, like the 
 Shepherd of the Downs. The shepherds 'of the East, like 
 Abraham and Laban and Jacob, were, as their descendants are to 
 this day in the oases of Arabia, the chiefs of great tribes often 
 warriors and kings, sages and legislators, with a wide and changing 
 field of action, and an outlook upon the world. The shepherds 
 of the Alps pursue their task beset by dangers of crevasse, glacier, 
 and cataract floods and landslips. The shepherds of South 
 America and Australia are armed horsemen, who carry their lives 
 in their hands and must be prepared for attack at any moment from
 
 88 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 savages or bushrangers. They are often the owners, too, as well 
 as the guardians of the countless flocks which they drive over 
 thousands of miles of almost trackless prairee, scrub, or desert, 
 and often return to the life of cities, which they have left for a 
 time, as millionaires and men of note. 
 
 In other parts, too, of Europe, and even of England and 
 Scotland, the shepherd's or drover's life is one of varied change 
 from place to place, of collision and dealings with other men, and 
 has no small amount of incident and excitement and ups and 
 downs in it, such as accompany the dealings of men with 
 men. 
 
 But, with the shepherd of the South Downs, life must be as 
 peaceful and unchanging as like from day to day, year to year, 
 and century to century, as one can well imagine it Shakspeare 
 has put into the mouth of Henry the 6th, when weary of the 
 intrigues of Courts and the tragedies of war, a picture of the 
 shepherd's life a South-Down Shepherd, it must have surely been 
 in his day, which will serve to picture it just as truly now : 
 
 O God ! methinks it were a happy life, 
 
 To be no better than a homely swain ; 
 
 To sit upon a hill, as I do now, 
 
 To carve out dials quaintly, point by point, 
 
 Thereby to see the minutes how they run 
 
 How many make the hour full complete, 
 
 How many hours bring about the day, 
 
 How many days will finish up the year, 
 
 How many years a mortal man may live. 
 
 When this is known ; then to divide the time : 
 
 So many hours must I tend my flock ; 
 
 So many hours must I take my rest ; 
 
 So many hours must I contemplate ; 
 
 So many hours must I sport myself ; 
 
 So many days my ewes have been with young ; 
 
 So many weeks ere the poor fools will yean ; 
 
 So many years ere I shall shear the fleece ; 
 
 So minutes, hours, days, months, and years, 
 
 Pass'd over to the end they were created, 
 
 Would bring white hairs unto a quiet grave. 
 
 Ah, what a life were this ! how sweet, how lovely !
 
 THE SOUTH-DOWN SHEPHERD. 89 
 
 Gives not the hawthorn bush a sweeter shade 
 
 To shepherds, looking on their silly sheep, 
 
 Than doth a rich embroidered canopy 
 
 To kings, that fear their subjects' treachery ? 
 
 O, yes, it doth ; a thousand-fold it doth ; 
 
 And to conclude the shepherd's homely curds, 
 
 His cold thin drink out of his leather bottle, 
 
 His wonted sleep under a fresh tree's shade, 
 
 All which secure and sweetly he enjoys, 
 
 Is far beyond a Prince's delicates, 
 
 His viands sparkling in a golden cup, 
 
 His body couched in a curious bed, 
 
 When care, mistrust, and treason wait on him. 
 
 Allow for the poet's exaltation of this life of the hill- 
 shepherd, and it is as true a picture now as it was in the day that 
 Shakspeare drew it. Still the same peaceful spot, with no 
 shadow of danger on it which a dog or a crook may not ward off ; 
 still the same fleecy forms and innocent faces creeping up and 
 down the hill-sides ; still the same quiet buzz of insects in the wild 
 thyme, that still gives out the same sweet scent, or the melancholy 
 cry of the pee-wit as it sweeps with the wind over hill and dale ', 
 still the same softly-rounded horizon landward, or, seaward, a vast 
 flat of waters until sea and sky meet, and close in the little world 
 of the shepherd. For he has none besides this, and thinks of 
 none and wishes for none. Sheep and dog, and birds and Downs, 
 with the alternations of the seasons, and the flock-duties they 
 bring, are to him the Alpha and the Omega of his existence. For 
 generations it has been so, how many we do not venture to say, 
 for sheep did not come in with the Conqueror ; he found them 
 here, and that being the case, of course there were shepherds. 
 In the Weald, most probably, the swineherd held sway, and many 
 a Gurth fed his unruly herd on the fruit of the oak and the beech. 
 But swine could find no mast or acorns, or such-like food, on 
 the unwooded Downs of Sussex. Here there was, and is, nothing 
 but the short sweet grass which has covered it since the day when 
 the rounded backs of the ribbed chalk began to show themselves, 
 " dolphin-like," above the waves, and to which the sweet breath of
 
 90 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 the south is as much the parent as Zephyr and Aurora were, in 
 their May sportings, to the spirit of Mirth. 
 
 On these Downs, then, these beautiful South Downs of 
 Sussex, must the first sheep that were brought from Spain by 
 Carthaginians, or from Gaul by Celts or Romans, have been 
 turned out to feed. And, allowing something for the difference 
 of nationalities, we do not think the first guardian of them could 
 have differed very much in garb or customs from those shepherds 
 who now tend them. He must have had his toga his warm great 
 coat or mantle to shelter him from the keen winds that some- 
 times blow eastward and northward over the Downs, and he must 
 have had some kind of flopping head-gear sombrero or cappello 
 to shade his eyes from the mid-day sun. And when he had 
 these Celt or Carthaginian, Roman or Saxon he did not, 
 probably, look so very unlike that figure that now meets our 
 gaze on the Down side. Motionless, of course the Down shep- 
 herd always is motionless, but erect, or just leaning on his crook, 
 with his wallet at his side, and with his dog at his feet, looking up 
 at him with that eager look, in expectation of a command, which 
 sheep-dogs are born with. Not a young man, who ever saw a 
 young shepherd ? but of an age not easy to fix, nor with an expres- 
 sion of face easy to decipher. A blank, and yet not a blank ; 
 rather an unwritten page in which much may be read an ex- 
 pression moulded by generations of men (for Down shepherds, 
 as a rule, descend from father to son) who have looked daily on 
 the same scene, and that mainly made up of three great elements, 
 sky, and sea, and Down, and with the same object in view : 
 to feed that flock of sheep and renew it from year to year. Ob- 
 jects, these, uninterfered with by the outer world, and with as little 
 intermixture of those personal elements of love and hope and fear 
 of desire to rise or fear to fall as it is possible for human life 
 to go on with. For as to those passions and that poetry which 
 the Pastoral poets and Italian and Spanish novelists import into 
 the shepherd-life, it may have been true of Arcadia or Andulasia, or 
 in the vales of Tempe or Tivoli, but with these things the 
 Down-shepherd has naught to do and never had. If he "told his
 
 THE SOUTH-DOWN SHEPHERD. 9 1 
 
 tale," it was his tale of sheep, and not of love, and he did not tell 
 it, as Milton sings, under a hawthorn tree, there are few or no 
 hawthorn trees on the South Downs, but as the animals passed 
 into or out of their fold ; and if he had his likes and his dislikes 
 his desires and his disappointments they had reference to the 
 masters into whose service he passed, the wages he received, the 
 " guerdon " he got for successful lambing, and such-like business 
 matters, and not to rages and jealousies and hates arising from the 
 tender passion the jiltings of mistresses (his " young woman " 
 never thought of jilting him nor his " missus " of planting the 
 " green-eyed monster " in his breast !) or the treasons of friends. 
 If the human passions slumber anywhere, they do so in the heart 
 of a South-down shepherd, and thus he seldom or never figures at 
 a Police Court or in an Assize calendar. Even the Game Laws 
 lose their terrors to him : he is no poacher, but fast friends with 
 the sportsman, to whom a " shepherd's hare " is always a dernier 
 ressort, and a safe one too, when the covers fail to supply sport. 
 
 The Down shepherd, too, has his own field of sport, or used 
 to have. Wheat-ears, which once abounded on our Downs, were 
 a little mine of wealth to him he caught them with springes set 
 in the turf and plovers' eggs were another source of revenue. 
 The capture of the first and the search for the second, the marking 
 down of a hare's seat, or the watching of rabbits going in and out 
 of their burrows, these, doubtless, supply those varieties to the 
 shepherd's life on the Downs without which it would be dull 
 indeed, for days must sometimes pass with no other society but 
 that of sheep and dog, and nothing more to do than watch the 
 one and order the other. 
 
 " What a fine opportunity for study !" some contemplative 
 reader, or some member of a School Board, eager for juvenile 
 development, may exclaim. We believe that the class is as 
 innocent of literary or scientific tastes as Audrey was of poetry. 
 It is in the society of men, and not of sheep or beeves, that these 
 cultivated tastes flourish in England at least. Now and then 
 there is an exception ; but they are' few and far between. Scotland 
 can boast of a poet and an astronomer who were shepherds, and
 
 92 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 Sussex has one instance, and only one, of a shepherd who turned 
 aside from sheep to letters. This latter was John Dudeney, a 
 native of Rottingdean, and a descendant from a long line of shep- 
 herds, who, in a " plain unvarnished tale," has left us a chronicle 
 of the life of a shepherd of the South Downs which is, in prose, 
 as truthful a picture as Shaksp care's is in verse. 
 
 John Dudeney was born at Rottingdean on the 2ist April, 
 1782, his father being shepherd to John Hamshaw, Esq. His own 
 shepherd-life extended from his 8th to his 23rd year, when he ex- 
 changed his flock of sheep for a flock of children in fact, became 
 a schoolmaster at Lewes, and so spent a long and useful life. 
 
 " When I was eight years old," he tells us, in a communication 
 made by him to Mr. R. W. Blencowe at an advanced period of his 
 life, " I began to follow the sheep during the summer months ; in 
 winter I sometimes drove the plough. I was fond of reading, and 
 borrowed all the books I could. When I was about ten, a gentleman 
 (whom I afterwards found to be Mr. Dunvan, author of what is called 
 Lee's History of Lewes) came to me on the hills, and gave me a 
 small History of England and Robinson Crusoe, and I read them both 
 with much interest. When he first came he inquired of the boy who 
 tended my father's flock, while I was gone to sheepshearing, for a 
 wheatear's nest, which he had never seen. These birds usually build 
 their nest in the chalk-pits, and in the holes which the rabbits had 
 made. I afterwards bought, when I came to Lewes fair, a small 
 History of France, and one of Rome, as I could get the money ; 
 indeed, when I came to the fairs, I brought all the money I could 
 spare to buy books . 
 
 " My mother sometimes tended my father's flock while he went to 
 sheepshearing. I have known other shepherds' wives do the same ; 
 but this custom, like many others, is discontinued. I have not seen 
 a woman with a flock for several years. 
 
 " The masters allowed me the keeping of one sheep, the lamb 
 and the wool of which brought me about 145 or 153 a year, which I 
 saved till I had enough to buy a watch, for which I gave four guineas, 
 and which has now shown me the time of day for more than half a 
 century. My father let me have the privilege of catching wheatears, 
 which brought me in a few shillings. These birds are never found in 
 great numbers so far from the sea-coast, and I very seldom caught a 
 dozen in a day. The bird called the bustard, I have heard old 
 shepherds say, formerly frequented the Downs ; but their visits have
 
 THE SOUTH-DOWN SHEPHERD. 93 
 
 been discontinued for nearly a century. I have heard my father say, 
 that his father saw one about the year 1750 ; he saw that near to Four 
 Lords' Dool, a place so called because at the tumulus or dool there four 
 parishes meet St John's under the Castle, Chailey, Chiltington, and 
 Falmer. When I was sixteen I went to service, as under-shepherd, 
 at West Blatchington, where I remained one year. When the transit 
 of Mercury over the sun's disc took place, on the 7th of May, 1799, 
 my curiosity was excited ; but in looking for it without due precaution 
 I very much injured one of my eyes. 
 
 " In the winter of 1798-9, during a snow, my flock was put into a 
 barn-yard, the first instance I know of putting the sheep into the yard, 
 except in lambing time. There we caught more wheatears than at 
 my father's. I used to sell some to the gentry on their excursions to 
 the Devil's Dyke for 2s. 6d. or 35. a dozen ; at the beginning of the 
 season sometimes catching three dozen in a day, but not often. At 
 Midsummer, 1799, I removed to Kingston, near Lewes, where I was 
 under-shepherd for three years. The flock was very large (1,400 the 
 winter stock), and my master, the head shepherd, being old and infirm, 
 much of the labour devolved on me. While here I had better wages, 
 ;6 a year ; I had also a part of the money obtained from the sale of 
 wheatears, though we did not catch them here in great numbers, a 
 dozen or two a day, seldom more. The hawks often injured us by tearing 
 them out of their coops, and scattering their feathers about, which 
 frightened the other birds from the coops. During winter I caught 
 the moles, which, at twopence each, brought me a few shillings. I 
 could, therefore, spare a little more money for books. I still read 
 such as I could borrow, on history, &c., for I never, after I was twelve 
 or thirteen years of age, could bear to spend my time in what is called 
 light reading. 
 
 " I had very little opportunity of reading at home, so used to take 
 a book or two in my shepherd's coat-pocket, and to pursue my studies 
 by the side of my flock when they were quiet. I was never found 
 fault with for neglecting my business through reading. I have some- 
 times been on the hills in winter from morning till night, and have not 
 seen a single person during the whole day. In the snow, I have 
 walked to and fro under the shelter of a steep bank, or in a bottom, 
 or a combe, while my sheep have been by me scraping away the snow 
 with their forefeet to get at the grass, and I have taken my book out 
 of my pocket, and, as I walked to and fro in the snow, have read to 
 pass away the time. It is very cold on the Downs in such weather ; 
 I remember once, whilst with my father, the snow froze into ice on my 
 eyelashes, and he breathed on my face to thaw it off. The Downs are 
 very pleasant in summer, commanding extensive views of both sea and
 
 <J4 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 land : I very much wanted a telescope, and could not spare money to 
 buy one ; but I met with some lenses, and putting them into a paste- 
 board case, I contrived one, which afforded me much amusement in 
 pleasant weather. 
 
 "In 1802 I began practical geometry from Turner's 'Intro- 
 duction.' I bought some paper and a pair of iron compasses. I 
 filed off part of one of the legs so that I could fasten on a pencil or 
 pen, then, laying my paper on the greensward on the hill, I drew my 
 circles, triangles, &c. 
 
 " On that part of the hill where my sheep required least attention, 
 I dug a hole in the ground amongst the heath, and placed a large 
 flintstone over it. No one would think of there being anything under 
 it if they had seen it. In that hole I kept some books and a slate, 
 which, when convenient, I took out, and went to work at arithmetic, 
 algebra, geometry, &c. This under-stone library was on Newmarket 
 Hill, not far from a pond, near to which a cottage and a barn have 
 since been erected. For more than thirty years the place where the 
 hole had been was to be seen ; and I have several times gone a little 
 way out of my road to visit it, and offer up my thanks to that gracious 
 Providence who has so directed my way ; but within these last few 
 years the plough has passed over it, and I can no longer find the exact 
 spot. 
 
 " My master, the head shepherd, at Kingston, had the keeping of 
 twenty sheep as part of his wages ; and I have heard old shepherds 
 affirm that, in the generation before them, some of the shepherds had 
 nearly, or quite all, their wages in this way, and it seems to have been 
 of very ancient practice. We have an instance in the case of Jacob 
 and Laban ; and I think it probable that the wages of the labouring 
 man were, almost of necessity, money being scarce, paid in this 
 manner. 
 
 "At Midsummer, 1802, I went (at his request) to be head 
 shepherd to James Ingram, Esq., of Rottingdean. Mr. Thomas 
 Beard and Mr. Dumbrill had each of them sheep in the flock, but Mr. 
 Ingram having most, he was my real master. The farm was called 
 the Westside Farm, extending from Rottingdean to Black Rock, in 
 Brighton Parish ; it was a long narrow slip of ground, not averaging 
 more than half a mile in width. My flock required very close 
 attention, as they had to feed so much between the pieces of corn, 
 and there were no fences to keep them off. In such situations a good 
 dog is a most valuable help to a shepherd, and I was fortunate in 
 having a very excellent one. 
 
 " The farm extending along the sea-coast, I caught great numbers 
 of wheatears during the season for taking them, which lasts from the
 
 THE SOUTH-DOWN SHEPHERD. 95 
 
 middle of July to the end of August. The most I ever caught in one 
 day yps thirteen dozen ; but we thought it a good day if we caught 
 three or four dozen. We sold them to a poulterer, at Brighton, who 
 took all we could catch in the season at i8d. a dozen. From what I 
 have heard from old shepherds, it cannot be doubted that they were 
 caught in much greater numbers a century ago than of late. I have 
 heard them speak of an immense number being taken in one day by 
 a shepherd at East Dean, near Beachy Head. I think they said he 
 took nearly a hundred dozen ; so many, that he could not thread them 
 on crow-quills in the usual manner, but took off his round frock and 
 made a sack of it, to put them into, and his wife did the same with 
 her petticoat This must have happened when there was a great 
 flight. Their numbers now are so decreased that some shepherds do 
 not set up any coops, as it does not pay for the trouble. 
 
 " I had a good father and mother, though they were poor, my 
 father's wages being only ^30 a year, and the keeping of ten or twelve 
 sheep, having a family of ten children, yet we were never in want." 
 
 We doubt if John Dudeney has had any followers among 
 South-Down shepherds in his pursuit of knowledge under diffi- 
 culties, or in his exchange of the tending of sheep for the 
 instruction of children. The life of the South-Down Shepherd is, 
 at best, a " hard one," and presents few or no opportunities for 
 self-improvement, and none of those degrees or steps in the social 
 scale by which men mount Fortune's ladder. As a rule, once a 
 shepherd, always a shepherd ; and the shepherd's boy has nothing 
 higher to look to than to be a shepherd. The opportunities of 
 leisure and contemplation which, to minds already formed to 
 study, may seem tempting to some, are more than counter- 
 balanced by the absence, in a shepherd's life, of those incentives 
 to exertion which are supplied to other men by closer contact 
 and the fiercer competition of city-life. To those engaged in 
 them, these seem to be evils ; and doubtless they have their evil 
 side. But let the theoretic lover of solitude poet or philosopher 
 try a year or two of sheep-tending on the South-Downs, and those 
 hills, so beautiful and delightful when seen in their summer garb, 
 would soon disgust him by their barren solitude and bleakness. 
 The shepherd endures all this with stolid patience ; but it does 
 not develop his mind or raise him in the scale of humanity. We
 
 96 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 question if the tendency in the life of the South-Down Shepherd. 
 of modern days is not to sink, rather than to rise, in comparison 
 with other classes of labourers. The latter move onward with the 
 stream ; he, almost necessarily by the conditions of his life, is 
 stationary. His world of action is rather narrowed than enlarged. 
 The wide-sweeping Downs are pressed upon by the plough on the 
 one side, and by Building Societies on the other ; the limit of the 
 shepherd's domains is yearly narrowed, and he is brought more 
 under the eye and within the ordinary control of the farmer, and 
 is less his own master ; has lighter responsibilities and less trust ; 
 and all this tends to make the Down shepherd a less important 
 member of the rural community than he used to be in by-gone 
 days. Still, he remains perhaps more closely and truly resem- 
 bling the figure that was seen on the same hills a thousand years 
 ago than any other set of men, on mountain or plain, in this 
 England of ours. And, of all spots so to see the Shepherd in his 
 primitive state, the South Downs are the best. 
 
 " Shepherds," writes Richard Lower, of Chiddingly, Sussex 
 (the father of Mark Antony Lower), in a paper on " Old South- 
 Down Shepherds," " were famous for spinning long yarns ; and if 
 it chanced that two or three met together on some lofty brow, 
 within sight of their respective flocks, stories of great length 
 would surely be related. These, chiefly referring to their own 
 calling, would beguile many hours, and sometimes concerned 
 matters that happened ' fifty year agoo,' or very likely a ' hundud.' 
 I once accidentally overheard two retired shepherds, who were 
 sitting on a March morning under a sunny hedge, conversing in a 
 somewhat disconsolate tone concerning the prosperity of bygone 
 days. One was telling the other how he had known the time 
 when, in a single year, from forty to fifty thousand sheep had been 
 washed near the spot where they were sitting, and * now,' he ex- 
 claimed, ' there be none ! ' The ' wash ' had been removed to 
 another locality, and this seemed to him almost a national 
 calamity. ' As to birding? he continued, in a still more doleful 
 tone ' birding is now all auver ; why, I used to make quite a 
 harvest of my birds twelve pound a year or more I have made
 
 THE SOUTH-DOWN SHEPHERD. 97 
 
 of my birds ; and one year I made fourteen pounds eight shillings. 
 We sent 'em ye see to Burthemson (Brighthelmstone Brighton), 
 and otherwhile we catched so many that the Burthemsoners 
 coud'nt take 'em all, and I myself have sent some to Tunbridge 
 Wells. That was the time o' dee, Old Boy, for shepherds.' For 
 laziness the shepherd, in his every-day habits, had no equal 
 Wrapped up in his thick great-coat, impervious to rain, snow, or 
 hail, he would throw himself backwards into a hawth bush, and 
 snugly repose as on a bed of down for hours together. If a 
 traveller, chancing to stray to the spot where he lay, enquired his 
 road over those trackless, lonely hills, the shepherd, too lazy to 
 rise to give the required information, would stretch out his leg, 
 pointing with his foot, and say ' over dat yander hill by de burg 
 down that 'ere bottom and so up de bostle,' as the case might 
 be, and drop again into his doze as snug as a dormouse."
 
 9 8 
 
 THE SUSSEX SHEEP-SHEARER. 
 
 '"TO some readers it may suggest itself that the shearer of sheep 
 ought to have been associated with the shepherd, that it 
 is one and the same set of men who tend the sheep and who 
 shear them. But this would be to fall into a mistake. A shepherd 
 may be, and indeed, usually is a shearer, but the great majority of 
 shearers are not shepherds ; and whilst the character of the shep- 
 herd varies with the locality in which he carries on his work, and 
 thus the shepherd of the hills may be a very different character 
 from the shepherd of the plain or the mountain, the occupation 
 of the sheep-shearer knows no such variation. It is pursued 
 in every county and country pretty much under the same 
 circumstances and conditions, and gives rise to no special 
 character in those who pursue it. It is, indeed, so to say, only an 
 accident of rural life ; occupies a few days' labour, and then is not 
 needed until another year. So, sheep-shearing is not a vocation a 
 settled calling ; there is no body of men who get their living solely 
 by it, as shepherds get their's. A shepherd is always to be seen 
 where there are sheep ; but enquire for a sheep-shearer in any but 
 the sheep-shearing months, and the only reply you would get 
 would be to be shown a man who can shear, but whose settled 
 employment is of a very different kind. And yet it is not every 
 man that can shear only here and there one ; and so the sheep- 
 shearer stands out from the common herd of agricultural labourers : 
 he is, for some few days of the year, a skilled labourer almost an 
 artist and as such he must be treated with some respect, and calls 
 for our notice and attention. 
 
 Sometimes, indeed, a shepherd will undertake the shearing of 
 his flock, and then we have the nearest approach to a pure sheep- 
 shearer. But there is many a shepherd who does not shear, as 
 there are thousands of shearers who are not shepherds, not, in-
 
 THE SUSSEX SHEEP-SHEARER. 99 
 
 deed, agricultural labourers at all. It is the one province of rural 
 industry, now that spinning is no longer carried on in the 
 cottage, that approximates most closely to the work of towns- 
 people. Not only may any hand on a farm take to shearing if he 
 possess the necessary skill, and will be allowed by his master to 
 shear for other farmers as well as for himself, but men who are not 
 farm labourers at all tailors and shoemakers and such-like as are 
 skilful in the use of the scissors, will join a "Company" of 
 shearers and take a circuit of country, such circuits being mapped 
 out and kept by the different sets of shearers with as much strict- 
 ness as gentlemen of the long robe keep to their circuits and 
 some people may be malicious enough to insinuate, for the same 
 object, namely, of shearing their sheep ! 
 
 The arrival of these shearing " Companies " at a farm used 
 once to be a very important event. Each Company had its Captain 
 and Lieutenant, selected for their trustworthy character, their 
 superior intelligence, and their skill in the shearing art. And, as 
 a symbol of the authority with which they were invested, the 
 Captain wore a gold-laced hat and the Lieutenant a silver-laced 
 one. As soon as the Company was formed, all the men repaired 
 to the cottage of the Captain, where a feast which was called the 
 " White-ram " was provided for them, and on this occasion the 
 whole plan of the campaign was discussed and arranged. They 
 generally got to their place of shearing about seven, and, having 
 breakfasted, they began their work. Once in the forenoon, and 
 twice in the afternoon, their custom was to " light up," as they 
 termed it ; that is, they ceased to work for a few minutes, drank 
 their beer, sharpened their shears, and set to work again. Their 
 dinner-hour was one, but this was not the great meal of the day, 
 their supper being the time of real enjoyment, and when this was 
 over, they would remain for several hours in the house, smoking 
 their pipes and singing their sheepshearing songs, in which they 
 were joined by the servants of the farm ; and sometimes the 
 master and mistress of the house would favour them with their 
 presence.
 
 100 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 Some of these sheep-shearing songs still linger in the 
 memories of old men and women, and may occasionally be heard 
 at rural merry-makings, one of their characteristics being their 
 interminable length. The following is a specimen : 
 
 Come, all my jolly boys, and we'll together go 
 Abroad with our masters, to shear the lamb and ewe ; 
 All in the merry month of June, of all times in the year, 
 It always comes in season the ewes and lambs to shear ; 
 And there we must work hard, boys, until our backs do ache, 
 And our master he will bring us beer whenever we do lack. 
 
 Our master he comes round to see our work is doing well, 
 
 And he cries, " Shear them close, men, for there is but little wool." 
 
 " O yes, good master," we reply, " we'll do well as we can," 
 
 When our Captain calls, " Shear close, boys !" to each and every man. 
 
 And at some places still we have this story all day long, 
 
 " Close them, boys, and shear them well !" and this is all their song. 
 
 And then our noble Captain doth unto our master say, 
 
 " Come, let us have one bucket of your good ale, I pray." 
 
 He turns unto our Captain, and makes him this reply : 
 
 " You shall have the best of beer, I promise, presently." 
 
 Then out with the bucket pretty Betsy she doth come, 
 
 And .master says, " Maid, mind and see that every man has some/' 
 
 This is some of our pastime while we the sheep do shear, 
 And though we are such merry boys, we work hard, I declare ; 
 And when 'tis night, and we are done, our master is more free, 
 And stores us well with good strong beer, and pipes and tobaccee. 
 So we do sit and drink, we smoke and sing and roar, 
 Till we become more merry far than e'er we were before. 
 
 When all our work is done, and all our sheep are shorn, 
 Then home to our Captain, to drink the ale that's strong. 
 'Tis a barrel, then, of hum cap, which vve call the black ram ; 
 And we do sit and swagger, and swear that we are men ; 
 But yet before 'tis night, I'll stand you half a crown, 
 That if you ha'n't a special care the ram will knock you down. 
 
 The next specimen of rural minstrelsy is in a more tuneful 
 spirit, but, we fear, is not such a genuine production of the soil as 
 the foregoing. It was, however, frequently sung at Sussex sheep-
 
 THE SUSSEX SHEEP-SHEARER. IOI 
 
 shearings in former days, and, for aught we know, may be so 
 now : 
 
 Here the rose buds in June, and the violets are blowing ; 
 The small birds they warble from every green bough ; 
 
 Here's the pink and the lily, 
 
 And the daffydowndilly, 
 
 To adore and perfume the sweet meadows in June. 
 'Tis all before the plough the fat oxen go slow ; 
 But the lads and the lasses to the sheepshearing go. 
 
 Our shepherds rejoice in their fine heavy fleece, 
 
 And frisky young lambs, with their flocks do increase ; 
 
 Each lad takes his lass, 
 
 All on the green grass, 
 
 Where the pink and the lily, 
 
 And the daffydowndilly, &c. 
 
 Here stands our brown jug, and 'tis fill'd with good ale, 
 Our table, our table shall increase and not fail ; 
 Well joke and we'll sing, 
 And dance in a ring ; 
 Where the pink and the lily, 
 And the daffydowndilly, &c. 
 
 When the sheepshearing's over, and harvest draws nigh, 
 We'll prepare for the fields, our strength for to try ; 
 We'll reap and we'll mow, 
 We'll plough and we'll sow ; 
 Oh ! the pink and the lily, 
 And the daffydowndilly, &c. 
 
 Some of the toasts given on these occasions were very quaint 
 and had their special ballads attached to them. One of these 
 latter commenced as follows : 
 
 Our maid she would a hunting go, 
 
 She'd never a horse to ride ; 
 
 She mounted on her master's boar, 
 
 And spurred him on the side. 
 
 Chink ! chink ! chink ! the bridle went, 
 
 As she rode o'er the downs. 
 So here's unto our maiden's health, 
 Drink round, my boys ! drink round !
 
 IO2 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 The supper finished, and the profits shared, the members of 
 the Company shook hands and parted, bidding each other good 
 bye till another year, and each man bending his steps towards his 
 own home, which, probably, lay widely apart from those of his 
 late companions. Yet, year after year, the members of these 
 Companies meet together, make their accustomed round, and 
 carry out their compact with much goodwill and harmony. It is 
 one of the few remaining instances which modern life affords of 
 such voluntary associations for a common end. In the Middle 
 Ages they were, doubtless, more common. The Masons of those 
 days went about in Companies from city to city, and parish to 
 parish, raising those wonderful and beautiful fabrics which are the 
 admiration and marvel of later days. Other " craftsmen " did the 
 same, and to the present day in Germany it is a part of the 
 education, or apprenticeship, of the youth who desires to be a 
 skilled workman, or " meister," thus to travel from place to place 
 for a certain period. 
 
 But we, too, are wandering from our subject our shearers, 
 who, indeed, are lost to us as soon as the shearing feast is over. 
 They disperse and resume their ordinary occupations. Neither 
 are these merry meetings so common as they were wont to be. 
 There has been an attempt to revive the harvest-feast, in another, 
 and, doubtless, improved form ; but we are not aware that this 
 has extended to the sheep-shearing feast. As a consequence, the 
 shearers take home more money to their families. The amounts 
 they earn are, indeed, pretty considerable, and to be a good 
 shearer is not only honourable, but profitable. The best sheep- 
 shearer is a man known in his district, as the best swordsman or 
 bowman used to be in former days. Some few years ago prizes 
 were contended for at County competitions, and in one special 
 instance the shearers of East Sussex were pitted against those of 
 West Sussex, in Goodwood Park, and were beaten. But this, 
 too, is a practice that has passed away. So 
 
 " The old order changeth, 
 Yielding place to new."
 
 THE SUSSEX SHEEP-SHEARER. 103 
 
 But, let there be what changes there may, there will always be 
 shepherds and sheep-shearers in the land ; they are two of those 
 primeval vocations which remain unchanged and unchangeable in 
 the midst of our changing civilization, and men must cease to be 
 civilized, cease to eat mutton and wear broadcloth,- before the 
 shepherd and the sheep-shearer disappear from the ranks of labour- 
 ing men. May they, then, flourish, and in Sussex, and on the 
 Sussex Downs especially, esto perpetua ! 
 
 In the absence of any picture of a sheep-shearing feast, the 
 following graphic description of a harvest-home one, given by Mr. 
 Rock, jun., of Hastings, in the i4th volume of the Sussex 
 Archaeological Collections, as witnessed by him at a farm in 
 Boreham Street, in East Sussex, twenty years previously, may be 
 taken as closely approximating to it, especially in the gravity of 
 the proceedings ! The custom of " turning the cup over " was, 
 doubtless, common to both occasions : 
 
 " Towards the close of the meal we could hear a rather mono- 
 tonous chanting proceeding from the kitchen. The effect, heard 
 faintly, except when occasionally an intermediate door was open, was 
 by no means disagreeable. Our host explained the ceremony of 
 'turning the cup over,' which was going on in the kitchen, and 
 invited us to take part in it ourselves. Accordingly we all adjourned 
 to the kitchen, which we found crowded with the labourers of the farm 
 and the men who had assisted them in harvesting. 
 
 " At the head of the table, one of men occupied the position of 
 chairman ; in front of him stood a pail, clean as wooden staves and 
 iron hoops could be made by human labour. At his right sat four or 
 five men who led the singing ; grave as judges were they ; indeed, the 
 appearance of the whole assembly was one of the greatest solemnity, 
 except for a moment or two when some unlucky wight failed to ' turn 
 the cup over,' and was compelled to undergo the penalty in that case 
 made and provided . This done, all went on as solemnly as before. 
 The ceremony, if I may call it so, was this : 
 
 " The leader, or chairman, standing behind the pail with a tall horn 
 cup in his hand, filled it with beer from the pail. The man next to
 
 104 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 him on the left stood up, and holding a hat with both hands by the 
 brim, crown upwards, received the cup from the chairman, on the 
 crown of the hat, not touching it with either hand. He then lifted the 
 cup to his lips by raising the hat, and slowly drank off the contents. 
 As soon as he began to drink, the chorus struck up this chant : 
 
 I've bin to Plymouth, and I've bin to Dover, 
 I have bin rambling, boys, all the wurld over 
 
 Over and over and over and over, 
 Drink up yur liquor and turn your cup over ; 
 
 Over and over and over and over, 
 The liquor's drink'd up and the cup is turned over. 
 
 " The man drinking was expected to time his draught so as to 
 empty his cup at the end of the fourth line of the chant ; he was then 
 to return the hat to the perpendicular, still holding the hat by the 
 brims, then to throw the cup into the air, and, reversing the hat, to 
 catch the cup in it as it fell. If he failed to perform this part of the 
 operation, the fellow workmen, who were closely watching him, made 
 an important alteration in the last line of their chant, which in that 
 case ran thus : 
 
 The liquor's drink'd up and the cup aint turned over. 
 
 " The cup was then refilled and the unfortunate drinker was 
 compelled to go through the same ceremony again. Every one at the 
 table took the cup and 'turned it over' in succession, the chief 
 shepherd keeping the pail constantly supplied with beer. The parlour 
 guests were of course invited to turn the cup over with the guests of 
 the kitchen, who went through the ordeal with more or less of success. 
 For my own part, I confess that I failed to catch the cup in the hat 
 at the first trial, and had to try again ; the chairman, however, 
 mercifully gave me only a small quantity of beer the second time. 
 
 " This custom of ' turning the cup over,' with its accompanying 
 chant, was rather amusing at first, but, after hearing it, as I did on the 
 occasion I have described, for at least four hours without intermission, 
 it became at last rather tiresome. I could not get the tune out of my 
 head for a long time after indeed, I have not got rid of it yet."
 
 SUSSEX CHARACTERS SKETCHED 
 FROM LIFE. 
 
 THE SUSSEX COTTAGE.WIFE. 
 
 TLJ OW is it that all the Diaries have been kept by men ? One 
 would have thought this form of autobiography would have 
 been better suited to women. Women have more leisure to jot 
 down events as they occur ; they are greater observers of the 
 little matters that make up life and Diaries ; they delight in gossip 
 in the passing scandal of the day in what happens to Mr. This 
 or Mrs. That. And yet no Diaries have been left to us by women, 
 only by men like Pepys and Evelyn and the Due de St. Simon, 
 who, doubtless, had a good deal of the woman in them, at least, 
 the first and last had, but who were de facto men. What would 
 we not give for a Diary by the wife of Anthony Stapley, or of 
 Thomas Turner, or of the Rev. Mr. Moore ! But the good women 
 only talked, and left their husbands to write, and when, as they 
 perhaps thought, the Benedick was casting up accounts, or making 
 out bills, or writing sermons, he was chronicling his peccadilloes 
 and their infirmities of temper ! 
 
 We can only now wish that the tables had been turned ; that 
 the wife, like the lion in the fable, could have told her story. 
 What a light would be thrown on many phases of character that 
 now lie hidden in obscurity, and can only be saved from total 
 oblivion by the imperfect medium of the memory. 
 
 What would we not give, for instance, to set down in that 
 freshness and sharpness which a Diary can only convey the 
 features, moral, domestic, and physical, of that specimen of the old 
 English cottage-wife whom we will try to introduce to our readers 
 under the name of Mrs. Colly. She was a type of a class that 
 was once common in Sussex, and which is still to be found in the 
 little gable-end cottages with their open timber-work fronts and
 
 IO6 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 shelving thatched roofs, coming down at one end nearly to the 
 ground, and little lattice-windows that look out so cosily from the 
 eaves. Prettier pictures than these cottages for landscape painters, 
 standing back as they generally do from the roadside, amidst apple, 
 cherry, plum, and pear trees, it would be difficult to find in any 
 part of the world. And inside, for the most part, they are as 
 clean, and neat, and as carefully tended as their gardens are out- 
 side, not without a touch of the ornamental, too, in gaily- 
 coloured cups and saucers, and mugs and ornaments of quaint 
 design, or even of the artistic, in engravings illustrating the ad- 
 ventures of Joseph and his brethren, or other Scriptural incidents, 
 intermixed, probably, with adventures in the sporting field. 
 But when thus much has been said for their cleanliness and neat- 
 ness, not much remains to be added of a complimentary cha- 
 racter. The brick floor is generally damp and uneven the 
 ceiling (often formed of massive oak beams, strong enough to 
 support a Church and heavy enough to pull it down) is low ; and 
 the only place free from draughts full of rheumatism is the inner- 
 most corner in the huge open chimney the place, according to 
 immemorial usage, of the male head of the family. As to the 
 female head, to judge by our typical cottage-wife, Mrs. Colly, we 
 should say that she never sat down. She was always, like the 
 sun, running her daily course of duty. Her place was on her 
 feet, and the chairs of her cottage were for her visitors not for 
 her. As some good women are sure that they never should live 
 " if so be they took to their beds," so Mrs. Colly was assured that 
 her days would be numbered " if so be she took to a chair." Her 
 legs were, to her thinking, made to be used as much as her hands, 
 and as these latter were never idle, so were the former members 
 never indulged in inactivity. 
 
 And yet their burthen was not very great. A body more 
 spare than that of our Sussex cottage-wife is rarely to be met 
 with that is, in a sound healthy body, which, as was her boast, 
 had never known a day's illness since it could take care of itself. 
 Take care of itself? No, that won't do. Little care of itself had
 
 THE SUSSEX COTTAGE-WIFE. 1 07 
 
 that little spare body ever taken, but a great deal of other people. 
 In the days of crinoline, it was a wonder, and also to us a delight, 
 to look at that little active body, as straight as a poplar, and as 
 curveless. " Lines of beauty," physically, there were none ; but, 
 morally, in the absence of all thought of self, Mrs. Colly was a 
 line of beauty from the top of her head to the soles of her feet. 
 And at each extremity there was something to admire. Her hair, 
 and she was above 70 when we first knew her, was raven- 
 black, and there was plenty of it, too ; her eyes matched with it, 
 bright and quick, and with a kindly twinkle in them. If you 
 could take your eyes off tier's, and it was not easy, 
 and give a glance at her feet, you saw that her boots, 
 thick and leather-laced as they were, could bear the scrutiny. 
 A tidy busy little soul was Mrs. Colly one whose whole life had 
 been spent in keeping the wolf from the cottage door and making 
 good the adage that cleanliness is next to godliness. She had, 
 of course, married young all Sussex cottage-wives do marry 
 young and, equally of course, had had a large family of children, 
 whom, to use her own expression, " she had brought up in the fear 
 of God from a month up'ards." What they did in the month that 
 preceded the " up'ards "" we never could fathom. It was one of 
 those mysteries of speech that went down to the grave with Mrs. 
 Colly. But as to the after-months of the children's existence, 
 there was no doubt about them. We knew all the children, sons 
 and daughters, and they were all worthy of their mother, or 
 nearly so. How she and her husband (a farm labourer) could 
 have brought them up, as they did, and given them the learning 
 they possessed, and which was Mrs. Colly's boast, for they could 
 all read and write, and she could do neither, is another mystery 
 that we must leave unsolved. 
 
 But there was a still greater mystery connected with Mr. and 
 Mrs. Colly : a mystery that made at once the glory and the misery 
 of their latter days. Nay, gentle reader ! do not suppose we are 
 going to indulge you in your love of the sensational. We have no 
 tale of murder or robbery or treasure-trove to tell you. These
 
 108 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 poor peoples' lives were absolutely destitute of incident : and yet 
 there was a tragical interest in what we are going to relate. It 
 lay in this : Besides having brought up and educated a large 
 family, without help from the parish, this Sussex cottager and his 
 wife had " put by " a hundred pounds ! Do not smile ! You can- 
 not, perhaps, conceive the amount of labour and privation that that 
 ;ioo represented. You cannot imagine the depth of joy that it 
 gave, or the magnitude of care and anxiety that it imposed on its 
 possessors. The millionaire may be so rich that he could not if 
 he wished cast up the sum of his riches, but he is not, nor ever 
 will be, so rich as the Sussex cottager who has " put by " from his 
 earnings one hundred pounds ! And then the care and trouble 
 that attended on that treasure where to keep it whilst it was 
 being saved, and what to do with it when it was saved; who can 
 sum that up ? 
 
 Well, our Sussex cotters, like richer people, found a way, or 
 rather had a way found for them. The hundred pounds was 
 disposed of " invested, the wise it call," in plain language, was 
 got rid of, chiefly through the medium of a favorite daughter whose 
 husband was not well off, and partly through a Building Society, by 
 the aid of which Mrs. Colly hoped some day to live in a house of 
 her own. 
 
 We confess we could never understand the right and the 
 wrong of the matter, though we listened to the history of it a 
 hundred times, except to arrive at this conclusion : that the money 
 was gone irretrievably gone as much as though it lay at the 
 bottom of the sea or more so. 
 
 And here lay the seat of Mrs, Colly's domestic mystery : 
 that hundred pounds, to her mind, was as much in existence as 
 when it lay in good gold and silver at the bottom of a worsted 
 stocking ! She had never spent that money she had never 
 thrown it away, or lost it, or been robbed of it, according to her 
 notion of throwing away or losing or robbing. She had only 
 lent it or invested it, and, accordingly, the hundred pounds was in 
 existence, and was her's, and nobody else's !
 
 THE SUSSEX COTTAGE- WIFE. 109 
 
 It would have been a cruel thing to undeceive her, though 
 we doubt if any one could have done that The saving of that 
 ^100 had entered too much into her life had been the centre 
 round which too many joys and hopes and cares had grown, to be 
 rooted up. And we verily believe the old lady died in the full 
 belief that she not her husband, though he survived her not 
 her daughter or daughter's husband, who had borrowed it not the 
 little building speculation that had swallowed up a good deal of it 
 was the owner of that ^100, but she good, honest, hard- 
 working, simple Mrs. Colly ! 
 
 Our Sussex cottage-wife was a woman of strong affections, 
 or she could not have brought up that large family so well " from 
 a month up'ards." And when boys and girls were grown up and 
 were " doing for themselves," she turned her affections towards 
 her cow. Her husband was a taciturn, eccentric old man not 
 unlike an old withered crab-apple tree who never uttered a 
 syllable if he could help it, and who had strange notions of 
 dieting himself on horse-radish and such-like things. His wife 
 did her duty by him ; but as to love ! There might have been a 
 time for such a word ; but it was gone, like the hundred pounds ; 
 and now the chief object of Mrs. Colly's affection was her cow. 
 Yes, she had a cow, and not only lived by it, but for it. It was 
 husband, children, friends, neighbours, all ! She talked to it, 
 kissed it, fondled it, fed it, and suffered no one else to milk it. 
 She would lead it through the green lanes and let it browse on the 
 roadside grass, lovingly watching it. Its shed was much warmer 
 than her own cottage ; and it was much better fed than herself. 
 It was the one little drop of comfort in the domestic cup of poor 
 Mrs. Colly, when the cottage had been emptied of its children and 
 the stocking of its savings ; and it was a happy thing that Mrs. 
 Colly died first. She died quickly, as " Sussex cotters and their 
 wives are apt to do She had never had a day's illness until she 
 was upwards of 70, and at that age she would walk long distances 
 to take her milk to customers or little nosegays to friends. When 
 sickness came, it came suddenly and sharply, and Mrs. Colly had
 
 110 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 not long to endure the misery, to her, of lying in bed doing 
 nothing ! She would have preferred, if her wishes had been 
 consulted in the matter, to die on her feet, upright as a post, and 
 talking, most probably, about that^ioo and its whereabouts and 
 wherewithals, her thin bony hands crossed before her and her 
 bright eyes looking sharply into your's. 
 
 One of her dying symptoms was a strange fancy, it was only 
 a fancy, that her husband had been experimentalizing upon her 
 with some of his strange vegetable diet, to which she had a 
 strong aversion. She never suspected that she was out of health 
 in a natural way. She never had been unwell had a thorough 
 contempt for doctor's stuff, and wondered why people's hair 
 turned grey. She went down to the tomb with hers as black as 
 ebony, and, to use one of her quaint expressions, " carried all 
 her teeth with her to the grave." A harder- working woman, a 
 better mother or cottage-wife, never slept the last sleep. Some may 
 be disposed to ask what was a life so passed in drudgery, so 
 limited in its sphere, so barren of what we call pleasure what was 
 it worth ? But Mrs. Colly never asked herself such a question. 
 No Sussex cottage- wife ever does. They have too much to do. 
 A great modern philosopher has said that directly we ask ourselves 
 if we are happy we cease to be so. And, certainly, Mrs. Colly 
 never put her happiness to such a test ! Perhaps she did not know 
 what happiness was certainly she had no knowledge of the 
 enjoyments in which most of us place happiness. But neither did 
 she ever ask herself if she was miserable, because she was as 
 ignorant of that feeling as of its opposite. She had, of course, 
 her pains and her pleasures, her ups and her downs, her bright 
 days and her dull days. But she was, up to 70 years of age, a 
 healthy, hard-working, children-loving, flower-loving, and cow- 
 loving woman fond of talking, but never sitting down to talk 
 fond of walking, but never " going out for a walk," fond of a 
 little bit of wholesome meat, but seldom or never getting it. 
 Altogether she was an excellent specimen of a class of women 
 who have had much to do in the making of England's greatness
 
 THE SUSSEX COTTAGE-WIFE. Ill 
 
 for they have brought up and sent into the world not a few 
 hard-headed, strong-fisted men, who have done many a good 
 day's work for themselves and their country; and we doubt 
 if England would miss many classes more than that of which we 
 have tried to draw a sketch a faint one, we know it is a 
 mere passing "glimpse" in Mrs. Colly, the Sussex cottage- 
 wife.
 
 112 
 
 THE OLD SUSSEX RADICAL. 
 
 T ET me try to draw out of the dim memories of the Past the 
 features of a man who was one of the latest representatives of 
 a class now passed away of a class, indeed, which may be said to 
 have passed away before he had closed his long life, and which is 
 no longer remembered except by a few who, like myself in early 
 life, were brought into contact with one of them. 
 
 I mean the men who used to be called Radicals, but whose 
 principles were more nearly allied to Republicanism. I do not 
 refer to the later Radicals who flourished in the days of the Reform 
 agitation the Hunts and Attwoods and Burdetts, who, too, are 
 now extinct and pretty well forgotten. The old Radical, or 
 Republican, of my recollection was a contemporary of Fox and 
 Philip Francis and Cartwright, and a member of the " Friends 
 of the People " Society. He had, in his youth, read the " Letters 
 of Junius " fresh from the pages of the Public Advertiser ; he had 
 execrated a kingly favourite in Bute, and sympathised with the fall 
 and death of Chatham. He had, in middle life, shared with such 
 men as Wordsworth, and Coleridge, and Southey in the enthu- 
 siastic hopes to which the opening scenes of the French Revolu- 
 tion gave birth in England had watched its rapid passage from 
 Constitutional reforms to democratic excesses, and had seen the 
 Liberal ranks in England divide at this point : one section 
 seceding with Burke to the Tory ranks ; the other remaining true 
 to their colours with Fox and Sheridan and Grey. 
 
 Clio Rickman, for it is he of whom I write, was one of 
 these latter. Of his early life I know nothing, except that he was 
 a member of the old Sussex Quaker family of that name, which 
 still survives, and, I believe, flourishes, in this County. He must 
 have early left the communion of the Friends, taking with him, 
 however, that spirit of resistance to undue authority and that
 
 THE OLD SUSSEX RADICAL. 113 
 
 contempt of forms which used to characterise the followers of 
 George Fox. But with the narrower and more ascetic spirit of 
 Quakerism he had no sympathy, and he showed it by assuming 
 that classical name of Clio the Muse of History which most 
 certainly his Quaker parents did not bestow upon him,* but by 
 which he was always known to his friends in after-life. It was in 
 his latter days that I knew him, and that was 50 years ago, 
 when he stood out of society like some old rock that carries down 
 to later ages the evidence of a pre-existing world. How well do 
 I recollect the mingled feelings of awe and wonderment with 
 which I first encountered the heavy brow and severe-looking eyes 
 that frowned from beneath a low-crowned, broad-brimmed straw 
 hat ! with what astonishment I looked at his quaintly-cut blue 
 coat, with enormous brass buttons and square lappets, from the 
 pocket of one of which peeped the corner of a silk handkerchief, 
 at which many generations of London thieves had pulled and 
 tugged, and never succeeded in extracting it ; and for a very good 
 reason : it was securely sewn with stout pack-thread into the inner 
 lining ! That handkerchief was for show and sport, it was the 
 fashion of the day so to show the handkerchief, the fellow-one 
 was for use, a huge coloured cotton one, and it lay safely inside 
 the low-crowned straw hat that covered that capacious brow. That 
 hat itself was a prodigy in the hat-way. It was a feat for us 
 youngsters (I am speaking of days when I was a boy) to lift it, or 
 to try to lift it; for its weight was enormous, and was yearly 
 increased by a pound of solid paint bestowed upon it. It was the 
 whim of its wearer so to freshen it up. But he had another reason : 
 namely, to strengthen its powers of resistance to the blows of 
 highwaymen (there were highwaymen in those days) or collision 
 with mother earth. Men in those days, when they travelled, rode 
 on horseback, like men, or in gigs, like travellers. Stage-coaches 
 had not yet commenced their career, and removed the responsibi- 
 lity of travelling singly in your own vehicle. Clio Rickman was a 
 
 * His Christian napoe was Thomas.
 
 114 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 great traveller, and he owed his life more than once to the strength 
 of that straw hat, which had been shattered to pieces by a fall 
 instead of his skull. 
 
 But to proceed with my description of Clio's outer man. To 
 match the blue coat there were the yellow leathern breeches, 
 showing a section of the manly calf above a pair of top-boots, 
 such as the old stage coach-men used to wear down to our times, 
 but which, years ago, were worn by Dukes, Earls, Lords, nay, by 
 Royalty itself. This was the garb, essentially English, which the 
 Due de Chartres (afterwards Philippe Egalite'), Mirabeau, and other 
 admirers of English institutions took back with them to France in 
 the days of the first National Assembly, and it was adopted by the 
 French patriots, by the Girondists especially, and is still to be 
 seen in the French historical pictures of that day. Its adoption 
 in France was a compliment to England and English freedom ; but 
 it passed away, like other fashions, with the stormy days that 
 followed, when French Republicanism was swallowed up in 
 Imperialism and English Republicanism was at a discount under 
 Pitt and Dundas. Clio Rickman and a few others of the old 
 school (Cobbett was one of them, though he came later than Clio) 
 were faithful to the old garb, in spite of the gibes of little boys in 
 the streets and the staring looks of older people. 
 
 The impression left by this old English garb now-a-days is a 
 vulgar one ; it smacks of stage-coaches and old-fashioned farmers. 
 But, 100 years ago, it was the dress of gentlemen and wits and 
 men of letters and beaux; and Clio Rickman was all these 
 except the latter. He was a thoroughly well-educated man well 
 up in the classics a good French scholar (I think he must have 
 been a good deal in France, in the early days of the Revolution 
 probably because England was too hot and Pitt too hard for him), 
 and had no small literary talent, which he exercised both in verse 
 and prose. But he was a politician avant tout ; and his opinions, 
 like those of so many of the older English Radicals, verged on 
 Republicanism. There was an excuse for it in those days, which 
 does not exist now. At the close of the last century and the 
 beginning of the present the Crown and Church and Aristocracy
 
 THE OLD SUSSEX RADICAL. 115 
 
 were all-powerful, and the excesses of the French Revolution had 
 created such a strong feeling against popular concessions, con- 
 cessions now amply made, that men might well be forgiven for 
 thinking that liberty could only be secured by a Republic, and 
 that Monarchy was another name for despotism. 
 
 Amongst those who so thought was Clio Rickman, and he 
 did not conceal his opinions, either in speech or in writing, or, 
 so far as that could indicate them, in dress. His favourite English 
 heroes were Lord William Russell and Algernon Sidney, his 
 classical ones, Cato, Brutus, and Cassius. The education of men 
 in those days was more classical than it is now ; allusions to 
 classical events by public speakers were more frequent, and the 
 names of Greek and Roman patriots were much more common 
 in men's mouths. In fact, there was a strong classical, and that 
 signified Republican current, running through society and politics. 
 We have worked out of that and beyond it in these days, I mean 
 as to the Republicanism. We have known how to erect Re- 
 publican institutions under the forms of Monarchy, and it is a 
 happy solution, which Sidney and Home Tooke, aye, and a 
 greater than either of these Cromwell, would have rejoiced at, 
 could they have achieved it. 
 
 Well, in Clio's days it was otherwise. A despotic govern- 
 ment was " on the cards," and, therefore, men were Republicans. 
 But Clio's Republicanism, at the time I knew him, was of a very 
 harmless kind. It was more literary than political. It showed 
 itself in quotations from Milton's Areopagitica and Addison's 
 " Cato," and, above all, from Shakspeare's " Julius Caesar." 
 Men did quote in those days, they seldom venture on it now, 
 and, when they do, generally contrive to misquote. And we 
 youngsters were made parties to the plot against Royalty. I was 
 elevated to the rank of Brutus ; my brother (being older and 
 "leaner") was dubbed Cassius, and "so we played our parts." 
 But, in the midst of all our honours, I never lost the impression 
 that Clio himself was a Caesar ! If, in theory, a Republican, in 
 practice he was a despot. He ruled us, or would have ruled us, 
 with a rod of iron. He had been brought up in the old school,
 
 Il6 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 under a despotic regime, when boys were scourged up their 
 " Gradus ad Parnassum," and girls were kept strictly to their 
 samplers and spinets, and when they grew up into men and 
 women they carried out the same iron discipline. Day, the 
 author of " Sandford and Merton," was a dreadful old tyrant to 
 his children, and we all know how old Sir Timothy Shelley treated 
 his son Bysshe. I don't know but that we go too much the other 
 way now : it is the children who tyrannise now, and the parents 
 have to "knock under." All Spartan and Roman discipline has 
 been thrown to the winds, and boys and girls " rule the roost." 
 
 Clio resisted this innovation ; he always turned Brutus and 
 Cassius out of the warmest seats by the fire, and took possession 
 himself,- unless a milder authority interposed in the maternal 
 form, and then Clio retreated and discipline went to the wall. For 
 Clio, under his rough exterior, and with much love of self, had the 
 true spirit of gallantry. The old Radicals, or Republicans the 
 terms were almost synonymous were preux chevaliers to woman ; 
 they treated her with a degree of deference that is now almost 
 unknown. They had no notion, indeed, of giving her the franchise, 
 nor had she of asking for it ; but the influence of woman was great 
 with them, and they loved to bow themselves before her. My 
 mother's word or look and yet there was nothing terrible in either 
 was law to Clio ; and it was a shield extended over Brutus and 
 Cassius against the tyranny of Caesar ! So we never had occasion 
 to kill him in the Capitol ! He died in his bed, after the Reform 
 Bill was passed ; and to the last he wooed the Muses, in lines to 
 Clelia, Cynthia, and Celia, and set down in terse prose his 
 " Reflections " on men and things. These appeared from time to 
 time in the columns of the Brighton Herald, and must supply the 
 place of that Diary which few men could have kept better than he, 
 and which would have been invaluable had he kept it, but which, 
 unfortunately, he never did keep. Else what scenes might he not 
 have described with the Hones, the Home Tookes, the Thelwalls, 
 and even older Radicals than they, with whom he must have 
 come in contact ! 
 
 Clio lost a much-loved wife in early life, and, when I knew
 
 THE OLD SUSSEX RADICAL. 1 17 
 
 him, had, properly speaking, no home only a room in London, 
 to which he retreated, like an old lion to its den, when he was too 
 infirm to travel. The world was his home. He loved to call 
 himself, and to hear himself called, ' ' a citizen of the world ; " he 
 belonged to no sect of religion, and his political and social 
 sympathies took in the whole human race and made light of the 
 distinctions of classes or of nations or of skins. He had few 
 family ties ; but he had a good many friends, who, in his latter 
 days, when he was somewhat out at elbows with fortune, showed 
 their friendship by providing for those few wants or luxuries 
 snuff and tobacco were the chief of them to which he was 
 tributary. In his palmy days, he was always travelling from 
 country to country, or from County to County. It was one of 
 his boasts that no Englishman could be in his company half-an- 
 hour without betraying to him by some peculiarity of speech the 
 County to which he belonged ; and of the customs of all these 
 Counties he was a master. He was as much at home in York- 
 shire or in Hampshire as he was in Sussex ; and, at last, he was 
 equally a curiosity in all ! Adhering to the old garb and fashions 
 of his youth and manhood, and to the old ways of thinking and 
 speaking, he looked like a portrait cut from an old picture-frame, 
 and he talked like a page out of Boswell's " Life of Dr. Johnson." 
 He was an original man at all times, even in an age when men 
 were more original than they are now, and, as men looking and 
 thinking like himself dropped off, he became a representative man 
 of a by-gone age and extinct class, a strong age and a sturdy 
 class, with more of iron in it, and less of tinsel, than the present ; 
 who had to contend as freemen with real dangers to liberty, of 
 which we know nothing, and were prepared to " champion " their 
 principles " to the outrance," though they led to the scaffold. 
 Exile and imprisonment, if not worse, were always in the 
 probabilities of the " old Radical " Clio had undergone both 
 and for words and acts which now enter into our daily life. So no 
 wonder they were a little stern and sour, and looked, as Clio did, 
 with a certain contempt on the Radicals of a later age, who had 
 never known a Pitt or Castlereagh, nor faced an Ellenborough !
 
 Jl8 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 More of the Roman had these men in them than our later race 
 of Englishmen : and, looking back to Clio Rickman, as I do still, 
 with something of a boy-like affection for I never knew him but 
 as a boy, as a Triton among the minnows, I would not question 
 his title to have inscribed upon his tomb- stone the Brutus-like 
 epitaph : Ultimus Romanorum.
 
 THE OLD SUSSEX TORY. 
 
 present age knows no such being as the Old Tory he is 
 dead and buried ; nor do I know that it would be desirable 
 to resuscitate him or the world in which he lived. But he had his 
 good points, and, at all events, he was a reality : something upon 
 which you could lay your finger, and, in due course of time, fix 
 your memory, with the consciousness that there was something to 
 rest upon. Your Conservative is a mere name : the man who 
 answers to it to-day was something else yesterday, and may be 
 something else to-morrow. Nor does he even know to-day very 
 clearly what he is. His is a transitory, uncertain state of 
 being. But the old Tory never changed. My Uncle Mason 
 never changed. The world that is, his world moral, political, 
 literary might fall to pieces around him ; he^ like the righteous 
 man of Horace, remained erect and immovable. He was born 
 a Tory ; he lived a Tory ; and he died a Tory. 
 
 How he came to be born a Tory, I don't know, not having 
 known his mother. But she must have been a strong-minded 
 woman and very difficult to be turned from a thing when she had 
 made up her mind to it. Her partner in life must have found her 
 a great help and a great hindrance. She must have exercised 
 his patience and sharpened his temper. I hold to the opinion 
 (and in this I, too, am a bit of a Tory, for I have no foundation 
 for my opinion) that we derive a large share of what we call 
 character from our maternal parent and that we suck it in with our 
 mother's milk.* My Uncle Mason must have sucked very hard, 
 for a more incorrigible unmitigated old Tory never breathed. His 
 Toryism was in his flesh and bones. It was not an affair, as our 
 
 * Sbakspeare makes Volumnia say to her son, Coriolanus, 
 "Thy valiant no 33 was mine : thoti tvck'dtt it from me."
 
 120 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 modern political opinions are, of reasoning and arguing and such- 
 like slow processes. It was a constitutional (I mean physically 
 constitutional) fact bound up with blood and brain and nerve and 
 muscle and associated with the insoluble mysteries of human 
 nature. The idea that my Uncle Mason could have been any- 
 thing but a Tory ! Absurd ! ridiculous ! It would have been to 
 deny his raison d'etre. He was, I am sure, a little Tory in long 
 clothes, and held to his mother's breast as Filmer did to the 
 Right Divine of Kings ! Whilst at school he must have had a 
 foretaste of all his subsequent joy and pride at the spectacle 
 which the schools of those days presented of unbounded authority 
 and dogmatism on one side and a mixture of servility and brutal 
 tyranny over younger boys on the other. 
 
 But these are mere surmises of mine as to my Uncle's juvenile 
 Toryism a re-construction of the boy from the man. It was as 
 a man as a formed and complete Tory that I knew him, when 
 his education was finished, when the Tory principles of the age 
 had poured into the matrix made by Nature to receive them, and 
 had become as hard and infrangible as the bronze statues of stern- 
 looking Imperators that are still dug up after ages of entombment. 
 The man and the politician were then welded together, so that 
 no fracture could be detected to indicate where the man ended 
 and the politician began. 
 
 And yet my Uncle was no politician that is, in the modern 
 sense of the term. He never made a political speech in his life, 
 and couldn't for the life of him have laid down a political axiom. 
 He was a party man to the backbone ; and his party was the Tory 
 party. Never did any man give himself up more completely to 
 his party, in a day when mendfa/ give themselves up to their party 
 in a way they don't know now. It was his country his religion 
 the pride and glory of his life. He would do anything for it. 
 My Uncle was as moral and as kind-hearted a man as ever 
 breathed. But when his party was in question when there was a 
 Tory to be returned for his native City, which was Chichester, 
 or for his County which was Sussex he threw religion, morality, 
 friendship, kind-heartedness to the winds with a fine disdain.
 
 THE OLD SUSSEX TORY. 121 
 
 He meant his party to win ; and that meant that he meant 
 to stick at nothing which might make it win. He entered 
 without scruple nay, with a ready joy into the most atrocious 
 conspiracies against his fellow-citizens. He lured them away 
 from the poll on the last day of polling by the most abomin- 
 able devices he locked them up in his own house until the 
 poll was closed ; and he boasted of it afterwards (I have heard 
 him do so !) as though he had performed the noblest, most 
 patriotic, and most meritorious action in the world. How he 
 escaped fine and imprisonment for this defiance of the law, I never 
 could discover, except it was that everybody else in those days did 
 the same thing, or admired those who did ; or perhaps, and I 
 think this is the better explanation of the two, there were, as our 
 neighbours in France say when a man has murdered half-a-dozen 
 people, extenuating circumstances in his favour which saved him 
 from the penalties of the law. For, if there was a man in his own 
 City who was respected and beloved, it was my uncle Mason, 
 not on account of his Toryism, but in spite of it Everybody 
 knew that he was a rank old Tory, and stuck at nothing to 
 serve the Tory cause; but then, too, everybody knew that he 
 was just as ready to serve anybody who needed assistance, 
 whether he was Tory, Whig, or Radical. He was really 
 a man who did not allow his left hand to know what his right 
 hand did, for the latter was continually in his breeches' pocket in 
 search of coin, which, certainly, when found, was not " made a 
 note of." This, too, smacked of Toryism. It was profuse 
 expenditure, without discrimination, and which often did as much 
 harm as good. It was to gratify his own feelings, without reference 
 to consequences : a kind of Timon of Athens bounty, in which 
 pride went hand-in-hand with generosity. " What a liberal, free- 
 handed man Mr. Mason is !" That was a bit of flattery he could 
 not resist, and so, in his. little way, he scattered a shower of silver 
 on his path, and was an inexhaustible mine of wealth to beggars, 
 impostors, flymen, railway porters, chambermaids, and all the fry 
 who feed on the little weaknesses of humanity. 
 
 But this profuseness was a growth of his latter days, when he
 
 122 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 moved more freely about the County in an official capacity. In 
 the earlier period of his career he was, like nearly all English 
 tradesmen 100 years ago, a fixture in his shop. This fixity of 
 tenure by the shopkeeping class was a characteristic I might 
 almost say a principle of Toryism. When the middle-classes 
 began to move about that is, when fast-going coaches and rail- 
 ways came in Toryism went out. Locomotion was its death- 
 blow. The true old Tory shopkeeper never thought of stirring 
 from his city scarcely of going over the sill of his door. One shop- 
 keeper kept watch over another, and if a truant were found out 
 and he was sure to be found out if he only went over to the other 
 side of the street the astounding fact was proclaimed to the 
 community, and suspicions flew abroad as to the state of the 
 truant's affairs. No man that is, no man of the shopkeeping 
 class dared to leave his counter for an hour, much less a day, 
 except on causes of paramount necessity, duly set forth, without 
 danger of being thought mad or insolvent ! This was a rule of 
 the " good old Tory days," and need I say that my Uncle strictly 
 adhered to it ? In his house his castle he was supreme his 
 wife permitting, despotic : workmen and shop-boys were slaves, 
 who had no will of their own. Out of his own house he was a 
 slave : a slave to public opinion that opinion being Tory. 
 
 Such restraint in the present day, when the middle-classes, 
 and even those below them, have broken through every shackle on 
 freedom of movement imposed by "the wisdom of our ancestors," 
 would be intolerable. But it was not so to our grandfathers. We 
 are the creatures of habit, and it was as easy to them to stay at 
 home never to stir from the street in which they were born for 
 months, and even years together, as it is for us to rush about the 
 country in railway carriages, or fly from land to land not to say 
 Continent to Continent in steamers. My Uncle, then, as a 
 model Tory tradesman, he was a bookseller, never went from 
 home for years together in the early days of his life except 
 on duly-announced matters of business. His City was his 
 world, and everything was measured by it It was an old 
 Cathedral City, ruled by the Clergy, and hedged in by great
 
 THE OLD SUSSEX TORY. 123 
 
 aristocratic families : the perfection of a Tory city ; and Toryism 
 grew up to perfection in it. Nothing was good that was not old ; 
 nothing respectable that was not sanctioned by the Clergy ; nothing 
 to be admired that was not aristocratic. Age, the Church, the 
 British Constitution (the latter being embodied in a Tory Govern- 
 ment), these were the essentials of British liberty, prosperity, and 
 orthodoxy, and they were summed up in one term : Toryism. It 
 took in religion, morals, and manners even literature. 
 
 I have said that my Uncle was a bookseller, and in that day 
 a bookseller, and particularly in a City like Chichester, meant a man 
 who understood books as well as sold them ; for books were 
 books in those days, whereas now they are merely so much printed 
 paper. Let me explain. New books, whether in the shape of 
 newly-written works or new editions of old authors, were the rare 
 exceptions ; eld books were the staple of a bookseller's trade : 
 good old authors, weighty in subject, and printed and bound in 
 the same solid fashion as they were written in ; Hooker, Stilling- 
 fleet, Chillingworth, Barrow, Tillotson, and such like. Now, my 
 Uncle Mason was thoroughly up in his business ; he understood 
 books, and especially books of Divinity, for which, of course, 
 there was a large demand in a City like Chichester, as well as any 
 man in England. I don't say that he knew their contents that 
 he had ever read one word of them. That was not bookselling 
 knowledge. But he was perfectly conversant with all the mysteries 
 of the trade knew which was the first, or second, or third edition 
 of such an author which edition, by the mistake of a word, or 
 the transposition of a letter, was worthless, and which, by the 
 presence of a certain passage or print, was invaluable. It was a 
 treat to see him handle such books as these to see him seize on 
 a ponderous old tome fling it open at the title-page give it a 
 glance, and then fling it from him with contempt or close it with 
 a certain air which, without disclosing too much to the ignorant 
 outer world (that was, if it was a public sale), said as plainly as 
 action could speak, " That book is mine. I know all about it, and 
 you the profanum vulgus don't." I should have liked to see
 
 124 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 the auctioneer in that day who dared to gainsay my Uncle Mason 
 in the matter of a book ! 
 
 But it was only one class of books my Uncle cared about, 
 as it was only one set of opinions that he had any regard for. 
 And that was old, and chiefly theological, books. For new works, 
 and even for new editions of old works, he had unbounded con- 
 tempt. In a later day Bohn was his horror. In an earlier day he 
 turned up his nose at the different " Libraries " " Classical," 
 "Scientific," "Standard," &c., c., that were sent forth by 
 Murray, Longman, and Bentley. He would not give a novel 
 house-room. For years did he stand out against the rage for " The 
 Great Unknown," until all the world hailed the writer as Sir 
 Walter Scott, and I never exactly understood how he gave in to 
 this violation of his principles and passed under the yoke of the 
 Magician. It was too tender a subject to question him about, for 
 my Uncle, as a genuine old Tory, never admitted that he had been 
 wrong never changed his course if he could possibly help it ; 
 was always ready to stick to his ship and go down with it if it was 
 necessary. He was certainly a very obstinate man. He cherished 
 prejudices where other men conceal them. He would not sit 
 down to a table at which there were 13 guests. He would make 
 anyone who upset the salt throw some of it over his or her left 
 shoulder. He never started on a journey, nor would allow anybody 
 else if he could help it, on a Friday. And everybody humoured 
 him in his crotchets ; such a dear, kind-hearted, jolly, plucky old 
 gentleman was my Uncle the old Tory. He was a child in his 
 opinions, but he was a hero in his acts ; he did not know what it 
 was to be "daunted ;" he had what Churchill calls a "matchless 
 intrepidity of face ; " he would speak up like a man to my Lord 
 Duke This or to the great Earl of That, if there was something to 
 say for the public good or for a neighbour or a neighbour's son. 
 He did not know what fear I had almost said modesty was. 
 He was certainly a very impudent man. That is, there was 
 nothing he would not ask for, and nobody whom he would not 
 ask, if he wanted to get something for somebody. There was no 
 shame-facedness in him. And that, too, \yas a characteristic o 1
 
 THE OLD SUSSEX TORY. 125 
 
 the old Tories ! They thought they had a right to all they could 
 get, which was pretty well everything that was worth having in this 
 world ! As to any body else, on the other side, wishing to get 
 any thing it was robbery, spoliation, high treason, revolutionary ! 
 Put the rascals in gaol transport them hang them up as high as 
 Haman ! 
 
 A terrible blow was the Reform Bill, and, after that, the 
 repeal of the Corn Laws, to my Uncle Mason. They upset his 
 politics, as Sir Walter had demoralised his bookshelves. He 
 could not argue what old Tory ever could ? but he knew it 
 was all wrong, and that it would end in anarchy and destruction. 
 It was too bad of us reforming youngsters to plague the old gentle- 
 man like so many picadores, and to make him rush, in defence of 
 his beloved Toryism, into the very jaws of an absurdity ! There 
 was no difficulty in it. Like the great mass of his party, he knew 
 nothing of principles : only men. Now, one of his men was 
 Huskisson, whom he knew personally, and potently believed to 
 be a Tory, whilst all the while that great statesman was working 
 hard to bring about that Free Trade in commerce which Peel and 
 Cobden and Bright afterwards achieved. It was glorious to hear 
 my Uncle, in the innocence of his heart, launch into praises of 
 the Statesman who had done all he could to consign the Tory 
 party and its principles of protection in trade and intolerance in 
 religion to the tomb of all the Capulets ! It was too bad of us ! 
 But we gave over at last, as we grew wiser and he grew older, and 
 the old Tory floated into the calm waters of consideration and 
 respect which his fine qualities as a man passons the politician 
 deserved. He never surrendered a single point ; he was as obsti- 
 nate, as superstitious, as proud of his party which existed no 
 longer as contemptuous of Whigs and Liberals as ever as fond 
 as ever of telling what enormities he had committed for it But he 
 gradually grew less bellicose would come down with less scorn 
 upon the saucy Liberal " boys " (his nephews were always " boys " 
 to him) submitted more and more to female sway was milder in 
 denunciation of political and literary revolutionists like Cobden 
 and Bright, Dickens and Thackeray troubled himself, in fact, less
 
 126 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 about the singularly perverse course which the affairs of the world 
 in general, and of England in particular, had taken since he com- 
 menced his career, some 80 years before, as a Tory, and, at, last, 
 amidst the general regret of all who knew him Liberals, Radicals, 
 Conservatives, there were no Tories left, took leave of a world 
 he had so often doomed to destruction as peacefully and forgivingly 
 as though he had not been the last of the Old Sussex Tories.
 
 127 
 
 THE SUSSEX COUNTRY DOCTOR. 
 
 T N the present day, doubtless, men attain to higher points in 
 particular branches of science than their forefathers ; but it 
 may be doubted whether they are so well informed " all round." 
 At least, as I look back to the past, the memories of men start up, 
 not in one, but in all departments of life, who were more varied 
 in their learning who could turn with greater ease than men do 
 now from one topic of discussion or speculation to another who, 
 if they were professional men, were also literary men, and not only 
 literary men, but politicians, and could, if need were, throw aside 
 politics, and talk nonsense to a pretty or philosophy to a plain 
 woman. Music was not cultivated to so high a point as it is now- 
 a-days ; but there were more men who could play an accompani- 
 ment on the flute or violin, or take a part in a duet or 
 trio, a glee or a madrigal. No such things as Fine Art 
 Exhibitions were known ; but yet the engravings of Raphael 
 Morghens and of Bartolozzi were generally to be found on the walls 
 of such men as these, in town and country, and they were more 
 appreciated, perhaps, than the expensive works of Art bought by 
 millionaires for their Palaces in the present day, not because the 
 buyers appreciate them, but because it is " the right thing to do," 
 and also because they are a good investment. 
 
 Of all the men who partook of this rounded character, 
 and there were several within my experience, 40 years ago, the 
 one who came up to the highest point was Charles Verral, the 
 " Doctor," by universal consent, of Seaford. I may proclaim his 
 name without reserve, for he has long passed away, and no member 
 of his large family, and few, if any, of his still larger circle of 
 friends, are to be found at Seaford ; and if his name and memory
 
 128 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 still linger there, it is probably because they are linked with the 
 almost tragic troubles that clouded the latter years of his life.* 
 
 Charles Verral stood high as a medical practitioner in Seaford 
 and its neighbourhood. I do not know whether he held a diploma 
 as a physician, or whether, as is often the case in the country, he 
 was called "Doctor " by custom or courtesy. His profession was 
 that of a general practitioner. But he was much more than a 
 doctor. He was a poet ; he was a dramatist ; he delighted 
 in literature and music and Art ; he was a keen politician, 
 and could hold his own when brought, as he was, into con- 
 tact with men moving in the highest political sphere, like Agar 
 Ellis, and even, if I mistake not, Canning, the intimate friend 
 of Agar Ellis, and a frequent visitor to his seat at Seaford. 
 And then his general conversation and his manners with all 
 men, and women, too, and children, were so charming, 
 so genial and pleasant, so frank and natural that in a 
 moment, to whichever of these categories you belonged, you 
 were at your ease, and gave all that you had to give of your little 
 store and received with delight the larger measure he dealt out in 
 return. And of this, on his side, there was no stint. He delighted 
 to pour forth his full streams of knowledge and fancy ; but neither 
 did he overwhelm you with them. It was to him as great a 
 pleasure to receive as to give to encourage others to show their 
 little stock of knowledge as to exhibit his own larger one. He 
 never preached, like Coleridge, or talked for victory, like Johnson, 
 but made conversation a pleasant mode of bartering thought for 
 thought. He delighted in being one of a very happy circle, and 
 drew into it young, middle-aged, old male and female all who 
 chose to come. And few could resist the charm of his manners 
 the liveliness of his conversation the pleasant play of his 
 features. Not that he was a handsome man far from it. His 
 
 * Several letters drawn forth from residents in Seaford and its neighbour- 
 hood by the appearance of this paper in the Brighton Herald attested to the fact 
 that Dr. Verral was still, in 1876, remembered with strong affection and respect 
 by many of his former friends and patients.
 
 THE SUSSEX COUNTRY DOCTOR. 129 
 
 features were homely, but full of tender sensibilities, and they 
 always kept tune with his thoughts. A deaf man might almost 
 have held converse with him by watching the flash of his eye and 
 the quick play of his mouth. Children would gaze upon him with 
 open eyes that did not wander as he talked about what they could 
 not understand, in tones which they liked to listen to, and which 
 held in check for a time their natural restlessness. There was a 
 spell in his manner which, whether he unbent himself to them, 
 and he often did so, or whether he soared into regions beyond 
 their comprehension, held them in rapt attention. 
 
 With all his attractive qualities for society, Dr. Verral 
 delighted in the joys of his own home. Few kept a more liberal 
 or hospitable table. Hospitality in those days, and especially in 
 the country, where travelling was difficult, and visitors were rare, 
 was a more common virtue in England than it is now-a-days. The 
 table might not be so richly decorated or loaded with such 
 delicacies ; but it was rich in a wholesome abundance, and the 
 house was flung open with a freedom that is unknown in these days. 
 Where, now-a-days, a man in the position of Dr. Verral, that is, 
 the Doctor of the Parish, gives one dinner to his friends, upon 
 a sumptuous scale, doubtless, and with a show and heat and 
 crowding that make half the guests ill, and at an expense that 
 impoverishes the host for the remainder of the year, the old- 
 fashioned Doctor would give twenty thirty " parties." Nay, 
 in the case of a man like Dr. Verral, so sought after and so ready 
 to give pleasure, it was almost " open house " all the year round. 
 His family was large, and additions to it did not seem to make 
 much difference in the provision to be made for every-day wants. 
 There were pupils, too, and sometimes in-door patients nearly 
 always friends his own, or his sons' or daughters' all, by what- 
 ever title they sat down at his table, certain to become, before they 
 rose from it, admirers of " the Doctor." 
 
 Such households as these are now things of the Past, and 
 the men who formed the centre of them seem to have passed 
 away. A vigour of body and an elasticity of mind, above all, a 
 variety of gifts, were demanded of them, which few possess now- 
 
 K
 
 130 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 a-days. More is given to the hard work and routine duties of life ; 
 the line is stumped out, the rails laid down, and in the grooves of 
 this the head of the family revolves round and round until he 
 has completed his day's work, and then he goes home to oil the 
 machinery to eat and drink and sleep perhaps to be amused, 
 but certainly not to amuse. He is too "used up," or, more 
 likely still, he has never acquired the art of amusing. It is " not 
 in the bond." He can talk about his profession or business, or, if 
 he has read his newspaper, on the news of the day, if there 
 happen to be any. But as to heading a table, or leading the con- 
 versation, he is unequal to it, and, aware of his deficiencies, either 
 declines " society " altogether, or calls in the professional singer 
 and player, above all, he relies on the "professed cook" to 
 cover all home defects. 
 
 Where and whence such men as Dr. Verral (and they were 
 once a class in country-towns) obtained the stock of health and 
 spirits to fit them equally for business and for pleasure, I cannot say. 
 But they did it. They made long rounds of calls on their patients 
 talked, read, wrote, aye, and studied too, and, when all was done, 
 took the head of their table as fresh and as genial as though they 
 had been getting themselves up specially for the occasion. Was it 
 the lighter spirit in which they went to their work, with a happy 
 unconsciousness of that rivalry that now propels a man along his 
 narrow path, forbidding him to diverge to the right or the left, 
 lest another should seize the opportunity, and rush past him in the 
 race for life ? Was it this ? or was it the hardier constitutions of 
 the men, often fresh from the farmhouse or the country rectory, 
 and renovated by fresh air and a ride " after hounds ? " Or was it 
 the diversity of occupation the passing from one pursuit to 
 another, suffering none of them to become that engrossing toil of 
 mind or body which grinds the intellects of a man to dust ? One 
 or other of these it must have been that gave such strength and 
 elasticity to men of Dr. Verral's stamp, and made them men of 
 society as well as of science, poets and politicians, writers and 
 talkers and thinkers, and not unfrequently, as in Dr. Verral's case, 
 inventors as well.
 
 THE SUSSEX COUNTRY DOCTOR. 131 
 
 For, wide and active as were the Seaford doctor's pursuits, he 
 sought to extend his practice by a mechanical invention, for the 
 relief of patients afflicted by diseases of the spine, of great merit, 
 and which has been of late years turned to good account. He 
 himself did not live to see it brought into full operation. In his 
 autumn of life a quick succession of terrible misfortunes fell upon 
 him that would have shattered a man of less vigour, and did, most 
 unquestionably, embitter and shorten his life, though he bore up 
 against them with a courage that was heroic His eldest 
 daughter a beautiful and talented young woman, and whom her 
 father loved with almost more than a father's affection the 
 daughter who was a mother to his younger children when he 
 was left without a wife she faded and pined away, and at length 
 died, under a home-sorrow that had thrown a dark shadow on her 
 father's happiness and against which she could not bear up. The 
 lines in which he poured forth his grief for her loss are now 
 lying before me. They are amongst the most touching and 
 beautiful, I think, that a poet has ever penned in the bitterness 
 of a death-grief. They were written down at the house of an old 
 friend in Brighton, whose daughter had been his daughter's 
 dearest companion. I make no excuse for copying them from the 
 columns of the Brighton Herald, where they appeared above 40 
 years ago : 
 
 We've lain her in the cold churchyard, 
 
 Beneath a mound of clay ; 
 Lov'd as she was, we've left her there, 
 
 To loathsome worms a prey. 
 
 And, lo ! the mist is on the hill, 
 
 The rain is driving fast, 
 The evening skies are wild and dark, 
 
 And chilly blows the blast. 
 
 And now this roof for many a year, 
 
 In many a storm so wild 
 This humble roof has been a home, 
 
 A shelter for my child.
 
 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 And now this roof, her father's roof, 
 Can be her home no more 
 
 How shall I close mine house to-night ? 
 How bear to bar my door ? 
 
 To shut her out for whom so oft 
 
 It gladly open'd wide ! 
 To shut her out that was so long 
 
 My joy, my hope, my pride ! 
 
 We, in these sheltering walls, to-night, 
 
 On beds so soft and warm, 
 Shall rest uninjur'd by the shower, 
 
 And shelter'd from the storm. 
 
 But she is in her cold, damp bed ; 
 
 And o'er her lonely grave 
 The driving shower will wildly beat, 
 
 The ruthless whirlwind rave. 
 
 And livid fires will glare around, 
 And pealing thunders roar ; 
 
 How can I close mine house to-night ? 
 How bear to bar my door ? 
 
 But wildly, idly flows my verse : 
 How vain are thoughts like these ! 
 
 She heeds not now the driving shower, 
 The tempest, or the breeze. 
 
 In vain for her the Spring shall bloom, 
 The suns of Summer glow ; 
 
 In vain the fruits of Autumn smile, 
 The blasts of Winter blow. 
 
 Untroubled in the silent tomb 
 
 She lies in peaceful sleep, 
 While I in this wide world am left 
 
 To wander and to weep ! 
 
 C larissa ! thou hast been to me 
 
 A blessing from thy birth ! 
 And time, that added to thy years, 
 
 Still added to thy worth.
 
 THE SUSSEX COUNTRY DOCTOR. 133 
 
 A little lovely babe wert thou, 
 
 Within thy mother's arms, 
 When first thy father used to gaze 
 
 And doat upon thy charms. 
 
 And still thy form more lovely grew, 
 
 And still thy mind improved ; 
 Thou wert by all who saw admired, 
 
 By all who knew thee loved. 
 
 And oh, when grief was at my heart, 
 
 And care was on my brow, 
 My kindest, truest, comforter, 
 
 My fondest friend, wert thou. 
 
 Nor was thy kindness unconfess'd, 
 
 Thy fondness unreturned 
 Living, how dearly wert thou loved ! 
 
 And dead, how deeply mourned ! 
 
 Some readers of these most beautiful and heartrending lines 
 (I do not think they are excelled, if equalled, for pathetic beauty 
 in all the range of English poetry) may ask how could grief so 
 deep put itself into the trammels of verse? The reply is, that, to 
 a poet, verse has no trammels ; it is the natural channel of his 
 thoughts and feelings the form in which his emotions clothe 
 themselves as they well up in his heart ; it is to him what tears, 
 and lamentations, and wringing of hands are to other men, a 
 relief and a consolation, and also a necessity ; for if he did not 
 so give vent to his feelings, they would break his heart or madden 
 his brain. 
 
 The death of this beloved daughter was Dr. Verral's greatest 
 sorrow in life, and yet it had its consolation in the memory of the 
 affection and virtues of the lost one. For that which had pre- 
 ceded it there was no consolation, and in that which followed 
 there was a sharper pang. Dr. Verral was walking in the 
 streets of London with a younger child a merry laughing girl. 
 They had to cross a road, crowded with traffic, and, before 
 they could do so, a heavy vehicle was upon them ; they were
 
 134 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 struck down, and when he rose, the child lay dead at his feet. In 
 his agony he threw himself on the corpse and refused to be com- 
 forted. What comfort, indeed, was there for a father so bereaved 
 of his child? 
 
 Before the last of these terrible misfortunes had fallen on Dr. 
 Verral, his home at Seaford had been broken up, and he had 
 begun the world again in another sphere. Into this I will not 
 follow him. It was as a. country Doctor the centre of a large 
 circle of friends and patients the adviser, the comforter, the 
 friend of rich and poor, the delight of society, the authority in 
 all matters of literature and Art and politics, it was as the Doctor 
 par excellence of Seaford that I knew him ; and his memory is so 
 connected with the place, though it knows him no longer, that I 
 never hear it named without recalling him. Perhaps there are 
 some few others who still do the same ; for he was not a man, once 
 known, to be forgotten. His place is not filled up. Nay, the 
 place itself no longer exists. Here and there an old-fashioned 
 " country Doctor " of the type of him of Seaford, a man of 
 varied parts with much wisdom as well as of " infinite mirth," 
 is to be found. But the race is fast dying out. The great towns 
 so much more numerous and so much greater than in times past 
 naturally draw to them men of such talent as Dr. Verral. The 
 country cannot compete with them as it used to do, aye, and 
 successfully too. Lesser men will now do for country places : well 
 qualified, doubtless, for their duties, but not such " all-round " 
 men, not philosopher, poet, politician, as well as physician like 
 the Doctor of Seaford.
 
 135 
 
 SELF-EDUCATED SUSSEX MEN. 
 
 T N a few years there will be no such thing as an uneducated boy 
 in England, and then the race of self-educated men will have 
 disappeared. When the State left children to themselves, and a 
 great many parents followed the example of the State, there was, 
 no doubt, a great deal of ignorance a large tract of brain that 
 lay fallow. But then, as if to compensate for this, here and there 
 a boy or man took the work into his own hands educated him-* 
 self; and of all modes of education this, if not the best, is the 
 most fruitful in results. For it can only be done, to follow out 
 my rural simile, on " strong soils," where Nature has been 
 prodigal of her gifts, and has given a decided bent in this or that 
 direction. As a rule, this bent is followed in self-education (in 
 enforced education it is often neglected or even thwarted), and the 
 consequence frequently is, such a crop as you only get from virgin 
 soil. 
 
 These self-educated men, in times gone by, made some 
 amends for the general sterility : they vindicated the goodness of 
 the native stock the natural richness of the soil. But they were 
 not a happy race of men. They had to fight against circum- 
 stances, and the jealousy of neighbours, and the doubts and 
 indifference of friends and relations ; above all, against the pride 
 and superciliousness of " Society," which sets its face against 
 irregular and erratic outbursts of talent, and closes its ranks like 
 a Macedonian phalanx against such as attempt to make a way by 
 force of genius into its Sacred Band ! 
 
 So I do not know that the amount of human happiness will 
 be much diminished by the loss of the self-educated man of those 
 who attempted to mount upwards, not by the national staircases, 
 the Public Schools and the Universities, but by a kind of hand- 
 over-hand process, as boys climb trees and sweeps get to the top 
 of greasy poles ! For, though the prize at the top of the pole
 
 136 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 may be carried off, it is seldom worth the pain and suffering 
 which it costs, to the sweep or to the self-educated man ! 
 
 At least, that is the conclusion I have come to from my 
 knowledge of self-educated men in this town of Brighton. I have 
 known some, who that has lived 60 years has not ? They used 
 to be more or less numerous in every town in England, and were 
 generally as much known for their eccentricities and misfortunes 
 as for their talents ; for, doubtless, in the process of self-education, 
 tares came up plentifully with the wheat ; there is little time for 
 weeding it needs a very strong man to weed himself '. and so 
 the penalty paid by the local genius the poet, or the linguist, or 
 the mathematician was, too often, to be pointed out to strangers 
 as a kind of lusus naturae ; in Sussex phrase, a " main clever kind 
 of chap," but as much to be laughed at and pitied as admired or 
 rewarded. 
 
 If I had to exemplify this class of men, as it existed in 
 Brighton some 40 or 50 years ago, I should choose two men 
 whose names are still familiar in some ears, and whose features 
 are not quite forgotten, but whose works are passing more and 
 more out of fame and use. I mean George Frederick Richardson 
 and Samuel Simes : the former a native of Brighton ; the latter 
 of Lewes. 
 
 I am not going to write their biographies, nor to draw a 
 parallel between them, after the manner of Plutarch, but simply 
 to illustrate my theory of self-educated men. In some respects 
 they agreed, as in local position, for both sprang from the middle 
 classes, and one, like De Foe, was a draper the other, like Stowe, 
 a tailor ; but in most other respects they were as different as men 
 could well be whose tastes lay in the same direction Literature 
 and who drew everything from their own resources. 
 
 George Richardson had an intellect that was fitted to go in 
 harness to be trained and cultivated up to a very high point ; to 
 submit to the severest discipline. If it had been his lot to be born 
 in Germany, he would have been a renowned Professor, and even 
 if educated at Oxford or Cambridge he must have risen to high 
 fame as a scholar. He had a prodigious memory and an aptitude
 
 SELF-EDUCATED SUSSEX MEN. 137 
 
 for acquiring knowledge that has seldom, I believe, been surpassed 
 in this country. With an education such as country tradesmen's 
 sons received 60 or 70 years ago, that is, in the three " r's " 
 reading, writing, and arithmetic, and by his unaided efforts, he 
 acquired a knowledge of Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and then, passing 
 on to modern languages, he mastered French, German, and 
 Italian, not only so as to read, but to speak them with ease 
 and elegance. This, remember, was at a time when the 
 Continent was closed to Englishmen when the language of 
 Germany was almost unknown to the English people, and when 
 its literature was only beginning to be recognised in Europe. 
 Richardson assisted to make its claims known by translating the 
 poems of Korner and Schiller and other German poets. How he 
 came to speak as well as to know the language, and also French' 
 and Italian I think, too, Spanish I know not, or rather I do 
 know a little ; it was by his indomitable courage and perseverance. 
 Not a wandering native of Faderland or of Gaul or Italy came 
 across his path were it a Bavarian broom-girl or an organ-man or 
 a Savoyard but Richardson would accost him or her and bring 
 his book-knowledge to the test of proof. He did not know what 
 shame-facedness was in the acquisition of a language. He 
 " aired " his French and German on all occasions, in season and 
 out of season, never forgetting a lesson or a hint, until he became 
 the proficient he was until his French had all the exquisite 
 ndtet'e and finesse of a Parisian, and his German was acknowledged 
 to be classic. It was, doubtless, in languages that the bent of 
 George Richardson's genius lay most strongly ; but he had tastes 
 and talent in many other directions, and, as opportunities offered, 
 he followed them out. He was devotedly fond of music, but had 
 no voice and little ear ; and yet he laboured to sing Mozart with 
 the same assiduity, though not with the same success, that he did 
 to recite Schiller or Korner. How well do I remember his 
 singing-lessons ! and his pathetic entreaties to his instructress (a 
 very patient, good-tempered young lady), after successive failures 
 in " La ci darem " or " Notf e giorno," for " just once more, my
 
 138 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 dear Miss ! just that passage, if you- please, once more : " 
 
 that " once more " being as illimitable as space ! 
 
 To the Graces, indeed, though our friend Richardson made 
 tremendous sacrifices, his sacrifices were not altogether acceptable. 
 He carried the same indomitable perseverance into his cultivation 
 of them that he did into the severer studies of language, and r 
 later in life, science, but not with the same result. In music and 
 dancing (and, oh ye Gods ! how he did labour to dance !) he failed 
 decidedly, and in acting he was not successful. He played lago 
 to, I think, Barnard Gregory's Othello on the Brighton stage, and 
 I don't know which was the worst of the two ; but, between them, 
 Shakspeare got terribly maltreated ! No, the Graces were not 
 propitious to George Richardson, devoutly as he worshipped them. 
 In literature, he was much happier. He wrote in many styles in 
 verse and in prose as a translator and as an original author as 
 an essayist, a critic, and in a light pleasing polished style that re- 
 called the social sketches of Addison and Steele in "The 
 Spectator " and " The Tatler." A series of these, under the title 
 of " The Visitor," appeared in the Brighton Herald between 40 
 and 50 years ago, and they contain matter that would justify a 
 more permanent form of publication. Some idea may be given 
 of the vein in which they were written by the following jeu 
 (fesprit; 
 
 LETTER FROM MISS AMELIA JANE MORTIMER, 
 LONDON, TO SIR HENRY CLIFTON, PARIS. 
 
 Dear Harry, You owe me a letter, 
 
 Nay, I really believe it is two ; 
 But to make you still further my debtor, 
 
 I send you this brief billet doux. 
 The shock was so great when we parted, 
 
 I can't overcome my regret ; 
 At first I was quite broken-hearted, 
 
 And have never recovered it yet ! 
 
 I have scarcely been out to a party, 
 But have sent an excuse, or been ill ; 
 
 I have played but three times at Ecarte, 
 And danced but a single quadrille !
 
 SELF-EDUCATED SUSSEX MEN. 139 
 
 And then I was sad, for my heart ne'er 
 
 One moment ceased thinking of thee ; 
 I'd a handsome young man for my partner, 
 
 And a handsomer still vis-ct-vis ! 
 
 But I had such a pain in my forehead, 
 
 And felt so ennuied dhd so tired, 
 I must have looked perfectly horrid, 
 
 Yet they say I was really admired ! 
 You j ll smile but Mamma heard a Lancer, 
 
 As he whispered his friend, and, said he, 
 " The best and most beautiful dancer 
 
 Is the lady in white," meaning me ! 
 
 I've been once to Lord Dorival's soirees, 
 
 Whose daughter in music excels ; 
 (Do they still wear the silks they call moires ? 
 
 They will know if you ask at Pradel's.) 
 She begged me to join in a duet : 
 
 But the melody died on my tongue, 
 And I thought I should never get through it, 
 
 It was one we so often have sung ! 
 
 In your last, you desire me to mention 
 
 The news of the Court and the Town ; 
 But there's nothing that's worth your attention, 
 
 Or deserving of my noting down. 
 The late-carried Catholic Question 
 
 Papa thinks will ruin the land ; 
 For my part, I make no suggestion 
 
 On matters I don't understand. 
 
 And Pa says the Duke has not well done 
 
 To put his old friends to the rout ; 
 That he should not have quarrell'd with Eldon 
 
 Nor have turn'd Mr. Huskisson out 
 And they say things are bad in the City, 
 
 And Pa thinks they'll only get worse 
 And they say the new bonnets are pretty, 
 
 But I think them quite the reverse !
 
 14 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 Lady Black has brought out her two daughters, 
 
 Good figures, but timid and shy ; 
 Mrs. White's gone to Bath for the waters, 
 
 And the doctors declare she will die. 
 It's all off 'twixt Miss Brown and Sir Stephen, 
 
 He found they could never agree ; 
 Her temper's so very uneven, 
 
 I always said how it would be ! 
 
 The Miss Whites aie grown very fine creatures, 
 
 Though they look rather large in a room ; 
 Miss Grey has gone off in her features, 
 
 Miss Green is gone off with her groom. 
 Lord Littleford's dead, and that noodle, 
 
 His son, has succeeded his sire ; 
 And her Ladyship's lost the fine poodle, 
 
 That you and I used to admire. 
 
 Little Joe is advancing in knowledge, 
 
 He begs me to send his regard ; 
 And Charles goes on Monday to College, 
 
 But mamma thinks he studies too hard. 
 We are losing our man-cook, he marries 
 
 My French femme de chambre, Baptiste ; 
 Pa wishes you'd send one from Paris, 
 
 But he must be a first-rate artiste. 
 
 I don't like my last new piano, 
 
 Its tones are so terribly sharp, 
 I think I must give it to Anna, 
 
 And get pa to buy me a harp ! 
 Little Gerald is growing quite mannish, 
 
 He was smoking just now a cigar ! 
 And I'm fagging hard at the Spanish, 
 
 And Lucy has learnt the guitar. 
 
 I suppose you can talk like an artist, 
 
 Of statues, busts, paintings, -vertu; 
 But, pray, love, don't turn Bonapartist, 
 
 Pa will never consent if you do ! 
 " You were born," he will say, " Sir, a Briton," 
 
 But forgive me so foolish a fear ; 
 If I thought you could blame what I've written, 
 
 I would soon wash it out with a tear !
 
 SELF-EDUCATED SUSSEX MEN. 14! 
 
 And pray, Sir, how like you the ladies, 
 
 Since you've quitted the land of your birth ? 
 I have heard the dark donnas of Cadiz 
 
 Are the loveliest women on earth. . 
 
 Th' Italians are lively and witty, 
 
 But I ne'er could their manners endure ; 
 Nor do I think French women pretty, 
 
 Though they have a most charming toiimure. 
 
 I was told you were flirting at Calais, 
 
 And next were intriguing at Rome, 
 But I smiled at their impotent malice, 
 
 Yet I must say I wish'd you at home ; 
 Though I kept what I fancied in petto, 
 
 And felt you would ever be true ; 
 Yet I dreamed of the murd'rer's stiletto, 
 
 Each night and its victim was you ! 
 
 I'm arrived at the end of my paper, 
 
 So, dearest, you'll not think it rude, 
 If I ring for my seal and my taper, 
 
 And think it is time to conclude. 
 Adieu, then-^dejected and lonely, 
 
 Till I see you I still shall remain, 
 Addto, mio caro Yours only 
 
 Yours ever, 
 
 AMELIA JANE. 
 
 P.S. You may buy me a dress like Selina's, 
 
 Her complexion's so much like my own ; 
 And don't fail to call at Farina's 
 
 For a case of his Eau de Cologne ; 
 And whate'er your next letter announces, 
 
 Let it also intelligence bring, 
 If the French have left off the deep flounces, 
 
 And what will be worn for the Spring ! 
 
 The hit, too, at the fashionable mania which raged amongst 
 the young swells of that day of driving stage-coaches (" The 
 Modem Phaeton "), with its classical allusions, is full of wit, as, at 
 a later day, was the rhyming description of a geological walk with
 
 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 Dr. Mantell. The lines he addressed to the young lady referred 
 to as his occasional musical instructress, on her marriage day, have 
 a tender grace in them that will justify quotation : 
 
 TO MARIANNE FLEET, 
 ON HER MARRIAGE,* MARCH 25, 1837. 
 
 And thou shalt be a bride to-day, thou young, and good, and fair, 
 And the ring is waiting for thy hand, the wreath is in thy hair ; 
 The young, the gay, the glad, are met to hail the joyous scene, 
 And thy bridesmaids wait upon thy steps, like fairies round their queen. 
 
 Thy young life hath been only past in love, and joy, and bliss ; 
 Thou but hast known a mother's care, a sister's love and Ids? ; 
 But thou shalt seek another now, shalt bear another's name, 
 And the love that we alone have shared, another now may claim ! 
 
 For thou, fair girl, art like the bird that left her ark of rest, 
 
 To seek a dwelling-place on earth, and build herself a nest ; 
 
 So thou hast left thy happy home, in other spheres to soar, 
 
 And, like the dove the Patriarch sent, shalt seek thine ark no more. 
 
 And sad our task will be, and long, thy mem'ry to retrace ; 
 To see, in fancy see, thy form, and view thy vacant place ; 
 To dwell with grief on every charm that bade us once rejoice, 
 And miss the magic of thy smile, the music of thy voice. 
 
 One thought the while shall cheer our woes and soothe our grief to rest : 
 It is the thought, where'er thou art, that thou must still be blest ; 
 For howsoe'er thy lot be cast, wherever thou mayst be, 
 All gentlest hopes and kindest loves must live and die with thee ! 
 
 And when before the sacred shrine thou standest shortly now, 
 To pledge thy faith to God and man, and breathe the life-long vow, 
 Our warmest loves, our fondest thoughts, shall all be with thee there, 
 And meet and mingle in the sky in blessing and in prayer ! 
 
 * With her cousin, William Hayley Mason, a godson of Hayley, the Poet
 
 SELF-EDUCATED SUSSEX MEN. 143 
 
 But hark ! they call thy lover waits no more must we delay, 
 We fain would hold thee ever thus, yet dare not bid thee stay ; 
 These streaming eyes, these breaking hearts, the pain of parting tell, 
 And these faint sobs are meant to say, but cannot speak, farewell 1 
 
 The following graceful lines illustrate the union in George 
 Richardson of tastes usually so opposed as the poetic and the 
 scientific : 
 
 THE NAUTILUS AND THE AMMONITE. 
 
 The Nautilus and the Ammonite 
 
 Were launch'd in storm and strife, 
 Each sent to float, in its tiny boat, 
 
 On the wide wild sea of life. 
 
 And each could swim on the Ocean's brim, 
 
 And anon its sails could furl, 
 And sink to sleep, in the great sea-deep, 
 
 In a palace all of pearl. 
 
 And their's was bliss more fair than this 
 
 That we feel in our colder clime, 
 For they were rife in tropic life, 
 
 In a brighter, happier clime. 
 
 They swam mid isles whose summer smiles 
 
 No wintry winds annoy, 
 Whose groves were palm, whose air was balm, 
 
 Where life was only joy. 
 
 They roamed all day, through creek and bay, 
 
 And traversed the ocean deep, 
 And at night they sank, on a coral bank, 
 
 In its fairy bowers to sleep. 
 
 And the monsters vast, of ages past, 
 
 They beheld in their ocean caves, 
 And saw them ride, in their power and pride, 
 
 And sink in their billowy graves.
 
 144 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 Thus hand in hand, from strand to strand, 
 
 They sailed in mirth and glee, 
 Those fancy shells, with their crystal cells, 
 
 Twin creatures of the sea. 
 
 But they came at last to a sea long past, 
 
 And, as they reached its shore, 
 The Almighty's breath spake out in death, 
 
 And the Ammonite lived no more. 
 
 And the Nautilus now, in its shelly prow, 
 
 As o'er the deep it strays, 
 Still seems to seek, in bay and creek, 
 
 Its companion of former days. 
 
 And thus do we, on life's stormy sea, 
 
 As we roam from shore to shore, 
 While tempest-toss'd, seek the loved the lost, 
 
 But to find them on earth no more ! 
 
 This and many more of his poetical effusions found a place 
 in the best periodicals of the day, and were also published in a 
 volume that is to be found in the Public Library of his native town. 
 
 But in the case of George Richardson, as in so many others, 
 the truth of the saying was exemplified, that " a prophet is not 
 honoured in his own country." George Richardson got little 
 honour in Brighton, and less profit. His habits, indeed, were not 
 formed for business. His spirit revolted against the selling of silks 
 and satins behind a counter. I do not think he could always have 
 been very pleasant to his customers. On one occasion, I know, 
 he was not. A lady whom he was serving made an uncom- 
 plimentary remark upon his face or figure in French or German 
 ignorant of the Admirable Crichton who was rolling out the 
 goods ; and Richardson, in his pride or vexation, replied to her in 
 the same language, and, doubtless, with a much purer accent, and 
 in much better grammar. Of course, that lady, the next time 
 she wanted a dress, went for her silks or satins to Mills's or 
 Hannington's ! He was very absent, too had fits of abstraction, 
 in which he did strange things and became the butt of practical
 
 SELF-EDUCATED SUSSEX MEN. 145 
 
 jokers, so that it was not to be wondered at that the business left 
 him which he was so desirous to get rid of. He did not, indeed, 
 get into his right place until comparatively late in life, when Dr. 
 Mantell opened his Geological Museum at Brighton ; and then 
 there was no man so fit to explain and preside over its treasures 
 as George Richardson, the ex-draper, the linguist, the lecturer, the 
 writer of verse and prose of touching lines and witty jeux 
 (F esprit, the reporter and journalist, the amateur actor and la-, 
 borious student of music and dancing ! Yes, this self-educated 
 man, having carried his powers into all these and other lines, 
 amongst them, conversation and mimicry, found himself at last 
 a worshipper in the Temple of Science, and a more devoted one 
 never entered it. For the first time his powers were concentrated, 
 he had a fixed and sole aim and object, and his wonderful 
 memory and organ of acquisitiveness came into full play. In a 
 short time he had so mastered the facts and theories of geology 
 and the kindred science of crystallography that he was able not 
 only to edit in point of fact, to write the latest work of Dr. 
 Mantell, founded on the Lectures which that talented man de- 
 livered in Brighton, and which, being delivered extempore, were 
 reported by Richardson, but to write a work on the subject which 
 has since become a text-book of geology. So thoroughly, too, 
 did he master the contents of the Mantellian Museum that, when 
 it was bought by the State and transferred to the British Museum, 
 it was necessary to take its Curator with it, and he became a Sub- 
 Curator of the national institution. There he was in his element, 
 and was appreciated at his value by the savans, native and foreign, 
 who resorted to the geological department of the Museum, and 
 with the latter of whom, whether French, German, Italian, or 
 Spanish, he was able to hold converse in their own tongues. He 
 was on the way to higher things when his career was suddenly 
 brought to a calamitous close. I have said that in business 
 matters he was never an adept, trusting to others and neglectful 
 himself. He now had to pay the bitter penalty of this indifference 
 to common things to pounds, shillings, and pence. He had 
 put confidence in a friend, who, at a moment of need, betrayed 
 
 L
 
 *4 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 him went off with a sum of money which poor Richardson 
 depended on to meet an engagement, and, in the despair of the 
 moment, he put an end to his existence. It was a melancholy 
 termination of a career which was to be admired in many respects, 
 especially in the love of knowledge, of literature and science and 
 Art indeed, of all that was intellectual it displayed, and in the 
 indomitable will with which the avenues to this knowledge were 
 stormed and captured by a man who had nothing but his own 
 resources to depend on who, in the many accomplishments that 
 he possessed, had had no instructor but himself. If at any time 
 the history of the Worthies of Brighton should be written, the 
 name of George Frederick Richardson, linguist, author, poet, 
 and man of science, ought not to be omitted. 
 
 In many respects Samuel Simes, though equally a self- 
 educated man perhaps more so than George Richardson, for 
 Simes was, I believe, originally only a journeyman tailor, and 
 Richardson was a master-draper and had some advantages in the 
 acquisition of knowledge which Simes had not, was the opposite 
 of his contemporary. He, too, was literary in his tastes ; but his 
 tastes lay towards politics and theology, for neither of which had 
 Richardson any inclination. Simes was, in fact, a "free-lance " 
 a Switzer of the Brighton Press. He was, in his heart, I believe, a 
 Radical, if not a democrat ; but he began by writing for a Tory 
 journal, the Brighton Gazette ; he then passed on to a Whig or 
 Liberal one, the Brighton Herald ; and he ended by editing a 
 Radical one, the Brighton Patriot. When he died he was on the 
 staff of the Brighton Examiner. But the prime of his intellect 
 was certainly given to the Brighton Herald, It was not limited to 
 politics, in which he was, of course, curbed in his extreme opinions 
 by the traditions of the journal, but took in a wide range of 
 literature imaginative, historical, musical, and theological. He 
 was an inordinate reader, and his memory was a tenacious one, so 
 that he could write and talk (and talk well, too) on nearly all 
 subjects. And, like Dr. Johnson, he talked perhaps wrote too 
 often for victory's sake, and not from conviction. I almost doubt 
 if he had any settled convictions ! He had had no grounding in
 
 SELF-EDUCATED SUSSEX MEN. 147 
 
 knowledge had picked it up in snatches here and there, as birds 
 do their food, and so it lay all higgledy-piggledy in his head, being 
 handy for use in irregular guerilla warfare, such as is often carried 
 on in newspapers ; very formidable to the uneducated opponents 
 whom he met in the " Free and Easies " where he reigned, a 
 " Triton among the minnows " ; oftentimes, too, very surprising 
 and embarrassing to men more highly and regularly educated than 
 himself, but whose reading had not been so wide, and whose intellect 
 was not so robust as Simes's. But still he was imperfectly educated, 
 and never, like Richardson, found the corner-stone on which he 
 could build up the multifarious materials he had collected into one 
 harmonious whole. For, of that gift of studying and acquiring 
 languages which was Richardson's forte in early life, Simes had not 
 a particle. He knew no language but English, and though he 
 wrote that in a nervous, racy, fluent style, yet even there he occa- 
 sionally tripped. He wanted some one to revise his " copy," 
 thrown off as it was at a white heat. Nor was he a poet, though 
 he could rhyme, and some of his political squibs, in verse, were 
 excessively happy. 
 
 But it was in prose strong, sterling English prose which 
 those who run could read, that Samuel Simes shone. He had read 
 Cobbett's political works, his " Register," " Peter Porcupine," 
 &c., and studied Cobbett's grammar, as a young man ; and they 
 had not been thrown away on him. He had much imagination, 
 too, though not of a high class, and he had a keen sense of humour. 
 Some of his reports of meetings were masterly. He did not use 
 shorthand, nobody did in that day, and reports were often the 
 better for it, having more of the reporter and less of the speaker 
 in them to the great improvement of the speeches and not to the 
 loss of the reader. 
 
 But Simes was not merely a litterateur. He had other and 
 refined tastes. He was an enthusiastic lover of music ; and here 
 he had the advantage of Richardson. (It is curious how the two 
 men differed !) Whilst the latter laboured in vain over "La ci 
 darem," and murdered " Nott' e giorno " in particular, and the 
 music of Mozart in general, Simes, with a rich mellow voice, could
 
 148 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 take a part in all the glees, madrigals, and part-songs which are the 
 glory of our English School. He understood, too, something of 
 thorough bass, and could put together a few bars of music. He 
 threw himself into the Mainzer movement, and a work of his (taken 
 from the columns of the Brighton Hwald}, on the management of 
 the voice, had a considerable sale. Then he was a good fencer, at 
 a time when fencing was a rare accomplishment ; could swim 
 I don't know how far (not quite over the Channel certainly !), 
 did something with the gloves, and was generally an adept 
 in athletics, and physically, as well as intellectually, a 
 fine specimen of an Englishman. His face, and here, too, he 
 had the superiority over his contemporary, was a very handsome 
 one, with a strong resemblance to that of the first Napoleon in 
 his later years : of classical mould and clearly cut, with curved 
 mouth, straight nose, and well-rounded brow. He was surely 
 intended by Nature for greater things than he ever accomplished. 
 Had Fortune been kinder to him could he have concentrated 
 his powers, he might have left something behind him that the 
 world " would not willingly let die," or, with his robust intellect,. 
 he might have sat on the Judicial Bench or been another War- 
 burton in theology. But the common wants of life the bread and 
 cheese necessities always pressed too closely on him. He could 
 not wait for his powers to ripen : he wrote to demand ; the 
 Printer's devil was ever at his elbow. " It is a work," he once 
 said to the writer of these reminiscences, " which pulverises the 
 brain." It exhausted his, and brought him to the grave before 
 his time, with nothing to mark his long and, in many respects, 
 able day's work, except what the columns of a local newspaper 
 contain. And yet I doubt if there be a man in Brighton, or 
 many in all England, at the present moment, Avho can compare 
 with Samuel Simes in the vigour and variety of his genius ; in the 
 ability to sit down, as he would sit down, at a moment's notice 
 and dash off, ready for the printer, a stirring political leader, or an 
 amusing essay, or a pungent report, or a cutting squib, or a clever 
 musical or dramatic criticism. What, indeed, could he not do ?
 
 SELF-EDUCATED SUSSEX MEN. 149 
 
 All that a newspaper man was called on to do 50 years ago for 
 a local journal he could do ; and that was every thing. 
 
 I will end by repeating what I said in starting : By and bye 
 there will not be an uneducated man in England ; fools, faineants, 
 dull men, and all, will be " coached up " to the educational 
 standard. And then, perhaps, the self-educated man will be 
 missed, and even perhaps called for, though, so far as he himself 
 is concerned, I do not think it is to be regretted that he will not 
 answer to his name.
 
 THE LAST OF THE SUSSEX M.C.'S. 
 
 " '"THE Last of the Romans " " The Last of the Mohicans" 
 " The Last of the Barons " we have all read of these 
 famous ultimate personages. And why, too, should not " The 
 Last of the M.C.'s " be enshrined in the mirror of the Past 
 and handed down to the wonder and admiration of succeeding 
 ages? 
 
 But we must be quick, or the fleeting image will escape us. 
 There is so little of the solid, of the real and substantial in it, 
 that, as we write, we hardly know whether we are dealing with a 
 substance or with a shadow a thing that lived and breathed and 
 had a being, or an automaton answering to the pull of a string, 
 and set in motion by a wire. 
 
 Let us try and fix our memories. Yes ; Lieut. -Col. Eld, the 
 last of the M.C.'s of Brighton, was a substantial being, and not 
 merely vox et prceterea nihil. He really did live and breathe and 
 have a being, though his virtual existence the period during 
 which he shone as a visible and luminous body above the horizon 
 - was limited to a very small period of time, namely, that which 
 extended from the first of the M.C.'s balls for the Brighton season 
 to the last of those memorable re-unions. For these two or three 
 months Lieut.-Colonel Eld c.arne out of his chrysalis, wherever 
 that might be, and sported a butterfly existence. He was the 
 curious centre of a curious circle a fast dwindling one even then, 
 and now totally extinct, of old maids, and dowager aunts, and 
 antique belles, all marriageable and all unmarried, who flew and 
 buzzed and droned round the last of the M.C.'s, as ghosts of 
 moths may be supposed to buzz round the ghost of a candle 
 For wings they had none to bunl they had been burnt off years 
 ago ; and there was no flame to burn them ! Yet to them he was 
 still a luminary, because all other luminaries had gone out. He
 
 THE LAST OF THE SUSSEX M.C/S. 15 1 
 
 was a relic -of that Past to which they, too, belonged ; and he 
 still kept a hold, feeble as it was, on the Present, to which they 
 clung with a despairing grasp. For nobody could gainsay his 
 title to his position. He was M.C. He held it by right of 
 descent from a line of M.C.'s dating back to Heaven knows what 
 point of History or Tradition ; and he carried his title in his look, 
 his face, his figure, his every movement ! How recall these, 
 except to the memory of those who have beheld them with their 
 eyes? 
 
 Only to such as have gazed on the bodily presence of 
 Lieut.-Colonel Eld, the last M.C. of Brighton, who have seen 
 him walk down North Street or up the Marine Parade, or down 
 the Marine Parade and up North Street, would we venture to 
 limn that tall and erect and Quixotic-looking figure, that 
 body poised so exactly upon those parallel legs, which 
 kept such perfect time upon the Brighton pavement ! If Archi- 
 medes could have made a man, amongst his other marvellous 
 machines, it would have been such a man as our last M.C. It 
 would have so looked so moved so stood still ; its head would 
 have been so held, in a perfect geometrical line, upon its shoulders; 
 its arms would have so swung, and oh ! perfection of Art, its toes 
 would so have pointed, at the only correct angles for toes, right 
 and left ! For, as every man has his strong as well as his weak 
 points as the strength of Samson lay in his hair, and the 
 vulnerability of Achilles in his heel, here in his toes lay the 
 strength of Colonel Eld. Here was the essence of the man. His 
 soul, if he had one, lay, not, as some philosophers aver, in the //a 
 mater, nor the heart, nor the pit of the stomach, but in the extremity 
 of that member of the body which determines, in the last 
 degree, the most important points in the life of a human being, 
 namely, in which direction he shall go, or to what altitude he shall 
 elevate himself. We mean the toe the big toe. Other men 
 ignore this great fact, and, consequently, it matters little which way 
 they do go, or whether they go or don't go at all. But in our 
 iiltimiis Arbiter Elegantiarum it was the all-in-all the real starting- 
 point in life the surnmum bonum the to kalon !
 
 152 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 But to proceed with our portrait. As Lieut.-Colonel Eld 
 stalked into your sphere of vision there was a something a je ne 
 sais quoi that struck the imagination at once, and proclaimed to 
 you, " Here is a character a curiosity a being that stands by 
 itself, is a law and an example to itself, and is either the first or 
 the last of its kind." It was a puzzle. And you searched in vain 
 for the key to it until, from resting on that calm, imperturbable 
 visage, that towered in tne sky, and seemed to seek its natural 
 aliment in the air thin air your eyes descended, by the waning 
 medium of his attenuated waist, and the long spindleshanks of 
 legs, to the sharply projected toes. And then you breathed again. 
 Eureka ! The problem was solved. Aiit Erasmus aitt diabolus. It 
 was either the M.C. or a dancing-master ; and as dancing-masters 
 do not, as a rule, perform their pas seuls in the open air, why then 
 it was the M.C. of Brighton, and nothing more nor less ! 
 
 Let it not be thought that we are gasconading, or going 
 beyond the fair limits of our subject. To show that we are not, 
 we will call into Court a witness, whose evidence on such a point 
 would be accepted by any Court in the world. Let Sydney Smith, 
 the witty Canon of St. Paul's, " come into Court," and speak " the 
 truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth," concerning the 
 party in this cause. 
 
 " ' I never was in Brighton ' (we quote from the Journal of 
 Julian Charles Young), 'till today; but, nevertheless, I have 
 made acquaintance with a great local power,' said he of St. Paul's. 
 ' Who may that be ?' asked Anderson. ' Who he is I know not ; 
 but I am certain what he is. It is that distinguished functionary, 
 the Master of the Ceremonies. It could be no one else. It was 
 a gentleman attired point device, walking down the parade like 
 Agag, ' delicately.' He pointed out his toes like a dancing-master, 
 but carried his head like a potentate. As he passed the stand of 
 flies he nodded approval, as if he owned them all. As he 
 approached the little goat-carriages, he looked askance over the 
 edge of his starched neckcloth and blandly smiled encouragement. 
 Sure that in following him I was treading in the steps of greatness, 
 I went on to the Pier, and there I was confirmed in my conviction
 
 THE LAST OF THE SUSSEX M.C. S. 153 
 
 of his eminence ; for I observed him look first over the right side 
 and then over the left, with an expression of serene satisfaction 
 spreading over his countenance, which said, as plainly as if he had 
 spoken to the sea aloud, ' That is right. You are low-tide at 
 present ; but never mind, in a couple of hours I shall make you 
 high-tide again.' " 
 
 If the whole order of M.C.'s, from Petronius downwards, had 
 been called on to choose a man in whom, as the last of the race, 
 their characteristics should be summed up and most visibly shine 
 forth, they could not have made a better selection than in Lieut- 
 Colonel Eld. There was the stamp of office in his look and 
 carriage an imposing air, " as one having authority," that asserted 
 his right to respect, and, in spite of the eccentricity of his manners, 
 daunted the profanum vulgus and ensured him from insult. He 
 carried, indeed, a good stout stick (it was the only stout thing 
 about him !), and it was said that he was skilled in the art of using 
 it. But it was not to that stick that he owed his perfect immunity 
 from anything like impertinence. No ! It lay deeper than that. 
 It was his perfect adaptation to the part he was playing the 
 harmony that existed between the man and the office. It is 
 incongruity a falling short of the true standard whether that 
 standard be high or low a hangman's or a king's that provokes 
 contempt and excites the laughter of " little vulgar boys." If a 
 man play his part, whatever it be, with due regard to the degree 
 and nature of that part, he is recognised as a real thing, and 
 allowed to go by unquestioned and unassailed. Now, this was 
 the case with Lieut.-Col. Eld. The man was made for the office. 
 His body was cast in the M.C. mould, and he had a soul to 
 match. So high, and no higher. You can but fill a vessel, and 
 when Lieut. -Col. Eld was elected to the office of M.C. for 
 Brighton he was filled, and he held all the liquor that there was 
 to pour into him, or that he could hold. The whole world 
 recognised it. How he existed previous to that moment, who 
 can say ? We are sometimes inclined to doubt if he did exist at 
 all previous to it if the occasion did not give him birth so 
 that, when the moment came, he walked forth, like Minerva from
 
 154 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 the brain of Jupiter, a complete and immaculate M.C. Who ever 
 saw him under any other aspect? in any other relationship? 
 He had no wife no sister, brother, cousins, aunt, or uncle no 
 relatives no friends no acquaintances only his M.C. sur- 
 roundings of spinsters, and widows, and " maids forlorn," and 
 they only came forth on the occasion of his balls, to flit round 
 him for a weary night or two, make their offerings (the price of a 
 ball-ticket), and then fade away into the regions of single 
 unblessedness. 
 
 They were ghostly assemblages, those M.C. balls. They 
 began in nothing, except the announcement in the local 
 papers that " such things would be ; " they brought nothing to 
 nothing they ended in nothing. Did a single ray of love illumine 
 them ? Impossible. Did Hymen ever crown them ? Incredible. 
 Hope itself must have withered in such an atmosphere. There 
 were but two elements in them : the M.C. element and the 
 husband-hunting element ; and the necessary link was missing I 
 But they were the Avatars of the M.C. of Brighton the 
 occasions on which he made himself palpable to the 
 senses of his followers, and was a Being. Did any one 
 ever see his name except when appended to the yearly 
 advertisements in the local papers which announced to the 
 Brighton world the fact of the recurring M.C.'s ball ? Did any- 
 one ever hear of his doing, saying, suffering anything except as 
 M.C. ? Did he ever change in his " outward man ? " We never 
 , noted it. Did he ever laugh, cry, joke, rage do anything but 
 walk ? One would think that it lay in his office to dance ; but he 
 did not. He was the medium by which other people danced, flirted, 
 fell in love, married or tried to do so and repented. But none 
 of these things did he do himself. Was he ever merry, angry, 
 sorry, glad, depressed, exalted ? We doubt it. He was above, or 
 beneath, " those natural shocks " that flesh is heir to. He wrote 
 on his door, and on his cards, " M.C.," and they passed him by, 
 as exempt from them by virtue of his office. Was he ever ill ? 
 He must have died, or we should still rejoice in an M.C. But, to 
 ensure ourselves from error on this point, we would prefer to say
 
 THE LAST OF THE SUSSEX M.C/S. 155 
 
 that he ceased to exist that he disappeared that with him closed 
 the dynasty of the Brighton M.C.'s. If he did die, only such a 
 pen as that which described the last moments of the Knight of La 
 Mancha could do justice to the scene. But as we have no credible 
 record of his coming in, neither have we any trustworthy report 
 of his going out. Like Arthur, that flos regum, our flower of 
 M.C.'s may be only hiding his pedal extremities in some Vale of 
 Avilion behind the faded curtains of a deserted ball-room until 
 the propitious moment returns when the glories of the olden times 
 shall be revived. Until then spinsters may wail and widows lament : 
 ladies of a certain age and uncertain position may look round 
 with despairing eyes for " help meet for them," and even younger 
 ones may learn the fatuity of balls without partners and take to 
 Rinks ! For they have lost their last, best, truest friend, who 
 for " a consideration," would run down their game and bring to 
 their arms a partner. Lieut.-Col. Eld, M.C., walks on earth no 
 more, and Brighton has seen " The last of the M.C.'s."
 
 '5* 
 
 THE LAST OF HIS KIND. 
 
 A CCORDING to physiologists, the sense for which there is no 
 need no field of exercise soon grows feeble, and eventu- 
 ally dies out. There is an analogy to this in society. Classes 
 which have lost their uses die out and disappear. Even within 
 my limited experience, I can recall individuals belonging to a class, 
 formerly, I have no doubt, a numerous one, but which has 
 entirely disappeared in this part of the world, as much as the 
 great bustards on our Downs. They have not been destroyed 
 like these ; but they have ceased to exist because there is no 
 longer a place or a demand for them. 
 
 I do not know but that the last representatives of these 
 extinct social classes are as much to be pitied as the last Red Man 
 or Black Man of America or Australia perhaps more, for their 
 susceptibilities, as belonging to a higher and more cultivated race, 
 must be keener ; and their fate is quite as inevitable : there is no 
 escaping from it. They must die out and leave no trace behind 
 them, or only such a trace as survives in the memory of some old 
 friend or acquaintance. 
 
 To such a doomed, and now, I believe, extinct class, did 
 Edmund Osmond belong. It would be impossible to find a 
 substitute for him in the present day ; and yet he had no place 
 no defined, fixed place in society. He could fill up an immense 
 number of little gaps in the social life of his day, but could supply 
 no positive social want ; and so Society gradually found that it 
 could do without him, and did do without him, and he pined and 
 withered away like a disused faculty. 
 
 And yet there are few men at the present day who can do 
 all the things that Osmond did. He belonged to an age, or, 
 rather, he ought to have belonged to an age, for when he was 
 born it had gone by, in which the division of labour had not 
 become a law of society in which it was not a necessity of
 
 THE LAST OF HIS KIND. 157 
 
 existence that a man should be proficient in at least one thing 
 useful or amusing, as the case may be, to his neighbours no 
 matter how simple or humble or even how humiliating. Osmond 
 was one of the most handy men in the world, but it was in a way 
 that was not positively wanted. He could draw and paint he 
 could handle the plane and the saw, the axe and the hammer ; he 
 could fish and shoot and skate ; he could put a horse into a gig 
 and drive it when it was in, or groom it when it was out ; he could 
 dance and take a part in a glee even play a little on the flute ; 
 was a first-rate ally of mothers in getting up a pic-nic, and could 
 do a little flirting with the daughters, when the mothers were away, 
 or nobody better was at hand. If a gala was to be planned or an 
 anniversary to be celebrated, or honour done or pleasure given to 
 somebody Osmond was sure to be called in. He could " put his 
 hand to any thing," and was ever willing to do so ; and when all 
 was over, there was no unpleasant reminder of his work in the 
 shape of a bill ! It was all done for the love and pleasure of the 
 thing. 
 
 It is quite certain that there was a day in England when such 
 a man as Osmond was a valuable member of society, and there 
 are still, doubtless, societies in which his various gifts would come 
 into play. He would have been able to " shift for himself" in a 
 new country, or in a half-civilised country, much better than men 
 more highly trained and developed, but only on one side. He 
 would also have been invaluable as an appendage to a great family 
 who could have afforded to support such a man let him be 
 called the Master of the Revels, or Jester, or what you 
 will with nothing particular to do no particular depart- 
 ment to overlook, but ready for anything or for nothing, 
 as the occasion demanded, or didn't demand. But times 
 are altered, and men of this kind are not needed now, even 
 in " great houses," in which every officer has his function 
 sharply mapped out in the household, or in the office, or in 
 the field. Only the Head of the family, and not always 
 he, is allowed to give a broad look-out over the expanse of 
 life, and say whether he will work or play walk or ride or drive
 
 158 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 do much or little or nothing, and in what style he likes. Few 
 Heads of houses, perhaps, can do this now, they are tethered 
 down too strictly to their duties. And so they have no need of 
 anybody else to assist them in doing well, I suppose I must say, 
 in doing nothing ! 
 
 The world into which poor Osmond was born " an age too 
 late " persisted in regarding all that he did, much and various as 
 it was, as nothing, or next to nothing counting as nothing, and 
 worth nothing in exchange for it. He was always active ; and yet 
 he had the reputation of being an idle man. He was always in 
 request ; and yet he was never wanted in the way in which 
 now-a-days men expect to be wanted "for a consideration." 
 He had plenty of services to give away, and was ready to give 
 them, and people accepted them ; but he had nothing to sell, or 
 exchange, which people cared to pay or barter for. If they wanted 
 to play, or to do anything that was unprofitable, Osmond was the 
 first man to rise up in their thoughts. He had a profession the 
 shadow of a profession ; but it never seemed to stand in his way, 
 and so his friends never thought of it as an obstacle when they 
 wanted him ; and he seemed to think still less of it when he was 
 wanted. He was deemed to be a kind of social fotsam and jetsam, 
 carried by the tide of life here and there, and which any man or 
 woman could pick up and turn to their use without cost to them- 
 selves. He was a " gentleman at large," without a groove to run 
 in, but with a certain capacity for moving freely in every direction, 
 as the wind listed or the fancy took him or his friends. He could 
 not " settle down " ; it was not in him. He was like a child in 
 this respect, but, unlike a child, he could not be taught and he did 
 not grow older. In face and form he might age ; but his nature 
 remained the same youthful, volatile, anti-utilitarian. As 
 different generations sprang up, they seemed to take him up, use 
 him in their joy and flush of youth, and then leave him where 
 they had found him. They went on to work, in thought or action 
 to make money, perhaps achieve fame. He remained behind 
 in the play-ground which they had left a boy-man. I never met 
 with any of his friends, whatever difference there might be in
 
 THE LAST OF HIS KIND. 159 
 
 their years, whose memories did not recall him in the self-same 
 light and form as the best of play-fellows the quickest to turn 
 his hand to all unprofitable kinds of labour. Who could organise 
 a gipsy-party like Osmond ? Who could " get up " a cricket- 
 match or a boating-party, or an angling or shooting excursion like 
 him ? Who could paint transparencies for general illuminations 
 (it was then the day of general illuminations), or design pretty 
 devices for coloured lamps, or light them when they were up, 
 or turn carpenter, or blacksmith, or groom, or anything else, fi for 
 the nonce," if he were required to do so ? His presence was the 
 signal that people were enjoying, or going to enjoy, themselves 
 that they were taking a holiday a " red letter day " for them- 
 selves in life's almanac, to which, in all probability, they would 
 look back in future years with a certain melancholy pleasure. 
 " Ah, yes, I remember him well. How we did enjoy ourselves 
 that day. What fun we had ! Poor Osmond (people got to call 
 him so after a time), poor Osmond was there. What a famous 
 fellow for a party ! how handy he was ! how clever, how good- 
 tempered ! how ready to help everybody and do everything ; 
 What's become of him ?" 
 
 And then, without waiting for a reply, with a half-smile, half- 
 sigh, they put themselves into their groove again, and " niove 
 on " in the great daily journey of life. 
 
 What to them had been a halt in life a puil-up a jaunt a 
 stroll was to Osmond life itself. It was a series of halts and 
 jaunts and strolls. He had no power of continuous work. 
 Light loads for the hour or the day he delighted to carry, 
 especially when they had to be taken to some pleasant 
 spot, where happy, merry faces were to meet him. But 
 for the heavy loads of life, such as men take up now, his 
 shoulders were quite unfitted. Life had no terrors scarcely 
 responsibilities for him ; he did not know them or seek to 
 anticipate them as we do. We combat the Future as a deadly 
 foe, and throw the Present to it as a bribe for its favors : because 
 we know it has no mercy for those who do not so propitiate it 
 To him it ever seemed to wear the face of a friend. Certainly he
 
 160 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 did not tax it heavily not, at least, at first. A batchelor, with no 
 encumbrances and a small independence besides what his profession 
 brought him in, perhaps he had no occasion to " look a-head." 
 He certainly did not do so, until it was too late until he was 
 amongst the breakers. He had been all his life up to middle- 
 age ; like a child playing on the edge of a precipice. He might 
 have gone on until the end, and never known his danger 
 never known that he was a man born out of date a remnant 
 of a by-gone class that ought to be and must be extinguished 
 a doomed man, as much as the Mohican or the Iroquois 
 of the New World ; lacking as he did the power to 
 keep up with the pace of the day. He might have so escaped, 
 as, perhaps, many another doomed man or animal has done for a 
 time, by a lucky chance. But it did not so fall out. In middle 
 age, Osmond's foot slipped, and he fell into matrimony. It was 
 like a great bustard coming from some remote spot, where there 
 was just a chance of its escaping the fowler, into the vicinity of a 
 town, or, better, like some old whip driving a stage-coach on to a 
 railway, and thinking to escape being run down. From out of his 
 little bye-way of butterfly life, Osmond came into the eager and 
 crowded highway of life, thinking to make his way like other men. 
 Had they not wives and children, and why not he ? Why not, 
 indeed ? There were thousands and hundreds of thousands of 
 men, his inferiors in many things, who " got on," and lived, they 
 and theirs, after a fashion. The only difference was, that they 
 belonged to the age in which they lived, had a place in the 
 " great scheme," higher or lower, perhaps very low and very un- 
 pleasant, but still a place, which they could hold against the world, 
 and which the world could not or did not wish to deprive them of, 
 for it was of use to it. He did and could not make such a place, 
 not for one for himself much less for two or three, dependent on 
 him. He should, so an old naturalist friend of his comically put 
 it, have done what the insects did which he somewhat resembled 
 in his light-hearted, erratic, day-for-day kind of life : he should 
 have spun a cocoon, beneath a pleasant shady tree, and gone 
 to sleep, to wake up again in a brighter world than this old
 
 THE LAST OF HIS KIND. l6l 
 
 working-day one of cur's has become. As to doing as 
 other men did taking unto himself a wife hoping to 
 continue such a race as his to take his place in the ranks 
 of daily plodders, and to provide for the growing wants of 
 the morrow, it was absurd to think of such a thing. Osmond had 
 never known what to-morrow was in its true sense in its beef- 
 and-mutton aspect only in its promise of fruit and flowers, play 
 and pleasure. The responsibilities of the future had never been 
 realities to him only to this extent : would the wind be in the 
 right quarter for the trout to rise ? or would the sky be cloudy 
 enough for the harriers to run ? or would the ice bear on Falmer 
 Pond ? or would the snow prevent his going to Mrs. Such-an-one's 
 ball ? These were the contingencies which chequered Osmond's 
 future which made it bright or gloomy gay or sad. It was the 
 simple unreflecting life of a primitive age and race, drawing all its 
 joys and griefs from the surface. Of the complex, artificial life 
 that makes up Society of the tpth century of its numerous 
 demands and necessities its checks and safeguards its provisions 
 and sacrifices, he knew little or nothing. He had never cared 
 much for himself his wants had been few and inexpensive. He 
 would do anything to give pleasure to others, and there he had 
 not been unsuccessful. But to take up that position in Society 
 which Society expects a man to take when he marries and has 
 children to be the head of a family the master of a household 
 to have such things as servants, tradesmen, landlord, bills, rent, 
 tax-papers, and all the multitudinous appendages of a man who 
 " settles down " in a respectable sphere of life, all this to 
 Osmond was as strange as knives and forks, bolsters and pillows 
 would be to a Cherokee or a Pawnee, fresh from his forest or 
 prairie ! He had left all these things during his holiday life to 
 his poor old mother (of course, he had been petted and spoilt by 
 her), and she was gone. His wife well, his wife was as in- 
 experienced as himself and had to learn everything. Before she 
 could do so the lesson was useless : the children's doll-house, it 
 was nothing more, was broken up the last holiday of Osmond 
 was over. He did not die : it would have been better had he
 
 1 62 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 done so : he went about the world some time longer, with a be- 
 wildered, dazed look, as if he had just woke up, or scarcely woke 
 up, out of a sleep and was trying to remember the dream he had 
 dreamt. Had he been dreaming all his life ? And was this the 
 waking up? He, who had always been so trim in his attire of so 
 smiling an aspect so cheery in speech whose thoughts, if not 
 deep, were so fresh and sweet with the freshness and sweetness of 
 the fields and the sky and the water he now became, as at the 
 touch of a wand, a seared and shrivelled figure of dingy aspect, 
 with a timid look that shrank from recognition, and a hesitating 
 speech that only echoed with meaningless repetition the com- 
 monest sounds that fell from the lips of those who accosted him. 
 His life such as it had been had gone out of him. He was 
 now only a shadow of a shadow. Coming from the pleasant 
 bye-ways of life in which he had played, into the crush 
 of the highway, he was at an utter loss what to do. 
 His light wares had been taken readily enough when he gave 
 them, and looked for no return ; but there was no one willing 
 to buy them in the heavy-goods market. Here he was out- 
 bid fore-stalled ridden down by stronger men brow- 
 beaten, roughly-elbowed finally, heart-broken. He must have 
 felt, poor fellow, that he was de trop in the way an impediment 
 and an encumbrance even to those whose pillar and prop he 
 should have been. They left him, or he left them I don't know 
 which. He again reverted to his original state of bachelorship 
 the life of irresponsibility. uselessness, if you will, for which 
 alone he was fit. But it was stript of all its little joys and 
 delights : its ornaments and attractions. The boy-man of a 
 former age had attempted to become the full man of this, and 
 had failed. He, a mere skirmisher on the skirts of life, had 
 sought to enter the ranks of the heavy-armed disciplined army, 
 and had found thai he could not wield its weapons or bear its 
 armour or even keep his place in its serried ranks. So, like the 
 wounded deer (his heart must have been wounded), he sought the 
 old covert and lay down and died. 
 
 The world did not miss him ; and yet he was the last of a
 
 THE LAST OF HIS KIND. 163 
 
 class that made the world more pleasant ; and those who knew 
 him in his early days may in vain look round for a successor to 
 him. At first, perhaps, they do so with a kind of regret for did 
 he not give and take much pleasure ? but, as they recollect his fate, 
 and how inevitable that fate was, they must end with the hope 
 that the world the busy, hard-working, use-exacting world may 
 never know another Osmond that he may be " the last of his 
 kind."
 
 164 
 
 THE SUSSEX REGICIDES AND THEIR 
 CONTEMPORARIES. 
 
 TF we are to judge by the number of Sussex men, or men from 
 Sussex, whose names appear on the High Court of Justice 
 which tried and condemned Charles I. for treason to his people, 
 or even of those whose names are attached to the warrant for his 
 execution, this County took its full share in the guilt or glory of 
 that act. In the Ordinance passed by the House of Commons 
 for the trial of Charles Stewart for a " wicked design totally to 
 subvert the ancient and fundamental laws and liberties of this 
 nation, and in their stead to introduce an arbitrary and tyrannical 
 Government," 131 persons were nominated to sit at Westminster 
 as a High Court of Justice, and of these 131 persons (headed by 
 Fairfax, Cromwell, and Ireton) eleven were Sussex men, some of 
 them members of families which still stand high in the County, 
 Thus we find in the list Peregrine Pelham, Abraham Burrell, Roger 
 Gratwick, Herbert Morley, Anthony Stapley, James Temple, 
 Gregory Norton, John Fagg, William Cawley, William Goffe, and 
 John Downes, all either members of Sussex families or sitting for 
 Sussex Boroughs. The 131 members of the High Court of 
 Justice, as it was called, embraced a large proportion of the then 
 House of Commons itself a remnant of the famous " Long 
 Parliament "with a small infusion of the Upper House, which, 
 as a body, had refused to join in the vote for the trial of the King, 
 and had been then set aside. Of these 131 Commissioners, how- 
 ever, a large number shrank from the odium and the risk of such 
 a daring act, and never took their seats at all. Such a defection 
 was provided for by making twenty members of the Commission 
 sufficient to form a Court ; and the prudence of this step was 
 soon seen. At the first meeting of the Court, in the Painted 
 Chamber, there were only 52 members present ; on the second 
 occasion, when the Court entered upon its functions when the
 
 THE SUSSEX REGICIDES, ETC. 1 65 
 
 King was arraigned before it, and when every Commissioner 
 present rose to his name, there were 65 present. Upon this 
 critical occasion there was a considerable defection in the ranks of 
 the Sussex members ; but six of them, namely, Peregrine Pelham, 
 Gregory Norton, William Goffe, William Cawley, James Temple, 
 and John Downes, answered to their names, and Anthony 
 Stapley and Herbert Morley joined on future occasions. John 
 Fagg rather assisted, we are told, in making preparations for the 
 trial than attending it as a Judge ; and his name does not appear 
 in any of the sittings. 
 
 The highest number that sat on the Court at any time was 
 69. But the number of those who actually signed the warrant for 
 the execution of the King was 59 ; 44 signing their names at once 
 in the Painted Chamber, and 15 afterwards. These 59 were the 
 Regicides ; the men who took on themselves the responsibility of 
 an act which struck Europe with dismay and called forth, perhaps, 
 a greater amount of horror than any deed involving the fate of an 
 individual which stands recorded in the history of this country. 
 
 Amongst these 59 Regicides seven Sussex Members are 
 to be found, namely, Peregrine Pelham, Anthony Stapley, James 
 Temple, Gregory Norton, William Cawley, William Goffe, and 
 John Downes. 
 
 As one of forty Counties, and that by no means the largest 
 in extent or population, Sussex thus bore its full proportion of 
 responsibility for the execution of Charles the First 
 
 Public opinion is still divided as to the justice or iniquity, the 
 wisdom or folly, of the act by which Charles was brought to the 
 block. But few, we take it, will now join in the hue and cry 
 raised against his judges after the Restoration, or approve of the 
 ruthlessness with which they were hunted down and handed over 
 some to the executioner, some to the assassin's knife, and some 
 to perpetual banishment from their native country. As the acts 
 and motives of men are weighed in the impartial balance of 
 history, and the consequences of those acts stand out distinctly in 
 relief, very different judgments are pronounced upon them at 
 different periods. Without any desire, therefore, to include the
 
 l66 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 Sussex Regicides among the Worthies of their County, they may, 
 at least, in the present day, claim to figure among its remarkable 
 men and to have that veil drawn aside beneath which it has been 
 the fashion to conceal them.* 
 
 The Regicides did not belong to the scum of the land. In 
 social position the majority of them were of the landed gentry 
 class. Indeed, as we read the Sussex records of the struggle 
 between King and Parliament, we are surprised to find how large a 
 section of the upper classes took part with the latter, and how many 
 of them even adhered to the fortunes of Cromwell and the 
 Commonwealth. Among those Sussex Members of the Long 
 Parliament who took the Covenant, one of the most decisive 
 acts of resistance to the King, or were in the military or civil 
 service of the Parliament were a Pelham, a Shelley, a Stapley, 
 a. Temple, a Morley, a Parker, an Onslow, a Goodwin, a Selden, a 
 Gratwick, a Middleton, a Courthope, a Fagg, a Gerrard, an Apsley, 
 a Hay, a Baker, a Marlott, a Springett, an Eversfield, a Trevor, a 
 Boord, and a Challoner. These, with others of the same rank, 
 were a fair representation of the gentry and richer burgesses of the 
 County. On the other side were the Gorings, the Lewkners, 
 the Alfords, the Lunsfords, the Coverts, the Bisshopps, the 
 Bowyers, the Culpeppers, the Fords, the Morleys (a different 
 branch from that of Colonel Herbert Morley, of Glynde), the 
 Sackvilles, the Howards, the Ashburnhams, the Carylls, and the 
 Campions. 
 
 As early as 1642 Sussex had sent up a petition praying "for 
 a thorough reform of religion." The middle-classes of the County, 
 now coming to the front, were decidedly with the Parliament ; 
 Rushworth remarking of Sussex, as of other Counties in the south 
 and east of England, that, though many of the chief gentry were 
 for the king, " Yet the freeholders and yeomen being generally 
 on the other side, as oft as they (the chief gentry) attempted to 
 show themselves, they were crushed, and their endeavours de- 
 
 * Not one of the Eegicides finds a place in Lower's "Worthies of Sussex," 
 although Jack Cade stands among them !
 
 THE SUSSEX REGICIDES, ETC. 167 
 
 feated." For " chief gentry " we might, perhaps, more correctly 
 read " nobility " in the above quotation.* The majority of the 
 gentry, as also the great body of yeomanry and townsmen, were 
 with the Parliament. Many, doubtless, like the Pelhams, the 
 Gratwicks, and the Eversfields, fell off from the popular cause as 
 it partook more of a Republican character. But others, like Col. 
 Herbert Morley, Sir John Trevor (who married Hampden's 
 daughter), Herbert Springett, Sir Gregory Norton, Anthony 
 Stapley, and Sir John Fagg, adhered to it to the last, and it is in 
 the ranks of these men thai we must look for those who sat on 
 the High Court of Justice, and, still more, who signed the death- 
 warrant of Charles the First. 
 
 Perhaps the most prominent and active man on the Parlia- 
 mentary side in Sussex was Col. Herbert Morley, ofGlynde, 
 and Member for Lewes and the County of Sussex. Of a good 
 family and large possessions, he was one of the first to accept a 
 Commission from the Parliament and to raise a regiment in Sussex ; 
 he aided Waller in the capture of Arundel and Chichester, and 
 maintained the military supremacy both of the Parliament and of the 
 Commonwealth in Sussex .up to the era of the Restoration. ^ Twice 
 he was nearly performing very memorable deeds. It was his 
 soldiers who stopped and questioned Charles the 2nd when that 
 Prince was on his flight from Worcester to Brighthelmstone, a 
 danger from which the ready wit of the King assisted to deliver 
 him, and Evelyn, his old schoolfellow and his friend to the 
 last, thinks Morley might, with a little more decision, have 
 anticipated the part of Monk in the restoration of Charles II., or 
 spoilt that General's game, if he had been so minded. But, 
 though an honourable and a consistent man, and a steady friend to 
 liberty, probably because he was such, Morley shrank from 
 extreme courses, and thus, though he was appointed one of the 
 High Court of Justice and attended three of its sittings, he did 
 not sign the warrant of execution. It has also been surmised that 
 
 * In the first Royal array there were only two Sussex names : Col. Ashburn- 
 liam and Capt. Ford.
 
 1 68 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 he favoured the escape of Charles II. from his soldiers. So, at 
 the Restoration, he was leniently dealt with, and got off with a 
 fine of ;i,ooo. He died in peaceable possession of his Sussex 
 estates, and lies buried in Glynde Church. 
 
 Abraham Burrell and Roger Gratwick (Member for Hastings) 
 never attended the High Court of Justice at all, though nomi- 
 nated on it, and, therefore, may be concluded to have disapproved 
 of it. 
 
 We now come to the Regicides Proper to those men who 
 did not shrink from putting their hands to that deed which stands 
 out so prominently in the history of England, nay, of Europe 
 and which, they well knew, sealed their fate if the tide of fortune 
 ever turned against their cause. Both the gentry and the burgess 
 class were represented amongst these men. To the former 
 belonged Anthony Stapley and James Temple, Peregrine Pelham 
 and Gregory Norton, and to the latter William Goffe, William 
 Cawley, and John Downes. 
 
 William Cawley has many titles to be placed at the head of 
 the Sussex Regicides, whether they be looked upon with a favour- 
 able or unfavourable eye. He belonged to the burgess class. 
 His father, John Cawley, was a brewer of Chichester, was thrice 
 Mayor, and his monument and effigy are still to be seen in St. 
 Andrew's Church of that City. His son and heir, William 
 Cawley, who was born in 1602 (his father died in 1621) was, there 
 is no doubt, the most popular and influential man of his day in 
 Chichester. He sat both for Midhurst and Chichester in Parlia- 
 ment, and his name appears as taking the Covenant on the same 
 day (June 6, 1633) as his fellow-Sussexian, John Selden, and a 
 still more famous man, Oliver Cromwell. He was appointed by 
 the House as one of the Commissioners " for demolishing 
 superstitious pictures and monuments " in London, and he was 
 selected to return thanks to the Divines who preached before 
 Parliament on August 28, 1644 a fast day " for their pains in 
 their sermons." At a later date he was empowered to pay 
 to "three able preaching Ministers" in Chichester ^100 a year 
 each out of the estates of the Dean and Chapter. In all
 
 THE SUSSEX REGICIDES, ETC 169 
 
 probability he was, like Cromwell, with whom he is said to have 
 been on terms of close friendship, an Independent in religion ; 
 and, when war broke out between , King and Parliament, he, like 
 Cromwell, joined the army and received a Commission, though 
 we hear nothing of him in a military way. But he was active and 
 zealous in other directions. In 1642, when the Royalists of 
 Chichester rose and wrested the City from the newly-appointed 
 Parliamentary Mayor, imprisoning some of the train-band, with an 
 intention to make Chichester the rallying-point of their cause in 
 Sussex, it was Cawley who sent intelligence of their doings to 
 Colonel Morley, then in attendance on Parliament, in London, 
 and this led to the successful expedition into Sussex of Sir William 
 Waller, who, having taken Arundel (the first time) by a coup de 
 main, proceeded to besiege Chichester, and captured the City 
 after a not very vigorous resistance by the Royalists of eight days. 
 The fact was, as Clarendon confesses, the Royal cause was un- 
 popular with " the common people of the County," and, to 
 use his own words, "their (the Royalists) number of com- 
 mon men was so small that the constant duty was performed 
 by the officers and gentlemen of quality, who were absolutely 
 tired out." From this moment up to the Restoration, William 
 Cawley's influence in Chichester was paramount, and it was 
 exerted steadily, first for the Parliament and then for the 
 Protector. Once, indeed, in 1647, he had occasion to ask for 
 military assistance, and Sir Arthur Haselrig, who had taken 
 part in the siege and capture of the City in 1642, was sent down 
 to him. But, on the whole, Sussex was staunch for the Common- 
 wealth, and gave little trouble to the Protector. William Cawley 
 was much trusted by the latter. He was appointed one of the 
 Council of State in 1650-1 ; he acquiesced in the assumption by 
 Cromwell of the Sovereign power, and the Protector made 
 him one of his Commissioners for the County of Sussex. 
 His name also appears with those of Sir T. Pelham Anthony 
 Stapley, Colonel Morley, John Downes, James Temple, &c., 
 as one of the Sequestrators for Sussex. The Chichester 
 brewer was, without doubt, all-powerful in that city during the
 
 1 70 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 Protectorate, and such was the estimation in which Cawley was 
 held in his native city that he was one of the few Regicides able 
 to obtain a seat in the Convention Parliament called to smoothe 
 the return of the Stuarts. But the tide was now running strongly 
 towards Monarchy, and against the recent upholders of a 
 Republic. Cawley had to conceal himself; and being absolutely 
 excepted, with the other Regicides, from pardon both as to life 
 and estate, he fled first to France, and thence to Geneva and 
 Lausanne, where, under the protection of the Lords of Berne, he 
 passed the remainder of his days in, as Noble observes, "the 
 constant fear of detection, the loss of all society with those he 
 loved, and with a scanty income." " He and some others impli- 
 cated with him," continues the historian of the Regicides, " lived 
 as if they wished to be forgotten even whilst on earth, and were 
 spectators, as it were, of being cut off from the land of the living. 
 A more melancholy situation cannot be conceived by the mind of 
 man." 
 
 Bad enough, no doubt ; but, most certainly, there are many 
 infinitely worse situations. For these men did not hold them- 
 selves to be criminals, but rather martyrs for what they looked 
 upon as 3. great and holy cause ; and some of them, at least, lived 
 to see the principles they had espoused brought to a successful 
 issue in the Revolution which placed William of Orange on the 
 Throne by a Parliamentary title.* This Revolution, however, 
 though it could not fail to bring consolation to such of the judges 
 of Charles I. as still lived, did not better their condition. Macau- 
 lay tells us how one of them, Edmund Ludlow, who, like Cawley, 
 had found a refuge in Switzerland and escaped the assassins by 
 whom another of Cawley's companions, John Lisle, fell, made the 
 
 * Macaulay says, "The leaders of the Roundhead party in 1642 and the 
 statesmen who, about half a century later, effected the Revolution, had exactly 
 the same object in view. That object was to terminate the contest between the 
 Crown and the Parliament, by giving to the Parliament a supreme control over 
 the executive administration. The statesmen of the Revolution effected this 
 indirectly by changing the dynasty. The Roundheads of 1642, being unable to 
 change the dynasty, were compelled to take a direct course towards their end."
 
 THE SUSSEX REGICIDES, ETC. 17 1 
 
 experiment of the public feeling towards the Regicides in 1689 
 the year following the Revolution by coming over to England, 
 and with what result. He was compelled to make a speedy flight 
 to his old asylum on the banks of the lake of Geneva, and there, 
 in the churchyard of Vevay, he lies buried. 
 
 William Cawley is characterised by Ludlow as " an able and 
 ancient Member of Parliament." He was certainly a consistent 
 politician, and, it would also seem, a charitable and pious man, 
 for he founded and endowed a Hospital for ten poor persons in his 
 native city, and had a Chapel erected in it and duly consecrated. 
 The Hospital still stands, but is now converted to the use of 
 a Workhouse. A portrait of its founder, at the age of 18, is still 
 preserved there, and the house which he occupied in that part of 
 Chich ester called the Pallant is to this day called " Cawley 
 Priory." It is a proof of Cawley's sagacity and insight into the 
 character of men that he alone opposed the proposition to give 
 Colonel Monk, when a prisoner as a Royalist in the Tower, a- 
 Commission in the Parliamentary Army. 
 
 Cawley left a son, who, in 1660, petitioned for himself and 
 wife to have the estate of his late father restored to him, on the 
 grounds that most of it had been settled on him at his marriage, 
 and that his wife's father had been sequestrated for loyalty, and 
 himself threatened with disinheritance because he, with tears and 
 prayers, attempted to dissuade his father from " entering the 
 detestable plot " (the King's trial). Of Cawley's wife all we learn 
 is from a letter written by one Robert Johnson, and dated Jan. 7, 
 1663, stating that "Mrs Cawley, whose husband was one of the 
 King's Judges, and is not yet discovered, lodges at her brother's 
 in Red Cross-street, London, and is intimate with the wives of 
 Ludlow, Goffe, and Whalley." So that at this time at least these 
 unfortunate men were alone in their hiding-places ; and it is very 
 doubtful if Cawley ever saw his wife again. John Lisle, his 
 companion, we know, did not ; for his wife, Dame Alice Lisle, 
 remaining in England, was sentenced to death by the infamous 
 Jefferies, and cruelly executed murdered for concealing in her 
 house some of the unfortunate fugitives from Sedgmoor.
 
 172 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 Cawley's property, including some land at Rumboldswyke, 
 near Chichester, still known (says Mr. Blaauw) as " Cawley's 
 Lane," was granted to the Duke of York afterwards James II., 
 and who, by another turn of fortune, had to taste, in his turn, 
 the bitterness of exile, and died, like Cawley, in a foreign land. 
 
 John Downes, member for Arundel, sat by the side of 
 William Cawley during the whole of the King's trial, and 
 voted and signed the death-warrant with him. He was evidently 
 closely connected with the Cawley family, for, in a petition to 
 Charles II. from Henry, Bishop of Chichester, the Bishop states 
 that since April, 1643, he has been deprived of his whole estate, 
 the chief actor being Henry Cawley (a. brother, perhaps, of 
 William) and John Downes. The latter is described by Noble as 
 a Londoner of mean family, which, very likely, he may have been, 
 but his connection with the Cawleys and with Chichester and 
 Arundel would lead to the assumption that he came of a Sussex 
 stock. Certainly he was a Sussex Member, and as such sat on 
 the High Court of Justice and signed the death-warrant. His 
 name, like those of other Eegicides, was excepted from pardon, 
 and, giving himself up, he was tried in October, 1660, and con- 
 demned to death, but pleaded so hard for his life that he was 
 reprieved, and died in prison. 
 
 Anthony Stapley was a Sussex man tout pur, and belonged to 
 the landed gentry class. He was the son of Anthony Stapley, of 
 Framfield, by a daughter of another Sussex family, the Thatchers. 
 He is sometimes described as of Patcham (near Brighton), to 
 which place the family removed from Framfield between 1620 and 
 1630. Another branch of the Stapleys was settled at Hickstead 
 Place, Twineham, and the Diaries left by some of its members 
 have been already referred to in this volume. But the Twineham 
 Stapleys inclined to the Royal cause. Anthony Stapley, of Fram- 
 field and Patcham, early took sides with the opponents of the 
 King in the Long Parliament ; refused to contribute to the war 
 against the Scots ; and, on the breaking-out of hostilities, received 
 a colonel's commission in the Parliamentary army. His standing 
 in Sussex must have been high, for he was returned both for
 
 THE SUSSEX REGICIDES, ETC. 173 
 
 Lewes (with Herbert Morley) and for the County, and elected 
 to sit (in the Long Parliament) for the latter. Appointed one of 
 the Hie;h Court of Justice, he attended nearly all its sittings, and 
 signed the death-warrant. He was appointed on the Councils of 
 State that preceded the Protectorate in 1649-50-53, and was for 
 some time Governor of Chichester. His wife was a Goring a 
 sister of that Goring Earl of Norwich who took so active a 
 part for the Royal cause. Dying before the Restoration, he 
 escaped both the fate of the other Regicides and the shame that 
 the conduct of his two sons would doubtless have caused him. 
 Both these young men, John, the eldest, and Anthony, had 
 tendered their service to the Protector and were put by him on the 
 Commission of Sussex. But in 1658 they engaged in a plot 
 (referred to, but very cautiously, in the Diary of Anthony Stapley, 
 of Hickstead Place), with the Marquis of Ormond, for the restora- 
 tion of Charles II. The plan was, that the King should land on 
 the Sussex Coast, and that that County, and Kent and Surrey, 
 should rise and march upon London, and six blank commissions 
 were received by John Stapley to fill up and distribute as he 
 pleased. But, whilst this plot was going on, Cromwell's Secretary 
 of State, Thurloe, was kept informed of every step of it, and at 
 the very moment when the parties to the plot thought all was ripe 
 for action, and the Marquis of Osmond had crossed over to 
 France to persuade Charles to make a landing, the bubble burst 
 and the Stapleys were arrested John at Whitehall, where he was 
 in personal attendance upon Cromwell. Nothing could then 
 exceed the baseness of these brothers. Anthony was a witness 
 against John, and John, to save his life, gave such evi- 
 dence as ensured the conviction and execution of his chief 
 confederates, Sir Harry Slings by (the head of an ancient 
 Yorkshire family) and Dr. John Hewitt, of Norfolk. Not only 
 did John Stapley betray his friends to death, but he wrote a 
 pitiful letter to Cromwell. " For the future," he said, " I do 
 promise, by the assistance of the Almighty, I will not only live 
 peaceably, but will, with the utmost of my endeavours, stand by 
 your Highness with life and fortune, to preserve your Highness'*
 
 174 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 person, interest, and dignity, and if ever Charles Stewart should 
 in my dayes make any attempt against your present Government, 
 I will personally appear against him, though it be but in the 
 capacity of a private trooper, if I may not be intrusted by your 
 Highness, or your successors, with better preferment." Cromwell 
 granted the traitor his life ; but, we may be sure, gave him no 
 " better preferment." At the Restoration, however, he met with 
 better luck. Not only was the paternal estate at Patcham, which ' 
 had been forfeited by the attainder of his father, restored to him, 
 but he was first knighted and then created a" Baronet" by Charles 
 II., and, to borrow the words of Mr W. H. Blaauw, in his 
 " Passages of the Civil War in Sussex " " Sir John Stapley, 
 Baronet, lived to a good old age, very loyal, and very well satisfied 
 to have expiated the sins of his regicide father by such prosperous 
 loyalty." It was fortunate for him that the letter he had written 
 to Cromwell was not discovered till later days. His wife was a 
 daughter of Sir Herbert Springett, of Boyle Place, Ringmer, and 
 he left four children, who, we are told, all married well. So 
 treachery, it would seem, sometimes dees prosper ! 
 
 Peregrine Pelham, like Anthony Stapley, belonged to the 
 class of landed gentry. He was a scion of the great Pelham 
 family, several of which sat in the Long Parliament, and took 
 part with the great leaders of liberty, Eliot, Pym, Hollis, and 
 Hampden ; but he was the only one who followed the cause to 
 the " bitter end," and sat on the High Court of Justice. He was 
 absent from only one of its sittings, and signed the warrant of 
 execution. But little is known of him personally, though he was 
 a man of family, fashion, and fortune, descending from that Sir 
 William Pelham who was Lord Deputy of Ireland in the reign of 
 Elizabeth, and being one of the Commissioners for conserving the 
 peace between England and Scotland in 1646. Fortunately for 
 him, he died previous to the Restoration, but his name was 
 inserted in the exception clause of the Bill of Indemnity, 
 
 Sir Gregory Norton, Bart., was another of the Regicides 
 residing in and connected with Sussex, though he came originally 
 from Hants. He sat for Midhurst in the Long Parliament, and
 
 THE SUSSEX REGICIDES, ETC. 175 
 
 his name appears on nearly all the sittings of the High Court and 
 on the warrant of execution. Noble, in his History of the Regi- 
 cides, accuses him of being actuated by sordid motives doubtless 
 from the fact that he bought a portion of the furniture of Richmond 
 Palace at a low price ; but Noble never fails to put the worst con- 
 struction on the acts and motives of the men whose lives he 
 attempts, from very imperfect materials, to chronicle. Sir Gregory 
 Norton died before the Restoration. His name was attainted and 
 his property escheated to the Crown. 
 
 James Temple sat for Bramber in the Long Parliament, and, 
 like so many of its younger and more active members, became a 
 Colonel of the Parliamentary army. Though a member of a 
 noble family, several of which took part with the King, he, like 
 Peregrine Pelham, steadily adhered to the popular cause, and being 
 put on the High Court was present at all its sittings and signed 
 the warrant of execution. When the Regicides were excepted 
 from the Bill of Indemnity, James Temple surrendered himself 
 and was tried at the Old Bailey, October 16, 1660. At first he 
 pleaded " Not Guilty," but eventually acknowledged his crime and 
 begged for mercy. He was sentenced to death, but was not 
 executed, and is supposed to have died in the Tower. His 
 relation, Peter Temple, who served, it is said, an apprenticeship to 
 a London draper, but who sat in the Long Parliament, served as 
 a Captain in the army, sat on the King's trial, and signed the 
 death-warrant, shared the fate of the Member for Bramber. He 
 was sentenced to death, but died in prison. 
 
 William Gone was a man springing from another class. He 
 was a son of the Rev. Stephen Goffe, the Puritan Rector of Stan- 
 mer, Sussex, and, it is clear, imbibed the rigid principles of his 
 father. His original vocation was that of a dry-salter in London, 
 but, on the breaking-out of the war between King and Parliament, 
 he left trade and became a soldier, and was doubtless a brave and 
 able one, for he rose to the rank of Major-General, and was one of 
 the officers most trusted by Cromwell, and who adhered faithfully to 
 his fortunes and those of his son. His name occurs frequently 
 in the long struggle between the Royalists and Cavaliers, and he
 
 176 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 was sent into Sussex by Cromwell, in 1665, to report on the 
 state of feeling in that County, writing frequently to Thurloe, 
 Cromwell's Secretary, on the reception he met with from Morley, 
 Fagg, &c. He married a daughter of his fellow-Regicide, General 
 Whalley. He sat on the High Court of Justice (though 
 not as a Sussex Member), and signed the death-warrant. When 
 Cromwell resuscitated the Upper House, General William Goffe 
 was named as one of the new Lords, and was a person of weight 
 and authority until the return of the Stewarts. He then fled, 
 with his father-in-law, Whalley, to North America, where Noble 
 represents them to have spent "40 years of as great misery and 
 wretchedness as can be paralleled." In a very maudlin strain, 
 Noble proceeds : " Dreadful as their sin had been, none can 
 read their sufferings without commiseration, and the endearing 
 softness the firm yet gentle constancy of his amiable wife to her 
 parent and her husband, in their years of captivity, must melt any 
 heart that is not impenetrable to pity, and ought to be a lesson 
 written in brass to deter men from enormous vices that have only 
 the wretched alternative of a painful and ignominious death or a 
 life of infamy, dread, and misery, separated from all those con- 
 nections that render existence desirable, that here have no hopes, 
 that hereafter can have no prospect but of still greater infliction, 
 unless their crimes are redeemed with the severest and sincerest 
 repentance." 
 
 Modern history looks at what Noble calls "the enormous 
 vices " of Goffe and Whalley that is, their opposition to and 
 punishment of regal tyranny in a different spirit from his : and, 
 whether we approve or disapprove of some of their acts, it is not 
 as men expiating infamous lives that we contemplate them in the 
 forests of North America or their hiding-places in Holland and 
 Switzerland, but rather as political martyrs the victims of their 
 efforts to carry out principles in advance of their day, but which 
 are recognised in the present age as constituting the very basis of 
 our liberty and our national greatness. The tribute to the 
 " gentle constancy " of Goffe's wife and Whalley's daughter is in 
 better taste ; and we shall see by and bye that there were other
 
 THE SUSSEX REGICIDES, ETC 177 
 
 women of the Puritan class who could bring to their cause as 
 many feminine virtues as any Royalist could claim for his. The 
 real life of Gofie and Whalley in North America is not to be 
 found in Noble. Hardships, doubtless, they endured, like other 
 early emigrants to those Colonies like the Pilgrim Fathers them- 
 selves. But they had their freedom of thought and action ; 
 and doubtless in that, and in the knowledge of the ultimate over- 
 throw of the Stewarts and their despotic notions of government, 
 they found some solace for the privations which they had to 
 endure. 
 
 We have exhausted the list of the Sussex Regicides proper. 
 Of those Sussex men who sat on the High Court of Justice, but 
 did not sign the death-warrant, Herbert Morley and John Fagg 
 were the most prominent. We have already spoken of the 
 former. After the death of Cromwell, he was one of the most 
 influential officers of the army which held the fate of the kingdom 
 in its hands. His services to the popular cause during the pre- 
 vious conflict with the King had been great ; he was the first to 
 form a regiment in Sussex, doubtless out of his own tenants at 
 Glynde and his friends and his constituents at Lewes, of which he 
 was the Member in the Long Parliament, and he rendered valu- 
 able service to Sir W. Waller in the siege and capture both of 
 Arundel and of Chichester. In 1643, he beat back the forces of 
 Lord Hopton, who was laying siege to Lewes, and preserved that 
 town to the Parliamentary cause. He assisted his fellow-Sussexian, 
 Col. Norton, at the siege of Basing House, and, as we know by an 
 interesting correspondence between himself and Sir W. Campion, 
 he was with Fairfax when that General took Borstall House, of 
 which Campion was the Governor. His treatment of Campion's 
 young wife was most honorable to him, and, indeed, in every 
 passage of his life he always behaved like a soldier and a gentle- 
 man. He sat three days on the High Court of Justice, but 
 refused to sign the death-warrant, and in the ensuing Protectorate 
 he was somewhat of a mal-content, and retired from active life to 
 his house at Glynde. 
 
 Writing from Lewes, to Thurloe, in November, 1655, 
 
 N
 
 178 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 General Goffe, Col. Morley's old fellow-soldier, says, " I intend 
 (if the Lord please) to give Colonel Morley a kind visitt this day, 
 his house being within two or three miles. I hope such a civility, 
 whatever he thinkes of my business, will doe no hurt." It appears 
 that Morley told Goffe he would assist him in any matter as a 
 Justice of the Peace, but hinted that in any other things he wished 
 not his name to appear. Col. Morley was returned for Sussex, 
 and also for Rye, in the Parliament which Cromwell called in 
 September, 1654, and which, after it had resolved, by 200 to 60, 
 not to make the Protectorate hereditary, was dissolved on July 
 22, 1655. He was also again elected for the County and for 
 Lewes in the Parliament of September, 1656, and which, refusing 
 to recognise the " other House," was dissolved by the Protector 
 in February, 1658. It was the last Parliament called by Crom- 
 well, who died in September, 1658. Again, in Richard Cromwell's 
 Parliament, of January, 1659, Col. Morley was returned both for 
 the County and for Lewes, and, on its dissolution, and the revival 
 of " the Rump," that is, the remains of the Long Parliament, 
 he acted as the champion of that resuscitation of the more 
 moderate party, now verging towards Royalism, and, when the 
 Rump was violently dispersed by General Lambert in the interests 
 of the more extreme party in the Army, Col. Morley and Sir 
 Arthur Haselrig, who, with three others, had been appointed to 
 organise the Army, in order to guard against Lambert's violence, 
 restored it (December 26, 1659),* and, at this stage of affairs, he 
 seemed to hold, and perhaps for a few days did hold, the fate of 
 the country in his hands. He was appointed Lieutenant of the 
 Tower, which gave him the command to a great degree of London, 
 and Evelyn, his old school-fellow, believed he might, if he had 
 chosen, at this period have played the part of Monk. " I went 
 this afternoon " writes Evelyn, on January 22, 1660, "to visit Col. 
 Morley. After dinner, I discoursed with him; but he was 
 
 * Whitelock says Haselrig, Walton, and Morley came into the House in 
 their riding habits, and Haselrig was very jocund and high. They all received 
 the public thanks of the House, and its cordial approval of their conduct.
 
 THE SUSSEX REGICIDES, ETC. 179 
 
 jealous, and would not believe that Monk came to do the King 
 any service. / told him he mi%ht do it without htm, and have all 
 the honour. He was still doubtful, and would resolve on nothing 
 yet, so I took leave." 
 
 It is probable that Morley shrank from betraying the men 
 with whom he had been associated all his life.* And whilst he 
 hesitated Monk was acting. This General had come up to London 
 from the North on February 3, 1660, and Morley, with whom he 
 was joined in the control of the army, being unable to penetrate 
 his intentions, broke off his correspondence with Evelyn, and 
 inclined to the party of the Commonwealth. Ludlow, a thorough 
 Republican, assured of his support, proposed that 2,000 soldiers 
 " should be ordered to march to the Tower, to join with Colonel 
 Morley's regiment, which was already there and would be ready to 
 receive them ; " adding, " he (Morley) having sent to me to let 
 me know that the Tower should be at my command whensoever 
 I please to desire it." Yet, at this very time, Whitelock declares 
 that " Col. Morley, Lieutenant of the Tower, concurred with 
 Monk," so that both sides believed that he inclined to them, the 
 truth being, perhaps, that he, like many an honourable man at that 
 time and since, felt it impossible to approve altogether of either 
 party, and would, if he could, have adopted a middle course. 
 But that was impossible. The current was always running too 
 violently in this or in that direction now against and now in 
 favour of Monarchy. At this moment, when Morley hesitated, it 
 was running in favour of the King, and Monk took it at its flow, 
 
 * Ludlow characterises Morley as " of a temporising spirit,'' which, in a 
 resolute .Republican like Ludlow, meant, perhaps, a man of moderate opinions. 
 Ludlow owed his escape at the Restoration to Colonel Herbert Morley. After a 
 period of hazardous concealment in London, he made his way to Lewes, where 
 an open vessel was waiting for him, but from which, on its passage down the 
 Ouse the wind blowing hard he removed to another which had just returned 
 from conveying over Richard Cromwell, ex-Protector, to France. The change of 
 vessels was a most fortunate one for him, for the one he had just quitted was 
 searched soon afterwards for fugitives, whilst the one he was in escaped suspicion 
 because it had stranded ; and getting off the next morning it got safely to Dieppe, 
 whence Ludlow hastened to Switzerland and joined Cawley.
 
 l8o GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 and, by one bold stroke, handed the country over to the 
 Royalists. There was no longer a choice for Colonel Morley. 
 He did not even attempt resistance, like his old companion in 
 arms, Col. Cockeram, whose regiment rose in mutiny at Graves- 
 end, and had to be put down by Monk's troops. He submitted, 
 gave up the Tower, and in the ensuing May besought the inter- 
 cession of his old school-fellow for his life. " Came to me," writes 
 Evelyn, " Colonel Morley, about procuring his pardon, now too 
 late seeing his error, and neglect of the counsel I gave him, by 
 which, if he had taken it, he had certainly done the same work 
 with the same ease that Monk did it, who was then in Scotland, 
 and Morley in a post to have done what he pleased, but his 
 jealousie and feare kept him from that blessing and honour. I 
 addressed him to Lord Mordaunt, then in great favour, for his 
 pardon, which he obtained at the cost of^i,ooo, as I heard. O 
 the sottish omission of this gentlement ! what did I not undergo 
 of danger in this negotiation, to have brought him over to his 
 Majesty's interest, when it was entirely in his hands ! " 
 
 Yet it may well be doubted, with all due deference to Evelyn, 
 whether the part taken by Col. Morley was not more honourable 
 than that of Monk. He at least did not buy rank and wealth at 
 the price of his colleagues' lives and the risk of his country's 
 liberties. 
 
 Having procured his pardon, Morley retired to Glynde, and 
 there ended his days peaceably in 1667, dying in the 52nd year of 
 his age, and being interred in the Parish Church. His only son 
 had married a daughter of Sir John Trevor, a grand-daughter of 
 Hampden, and by this alliance the Glynde estate came to the 
 Trevors, and, through them, to its present holder, the Right Hon. 
 H. Brand, Speaker of the House of Commons. Sir John Trevor 
 himself, it may be added, who married Hampden's daughter, Ruth, 
 supported both Oliver and Richard to the last, but was, in spite 
 of this, taken into favour by Charles, and sent as Ambassador to 
 France in 1667. 
 
 John Fagg, though not so active a soldier as Col. Morley, ran, 
 in many respects, a parallel course with him. They were, indeed.
 
 THE SUSSEX REGICIDES, ETC. l8l 
 
 closely connected, Fagg marrying Morley's sister, Mary. He 
 represented Rye, of which he was a native, in the Long Parlia- 
 ment; received a Colonel's commission in the Parliamentary 
 Army ; and sat on the High Court of Justice, but rather assisted 
 in making preparations for the trial than acted as a Judge ; above 
 all, he did not sign the death-warrant. He was made one of the 
 Commissioners for Sussex by Cromwell, but does not appear to 
 have been a zealous supporter of the Protector, for Gen. Goffe, 
 writing from Lewes to Secretary Thurloe, on Nov. 7, 1655, tells 
 him that he had not put in Mr. Fagg's name, " as he appeared 
 gracious with disaffected men, and would not stir a hair's breadth 
 without Col. Morley." And in the following year (1656) he was 
 precluded from sitting in the Parliament then summoned by 
 Cromwell as not approved by the Protector's Council. At the 
 death of Cromwell he, like Col. Morley, came again to the front. 
 He was put in command of the Sussex Militia by the Council of 
 State, directed to secure Chichester and Arundel, and to hold 
 correspondence with the forces in Surrey, Kent, and Wilts. 
 During the struggle between the Presbyterian party in the Rump 
 and Lambert at the head of the Republicans, Fagg was made 
 Governor of Portsmouth, and, probably, his acquiescence in 
 Monk's plans for the Restoration obtained for him that immunity 
 which he subsequently enjoyed for the past, and even favour in the 
 future ; for he was made first a Knight and then a Baronet by Charles 
 II., and was secured in all his possessions. Amongst these was 
 Wiston House, the old residence of the Shirleys in West Sussex, 
 which the father of " the three Shirleys " had been compelled to sell 
 from poverty, and which Dr. Thomas Shirley, a descendant, 
 attempted to recover by law from Sir John Fagg, but failed, and 
 was unlucky enough to be committed for breach of privilege in 
 proceeding against the new Courtier and old Republican, Sir 
 John. We are told that Sir John Fagg had a family of 16 
 children ; but the male line seems soon to have failed, and Wiston 
 passed, by the marriage, in 1743, of the heiress, Elizabeth Fagg, 
 to Sir Charles Matthews Goring, to the Gorings. The name of 
 Fagg is not now to be found amongst the gentry of Sussex, any
 
 1 82 GLIMPSES. OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 more than are those of Culpepper, Challoner, Covert, Caryll, 
 Springet, Boord, and a score more of once familiar Sussex names. 
 
 The close connection of Sir John Trevor, and, through him, 
 of Col. Morley and Sir John Fagg with the great patriot, John 
 Hampden, explains to some extent the support they gave to the 
 Parliamentary cause, and, though not in the same degree, to the 
 Protectorate. Hampden himself, it will be borne in mind, was a 
 cousin of Cromwell, and so Cromwell was connected by family 
 ties as well as political sympathies with these leading men of 
 Sussex. The blood of Cromwell and of Hampden still flows in 
 Sussex veins. 
 
 We have named the Springets as one of our extinct Sussex 
 families. Their seat was Broyle Place, Ringmer, near Lewes, and 
 here we have an instance, amongst many others, of the extent to 
 which the rigid opinions of the Puritans had penetrated the ranks 
 of the English gentry as well as of the bourgeois and yeoman 
 class in the earlier part of the i7th century. One of the brothers 
 of Sir Thomas Springet in the first Charles's day was a lawyer, but 
 very strict in religion, and dying early of consumption, his widow 
 (a sister of Sir E. Partridge, of Kent) brought up his son in the 
 father's principles, sending him to Cambridge to "a Puritan 
 College called St. Katherine's Hall, for he declined Bishops and 
 Common Prayer very early." At home he was not less carefully 
 looked after, his mother having a " Minister " to preach thrice a 
 week to her friends and spending half her fortune in daily com- 
 pounding and dispensing medicines to the poor. All these par- 
 ticulars we learn from the lady whom young William Springet 
 married at the early age of 20, in Kent, " without a ring," as she 
 tells us, " and many of their formal dark words left out." She 
 was a daughter of Sir John Proude, Knight ; and she is worthy to 
 take her place by the side of Lucy Hutchinson and with the 
 daughter of Whalley and wife of Goffe for the devoted affection 
 she showed to her husband and for her constancy to the principles 
 in which it is evident she, like her husband, had been brought 
 up in one of those " God-fearing households " then so common in 
 England. On a son being born to them, her husband, she tells
 
 THE SUSSEX REGICIDES, ETC. 183 
 
 us, carried the child five miles off in order to avoid baptism in a 
 Church, and to obtain it from the chosen hands of Master Wilson, 
 of Otham, one of the Orthodox Divines of Kent. 
 
 On the breaking-out of hostilities between King and Parlia- 
 ment, the young Sussex Puritan was not long in choosing sides. 
 He took the Covenant, and received a commission to raise a 
 regiment of horse. He must have done his work promptly, for 
 he was soon at the head of 800 horse, and was employed with it 
 in suppressing a Royalist rising in the vale of Kent, and after- 
 wards, in Surrey, besieged and took Lord Craven's house, fought 
 at Edgehill, and was wounded at Newbury, for which and other 
 services he was thanked by Parliament. He is supposed to have 
 been early knighted by Essex, for, in a despatch from Arundel, Sir 
 William Waller entitles him " Sir William." It was here at 
 Arundel that his short career (he was but 22 years of age) was 
 brought to a close. After the capture of the place by Waller, 
 the custody of the Castle was committed to Sir William Springet 
 and to Colonel Morley. Soon afterwards the garrison was 
 attacked by a fatal sickness called calenture, or sun-fever, brought 
 on by exposure to unwholesome night air,* and Col. Springet was 
 one of the sufferers. His wife, then in London, was sent for, 
 and, though far advanced in pregnancy, she immediately set out. 
 The reputation of the Sussex roads in those days, and for many a 
 long year afterwards, was very bad, and it was with great difficulty 
 that Lady Springet succeeded in hiring a coach, at a very high 
 price. She took a physician with her, and her husband's 
 messenger escorted her on horseback. But the frost, which had 
 
 * In the delirium peculiar to this fever, says Mr Blaauw, "surrounding 
 objects assumed the aspect of verdant meadows to the eyes of the sufferer, who, 
 when at sea, would madly throw himself into it, as if seeking the refreshment of 
 a cool walk on land. Dryden and Swift have made fine poetical use of this 
 delusion. Probably Falstaff died of it, for Mrs Quickly, describinz his last 
 symptoms, after lamenting that he was "so shaked of a burniug quotidian ter- 
 tian," as Springet also wa, says : " After I saw him fumble with the sheets and 
 play with flowers, and smile upon his fingers' ends, I knew there w i s bu ^ one 
 way, for his nose was sharp as a pen, and 'a babbled of green fields." Heu. V., Act 2.
 
 184 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 been so useful in the siege of Arundel, was now broken up, and 
 the poor lady was " forced to row in the highways in a boat, and 
 take the things in the coach with her, and the horses to be led 
 with strings tied to their bridles, and to swim the coach and horses 
 in the highways." She was afterwards " benighted, and overthrown 
 in the dark into a hedge," close to a very deep precipice. The 
 colonel of a garrison which she passed invited her to stop for re- 
 pose, but she gallantly says, " I was resolved not to go out of the 
 coach, unless it broke, until I came so near the house that I could 
 compass it on foot. . . , When we came to Arundel, we met 
 with a most dismal sight, the town being depopulated, all the 
 windows being broken with the great guns, and the soldiers 
 making stables of all the shops and lower rooms." After passing 
 through the dreary town, she was at last obliged to fulfil her reso- 
 lution of walking, for, within a quarter of a mile of her husband's 
 residence, " the horses came to a stand, the wheel of the coach 
 being pitched in the root of a tree." This unexpected arrival at 
 midnight did not allay the feverish excitement of the overjoyed 
 husband, who had been now sleepless for five days. When his 
 friends insisted upon quiet, he had covenanted with them for the 
 liberty " to shoot birds with his cross-bow out of window, which 
 he did till the fever took his head." . . "He was an artist in 
 shooting and fishing," and had been employed from his boy- 
 hood with horses, dogs, guns, cross-bows, bullets, feathering 
 arrows, and, a curious amusement, " pulling his watch to 
 pieces." 
 
 The devoted wife now watched him incessantly for two more 
 days of ebbing life, hanging upon his parched lips, to cool them 
 with her own, unterrified by the danger of infection, and rewarded 
 by his faint entreaty, " Oh, don't leave me." The next morning, 
 after he had thus breathed away his love and life, in his zjrd year, 
 Feb. 3, 1644, his body was carried in his own ammunition-waggon 
 to Ringmer, his native place. Having always provided at his own 
 expense both his tents and ammunition, and having kept a table 
 at Arundel open to the volunteers of his own regiment, it was not
 
 THE SUSSEX REGICIDES, ETC. 185 
 
 surprising that only 12 was now found in his chest, and he left 
 debts of ^2,000, partly by having advanced loans for what he 
 thought the good cause. 
 
 In addition to this he had spent the whole of his wife's 
 fortune (^1,600) in fitting out his regiment, and, it is evident, 
 was one of the most earnest spirits of that earnest age. He would 
 never lodge in the sequestrated mansions of the Royalists, not 
 even in that of his uncle, Sir Thomas Culpepper, and, as Mr. 
 Blaauw (to whom we are indebted for these particulars) remarks, 
 " his character, cherished in the fond memory of his widow, and 
 traced by the hand of love forty years afterwards, may serve as a 
 type of the strong feelings of that turbulent age, though indeed ' 
 even she quietly laments his not having embraced the whole truth, 
 as she complacently considered herself to have done." 
 
 Mr. Blaauw refers to the adoption by Sir W. Springet's widow 
 of the tenets of the Quakers. This she did on her marriage with 
 Isaac Pennington, son of the Regicide of the same name ; and it 
 was, doubtless, owing to this connection that her daughter, 
 Gulielma, became the wife, in 1672, of the celebrated William 
 Penn. But, though thus weaned (and wedded) from the vanities 
 of the world, the widow of Sir William Springet never forgot her 
 first love ; and in her letters to her grandson, which she -wrote in 
 1680, and which have been published, she dwells upon his virtues, 
 and does not fail to initiate the young man into the secret of his 
 Sussex and Springet ancestry. 
 
 Two Chaloners, Thomas and James, were nominated upon 
 the High Court of Justice, and one of them, Thomas Chaloner, 
 signed the death-warrant. But neither of these was a member of 
 the Sussex family. The head of the Sussex Chaloners, Robert 
 Chaloner, ofKemvards, Lindfield, was, however, engaged in the 
 same cause. He was a Major in the Parliamentary army, and an 
 active supporter of the Protector. In the Parish Register of 
 Lindfield, about 1655, his name frequently appears attached to 
 the entries of marriages which were performed by " Ye Major,' 
 not at the Parish Church, but at Kenwards, his mansion at 
 Lindfield. His possessions in East Sussex were very extensive ;
 
 1 86 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 but the Restoration was fatal to him and his family, and from this 
 period the Sussex Chaloners declined till they disappeared 
 altogether from the gentry of the County. Of the fate of Robert 
 Chaloner, " Ye Major," of Kenwards, Lindfield, we are ignorant, 
 but the tradition in the neighbourhood of his estate is, that he had 
 to fly the country and died abroad. His house at Lindfield was 
 dismantled, and the only part of it that now remains is the stables, 
 which have been converted into a farmhouse. It seems to have 
 been the fashion of the officers of the Puritan army to perform the 
 marriage ceremony, for in the Framfield Register there is an entry 
 to the same effect as those in the Lindfield Register, to which the 
 'name of Capt Stapley is appended. Doubtless, however, in each 
 of these cases, the military performer of the contract was a 
 Justice of the Peace. 
 
 Samuel Gott, who sat for Winchelsea in the Long Parliament ; 
 for Rye in the Parliament summoned by Cromwell, in 1656 ; and 
 for Hastings in the " Rump" Parliament of 1658, was a staunch 
 upholder of the Republic, but he did not sit on the High Court of 
 Justice, and we are ignorant how he closed his career. Perhaps, 
 like many of the men who took an active part in the Protectorate, 
 he was happy to seek safety in obscurity. 
 
 It will be remarked that, though several of the Sussex 
 Regicides, like James Temple and John Downes, were tried and 
 condemned to death, none of them was actually executed. James 
 Temple and John Downes died in prison ; William Cawley and 
 William Goffe in exile ; Anthony Stapley, Gregory Norton, and 
 Peregrine Pelham died before the Restoration. Of those who sat 
 upon the Court, but did not sign the death-warrant, Sir John 
 Fagg was forgiven and came to honours and dignity under the 
 Stewarts ; and Colonel Morley died in peace at Glynde. 
 
 It is impossible to go through the records of families engaged 
 in the conflict of King and Parliament, and follow all their 
 vicissitudes, without being struck by the contrast of those troubled 
 days with the present age, when " Harry follows Harry " 
 in such peaceful succession, and the most exciting events of 
 country life, in the way of war or peace, are a lawsuit or an
 
 THE SUSSEX REGICIDES, ETC. 187 
 
 alliance a review or a ball ! How easy, then, is it for us now-a- 
 days to scatter praise and blame on the actors in .the great events 
 of the 1 7th century! how impossible to realise the sacrifices 
 made by the men who fought in those days for what they held to 
 be the right and truthful cause ! Good men and true there were, 
 most certainly, on both sides, as well as, without doubt, men of a 
 lower character. But as for the theory which sets down all the 
 men on one side as rogues and rascals, knaves and hypocrites, we 
 have passed beyond that ; and it is no longer necessary to make 
 an excuse for giving some particulars of the men in this County, 
 who, like Colonel Herbert Morley and Sir William Springet, 
 entered zealously into the conflict with the King, or even of those 
 who, like Anthony Stapley and William Cawley, went a step 
 further and put their names to the death-warrant of that unfortu- 
 nate, but not the less most unscrupulous and untruthful king. 
 Let us rather thank the good fortune which has reserved happier 
 days for us, when the principles of hereditary Monarchy and of 
 national freedom are reconciled to each other, and when the most 
 zealous advocates of liberty may accept Constitutional Govern- 
 ment and the Commonwealth as synonymous terms. We owe it 
 not a little to the men who fought and suffered, in Sussex and 
 elsewhere, for liberty in the tyth century.
 
 i88 
 
 SUSSEX TRAGEDIES AND ROMANCES. 
 
 CUSSEX is not distinguished, like Yorkshire, as the scene of a 
 tragedy ;* but, like most other parts of the world, it has had 
 its share of the tragic acts of men, and one of the earliest, if not the 
 earliest of these on record, is the trial and execution for murder of 
 Lord Dacre, of Hurstmonceux Castle. The title still survives in a 
 Sussex family the Brands a member of which is the "first 
 Commoner of England " in other words, Speaker of the House 
 of Commons, and the picturesque ruins of Hurstmonceux Castle 
 still form a feature of the eastern part of Sussex. 
 
 The trial and execution of Lord Dacre for murder is one of 
 the strangest stories of the Tudor times, and stands out as 
 prominently in English jurisprudence as does the execution of 
 Earl Ferrers, the head of the Shirleys, another Sussex family, at a 
 later era, and for a similar crime. 
 
 The family name of the unfortunate nobleman was Fynes or 
 Fiennes, an ancient Norman family who had acquired Hurst- 
 monceux in Sussex by marriage with the equally ancient family of 
 Monceux ; but the title by which he is known in the history of 
 crime was derived from the famous Lords Dacre of Gillesland, the 
 heiress of which family was married in 1440 by Sir Roger Fynes, 
 and brought by him to the fine Castle he had built at Hurstmon- 
 ceux, in Sussex. In right of his wife he was summoned to Par- 
 liament as Baron Dacre " of the South," in contradistinction to 
 the Lords Dacre " of the North," then still flourishing in Cumber- 
 land. He was succeeded, in 1484, by his grandson Thomas, who, 
 though Constable of Calais and distinguished for his services in 
 the field against the Scots, got into trouble, and was imprisoned 
 in the Fleet and fined for " harbouring of suspected felons," and 
 
 * " The Yorkshire Tragedy," a play of the 16th century, sometimes assigned, 
 but incorrectly, to Shakspeare.
 
 SUSSEX TRAGEDIES AND ROMANCES. 189 
 
 " for remysness and negligence in ponyshement of them." But 
 the delinquencies of this Lord Dacre, whatever they may have 
 been, shrink into insignificance when compared with those of his 
 grandson, another Thomas, Lord Dacre of the South, the hero of 
 our story. This Lord Thomas, like his grandfather, was left an 
 orphan, in 1525, at the age of 17, and came into possession of one 
 of the finest estates and Baronies of the kingdom. He married, 
 too, a lady of noble birth, a Neville, daughter of another Sussex 
 nobleman, Lord Abergavenny, and had every advantage which 
 wealth, rank, and connection could give him. But his education 
 had been neglected ; his habits were dissolute ; his companions 
 were, it is evident, of rank far below his own, and, doubtless, 
 selected by him for the congeniality of their tastes and habits. 
 What these were can be guessed from the deed which involved 
 him and three of them in the terrible fate which overtook them. 
 
 It would seem, from the legal documents found in the Record 
 Office in our days, and published by the Deputy-Keeper of the 
 Records, that, on the 2oth of April, in the 32nd year of the reign 
 of Henry the 8th, a party of fourteen men, including Lord Dacre 
 himself, met at his mansion at Hurstmonceux, "and did there 
 illegally conspire in what manner they could best hunt in the Park 
 of Nicholas Pelham, Esq., of Laughton, in the County of Sussex, 
 with dogs and nets called buckstalls, and bound themselves by 
 oaths, &c., for such illegal purpose, and also to stand against all 
 the lieges of the King, and to kill any of the King's lieges who 
 might oppose them." 
 
 A list is given of the names, occupations, and late residences 
 of these so-called conspirators, and whilst none of them was above 
 the rank of gentleman, several are entitled yeomen, and one was 
 a smith, of Fletching. With the exception of two, who are " late 
 of London," and two others late of places in Kent, all are set 
 down as being lately of places in Sussex, several of Hurst- 
 monceux, and, doubtless, in the service of Lord Dacre; one 
 (Thos. Duffield), of Framfield, and another (John Shelley, a well- 
 known Sussex name), of Patcham. The meeting on the 2oth of 
 April broke up, we may presume, without any definite result. It
 
 190 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 led, at all events, to no immediate action ; for ten days after- 
 wards, on the 3oth April, the same parties met again at the same 
 house, and on this occasion the meeting was followed up by decisive 
 acts. The conspirators, or, as we should call them in the present 
 day, poachers, divided themselves into two bands ; one led by 
 Lord Dacre, and the other by Henry Fitzherbert (of Ringmer, 
 Sussex), and so entered the Park of Sir Nicholas Pelham, at 
 Hellingley, on two sides, with intent, doubtless, to drive the deer, 
 as Earl Percy did at Chevy Chase in " the brave days of old." 
 The only difference between the Percy and the Dacre driving 
 was, that the deer in the latter case were those of a neighbour, 
 and that it was not in the border line of Chevy Chase, but in an 
 enclosed Sussex Park that they lay ; and, above all, that these 
 were the days of the Eighth Harry, who kept a strict hand over 
 his Barons, and, if they over-stept the limits of the law, made 
 very little difficulty of cutting off their heads ! 
 
 It would seem that Sir Nicholas Pelham, like his prototype, 
 Earl Douglas, had been warned of young Lord" Dacre's design. 
 At all events, his keepers were on the look-out for intruders, and 
 at a spot called "Pykehay," in the Parish of Hellingly, the party 
 headed by Lord Dacre had the misfortune to come upon three 
 of these men, named John Busbrydgge, James Busbrydgge, and 
 Richard Somener. What words passed between them (and, 
 doubtless, there were some, for a quarrel is said to have ensued) 
 is not stated, but it is declared in the old pleading that " for fear 
 lest they (the poachers) might be known by them" (the keepers), 
 they attacked and wounded them, and gave certain mortal 
 wounds to John Busbrydgge, in consequence of which he died 
 on the 2nd May then next following. 
 
 For this tragical act an indictment for murder was laid 
 against three of the party John Mantell, John Frowds, and 
 George Roidon, described as " gentlemen," in the ordinary course 
 of law, and they were found guilty by a Grand Jury, which is 
 described as meeting first at Hellingly the place where the 
 crime was committed -and afterwards, by adjournment, at Mares- 
 field, in the vicinity of it, before Sir Humphrey Brown, Knight,
 
 SUSSEX TRAGEDIES AND ROMANCES. 1 91 
 
 Sergeant-at-Law, and Robert Oxenbridge and Thomas Darell, 
 keepers (Justices) of the Peace, and they were sentenced to 
 death and executed by hanging, we presume at a spot called 
 " St. Thomas Waterings," the usual place of execution within 
 the Sheriffdom of Sussex and Surrey, situated near the 2nd mile- 
 stone on what is now called the Old Kent Road, by which, in 
 former days, pilgrims travelled to the shrine of St. Thomas a 
 Beckett at Canterbury. 
 
 Thus three of the conspirators were soon called to a bloody 
 reckoning for their night's frolic. Nor was the head and chief of 
 it, at whose great house it was planned, and under whose 
 direction it was carried out, to escape. A few years before, such 
 an act would doubtless have excited little or no attention, amidst 
 the license and disorder of the Civil Wars, or in the times pre- 
 ceding them, when great men did pretty well as they pleased. 
 But the Tudors had brought in a new state of things ; and a 
 striking example was now to be given that laws were made both 
 for high and low *-for Peer and peasant. As a Peer of the Realm, 
 the legal procedure against Lord Dacre was different from 
 that taken against the three commoners. On the 2yth June 
 (33 Henry 8) a Commission was issued, by which the Lord 
 Chancellor Audley was appointed Lord High Steward and Judge, 
 and, upon his precept, a jury of Peers was summoned for the trial 
 of Lord Dacre, at the head of which was Henry, Marquis of 
 Dorset, and on which also sat the Earl of Sussex, the Earl of 
 Derby, the Earl of Rutland, Lord John Russell (High Admiral of 
 England), and others of the highest nobles of England. Before 
 these Peers on the 2-jth June the hapless young Noble, brought 
 from the Tower (the Constable of which was his Sussex 
 neighbour, Sir John Gage, of Firle) for the purpose, was ar- 
 raigned on a charge of murder. To this he at first pleaded 
 " Not Guilty," as not being the actual murderer, and put himself 
 upon his Peers ; but " sufficient and probable evidence " having 
 been adduced, he reversed his plea to " Guilty," and put him- 
 self upon the King's mercy The judgment of the Court was, 
 that " he was to be hanged " neither time nor place, however
 
 IQ2 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 being named ; and this judgment was carried out, at the in- 
 stance, it is said, of certain Courtiers, "who gaped after his 
 estate," not an improbable thing, though there is no proof of 
 its truth. 
 
 The execution took place two days after the judgment : on 
 St. Peter's Day, the 2 9th day of June ; so quick a despatch of 
 justice that the King could, indeed, have had little inclination for 
 " mercy." Was he not the 8th Harry, who " spared no man in 
 his wrath, and no woman in his lust ? " There was something 
 terribly painful as well as ignominious in Lord Dacre's death ; for 
 to the last, it would seem, he was tantalised with a hope of escape. 
 In the words of the old chronicler, Holingshed, " And afterward, 
 the nine and twentith of June, being St. Peter's daie, at eleuen 
 of the clocke in the forenoon, the shiriffs of London, accordinglie 
 as they were appointed, were ready at the Tower to have receiued 
 the said prisoner, and him to haue led to execution on the Tower 
 hill ; but, as the prisoner should come forth of the Tower, one 
 Heire, a gentleman of the Lord Chancellor's house, came, and in 
 the King's name commanded to staie the execution till two of 
 the clocke in the afternoone, which caused manie to thinke that 
 the King would have granted his pardon. But neuertheless, at 
 three of the clocke in the same afternoone, he was brought forth 
 of the Tower and deliuered to the shiriffs, who led him on foot 
 unto Tiburne, where he died. His bodi was buried in the church 
 of Saint Sepulchers. He was not past foure and twentie yeeres 
 of age, when he came through this great mishap to his end, for 
 whom manie sore lamented, and likewise for the other three 
 gentlemen, Mantell, Frowds, and Roidon. But for the said yoong 
 Lord, being a right towardlie gentleman, and such a one as many 
 had conceiued great hope of better proofe, no small mone and 
 lamentation was made ; the more, indeed, for that it was thought 
 he was induced to attempt such follie, which occasioned his death, 
 by some light heads that were then about him." 
 
 When, indeed, the character of the times is considered, 
 the punishment seems out of proportion to the offence, which 
 was rather that of homicide than of murder ; and in these days
 
 SUSSEX TRAGEDIES AND ROMANCES. 193 
 
 the penalty of manslaughter would, probably, be deemed sufficient 
 for the purposes of justice. But in Henry the Eighth's day the 
 kingly hand weighed heavily on the noble ; noble heads were cut 
 off for very venial acts ; and the mere pretext of " standing against 
 all the lieges of the King," even if only to kill a buck, was suffi- 
 cient to bring down the most dread vengeance of the law. 
 
 In his paper on this tragical event, the late Mr. M. A. Lower 
 says the scene of it is still known. Pick-Hay, as it is now called, 
 is an arable field of ten acres on the Horselunges Farm, in the 
 Parish of Hellingly, adjoining a field called " The Cabins," on the 
 Broad Farm, rather less than a. quarter of a mile south-west 
 of Hellingly Church on the road to Horsebridge. The river 
 Cuckmere is the boundary of the two fields. The actual scene 
 of the murder (writes a local archaeologist f Mr. T. Horton) 
 is near the bottom of the two fields and near the river. " In my 
 youth (he adds) the tradition of the murder was current ; and I 
 may add that a ghost has always been about the place." Whether 
 of Lord Dacre, " of the South," or of John Busbrydge, " deponent 
 sayeth not" 
 
 This is the earliest on record of what may be called our Sussex 
 domestic tragedies. 
 
 We pass over a long space of time before we come to anything 
 like a parallel to it ; for Sussex is not a County of great crimes. 
 Poaching and smuggling have both flourished among us, and Lord 
 Dacre may be included among the victims of the former class of 
 misdeeds ; but more heinous crimes have been " few and far 
 between." The Jack Shepherds, Dick Turpins, and Claude 
 Duvals belonged to other parts of the kingdom. Still we have 
 had our highway robbers, or, as Sir John Falstaff lovingly calls 
 them, " Diana's foresters, Gentlemen of the Shade, Minions of the 
 Moon." In this class figure very prominently two brothers of the 
 name of Weston, Joseph and George, who, in the years 1781-2, 
 astonished the good people of Rye and Winchilsea by taking the 
 mansion at the latter place known as " The Friars," and living 
 there in great style and at lavish expense under the names of 
 William Johnson and Samuel Weston. They passed themselves
 
 194 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 off as persons of standing, and dressed, rode, and, above all, eat 
 and drank like gentlemen. They were, in fact, forgers, horse- 
 stealers, and highwaymen, carrying on their operations over a wide 
 extent of country, and bringing their booty to the remote Sussex 
 town of Winchelsea, to live a "jolly life." They were at length 
 apprehended in London for robbing the Bath and Bristol mail on 
 the morning of January 25th, 1781, between Maidenhead and 
 Hounslow, and for this they were committed for trial to Newgate 
 on the 1 7th of April, 1782. But, the day before the trial came 
 on, they succeeded, with three other felons, by the aid of their 
 wives, in breaking out of gaol. It says something for the rascals 
 that the Mistress Westons thought they were worth saving ! But 
 it was not for long. George was soon after re-captured in Smith- 
 field, and his brother Joseph in Cock Lane. This latter defended 
 himself desperately, and wounded one of his captors in the 
 cheek with a pistol. Strange to say, on being arraigned, four 
 days afterwards, for the robbery of the mail, they were acquitted. 
 They were, however, immediately tried on other charges : George 
 for forgery and Joseph for firing the pistol ; and this time they 
 were convicted and sentenced to death. They were identified on 
 this occasion by a witness from Draycott, Staffordshire, who had 
 known them from their birth as the sons of a farmer named 
 George Weston. They were executed at Tyburn on September 
 3, 1782, and, according to a writer in the Gentleman 's Magazine, 
 " made a good ending," receiving, as Catholics, the consolation of 
 their faith. But the same account fails not to tell us that they 
 were " two of the most artful villains that have ever appeared at 
 any time in this country, and have robbed the country of an 
 immense sum." It was the career of these men that supplied 
 Thackeray with some of the incidents of the novel which he was 
 writing when his life and the story were suddenly ended. The 
 scene of it, it will be recollected, was laid at Rye, and an attempt to 
 rob the London coach of a large sum of tax-money gives the hero 
 an opportunity to distinguish himself at the expense of the high- 
 wayman, who receives the contents of the lad's pistol in his 
 face.
 
 SUSSEX TRAGEDIES AND ROMANCES. 195 
 
 It seems "a little too bad" to give Lord Dacre "of the 
 South " such companions as these ; but crime, like poverty, " has 
 strange bed-fellows." 
 
 We have said that Sussex had no Dick Turpin or Claude 
 Duval. But the foot-pad who, early in the present century (1807), 
 infested the roads between Arundel and Chichester, and eased 
 graziers and farmers of their heavy purses as they returned home 
 from market, until he became a word of fear to the western part 
 of the County, may well compare with any highway notoriety in 
 daring acts and in his tragic end. His name was Allen, and he 
 had been a footman in the service of the Lennox family ; but 
 this was not known until he had made the country so " hot " by 
 his numerous robberies that, at length, the militia were called out 
 to effect his capture. He was pressed so closely that at length he 
 took refuge in a pond at Graffham, near Midhurst. There, however, 
 he was followed, and espied by some of his pursuers among 
 them a son of Mr. Sargent, a neighbouring gentleman of large pro- 
 perty. Unfortunately young Sargent a fine young man, a captain 
 in the gth Regiment of Foot, recognised the highwayman, and 
 called upon him by his name to give himself up. The only reply 
 was a shot from Allen's gun or pistol, which laid the unfortunate 
 young man dead on the spot. The soldiers who accompanied him 
 immediately fired on the robber, and so gave him a better end than 
 he deserved. The nieces of young Sargent were co-heiresses of the 
 Lavington Estate, and it was their fate to become the wives of two 
 remarkable men : Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford and of 
 Winchester, and Henry Manning, Cardinal of Rome. 
 
 Sussex soil, we have said, is not stained by many atrocious 
 crimes. But one of the most atrocious crimes ever committed on 
 it, and which, by the wholesale extermination of a household, 
 closely resembles the Mars and Williams tragedies which terrified 
 London at the commencement of this century, and have been so 
 terribly described by De Quincey, was committed at Ditchling in 
 1734. The perpetrator of it was a Jew pedlar named Jacob 
 Harris, who, whilst travelling the country with his wares, put up his 
 horse at a public house in that lonely part of the country, Ditchling
 
 196 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 Common, and whilst his host, named Miles, was engaged in cleaning 
 the animal in the stable, seized the opportunity to attack him, 
 and, as he thought, deprive him of life by cutting his throat with 
 a razor. Leaving him for dead, he entered the house, and, 
 meeting the servant-maid, who, it is supposed, had been alarmed 
 by the noise of the struggle in the stable and was descending 
 the stairs to see what was the matter, he attacked her too and 
 murdered her. Then, mounting the stairs, he entered the room 
 where the wife of the landlord was lying on a sick bed and 
 destroyed the poor woman by cutting her throat. He then 
 plundered the house, which, it would seem, was the motive for 
 these wholesale murders, and made his escape. But only for 
 a short time. We have said that he left Miles for dead ; but 
 he had not carried out his barbarous act so effectually in this 
 instance but that Miles was able, with the little life left to him, to 
 give information which led to a speedy pursuit and to the capture 
 of his murderer, at Turner's Hill, and also to his identifi- 
 cation. Harris was tried at Horsham Assizes in the follow 
 ing August, the murders were committed in May, and being 
 convicted and condemned to death, he was hung at Horsham 
 and his body then transported to the place of the crime, Ditchling 
 Common, and hung on a gibbet near to the house in which the 
 murders had been committed. A portion of the gibbet still 
 remains, it is, we believe, the only relic of the kind in Sussex, 
 and is known as " Jacob's Post." 
 
 Whilst in the Ditchling tragedy a pedlar was the perpetrator 
 of the crime, in the succeeding instance he was the victim. The 
 scene of it lay in the adjoining parish. 
 
 One of the many woods which lie scattered on every side 
 of Lindfield is known by the name of CostelPs Wood. It lies on 
 the left-hand side of the road from Lindfield to Lewes, in the 
 Manor of South Mailing, and forms part of a large farm called 
 Wallstead. Above 400 acres of this farm are covered with oaks 
 once famed for their girth and height. But these old giants of 
 the forest have fallen before the axe, and CostelFs Wood now 
 consists chiefly of young trees, planted pretty closely together, in
 
 SUSSEX TRAGEDIES AND ROMANCES. 197 
 
 order that they may attain a greater height than oaks do when 
 growing singly in hedgerows. The space between them is grown 
 over with fern and underwood, but not so thickly as to bar a 
 passage through the trees. 
 
 There are, however, too many woods round Lindfield, and 
 too few people in it, to make Costell's Wood a common place of 
 resort, as it would be near a town. With the exception of the 
 woodreeve, who occasionally goes in to lop off an exuberant 
 branch or so, perhaps months pass without any one being tempted 
 to get over the gate which leads into it from the Lewes Road. It 
 holds forth no attractions even to school boys in the shape of 
 nuts or blackberries, or to the sportsman in the shape of game. 
 In Costell's Wood the trees are left pretty much to themselves to 
 grow in peace and quiet, with only the sun and the breeze to 
 keep them company. 
 
 But at the time we are about to refer to some 38 years ago 
 they had another visitor, a poor idiot boy was their constant 
 frequenter, and would wander about among them all the day. 
 Being perfectly harmless, to himself and to others, his mother was 
 in the habit of giving him his day's food, and with this he 
 wandered forth, hiding himself in the woods all the day long, 
 amusing himself in his own unintelligible way, and returning 
 home at night mumbling forth his adventures in his own gibberish, 
 which few could understand and nobody ever paid attention to. 
 So, when, after his usual rambles, one evening he came home to 
 his mother with a scared face and an agitated manner, and made 
 strange motions with his hand across his throat and uttered some- 
 thing in his imperfect language about " man man dead," " man 
 in the wood," and pulled at her dress as though he wished her to 
 go somewhere with him, she paid no more heed to him than she 
 had a hundred times before, when he had returned home after 
 seeing a pig killed, a sight, it seems, of which he had a peculiar 
 horror, and it was her belief that a spectacle of this kind had 
 caused the terror under which the boy was now evidently 
 labouring. So no attention was paid to his gestures and mum- 
 blings, and the next day he was allowed to go out again upon his
 
 1 98 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 rambles ; but still, day after day, it was remarked that he went 
 in the direction of Costell's Wood ; and from time to time, too r 
 on coming home to his mother, he returned to the old subject, 
 only with some variation in his tale, and, instead of its being 
 " man dead," " man in the wood," it was now " birds birds peck 
 man's eyes " "dogs dogs eat man," and other strange expressions 
 of this kind. 
 
 At length a neighbour, who had noticed the boy's visits to 
 the wood, and had heard him utter some of his strange ex- 
 pressions, took the trouble to follow him in one of his rambles,, 
 and having got over the gate and entered the wood some twenty 
 or thirty yards from the road, following in the wake of the idiot 
 boy, a spectacle presented itself which was sufficient to stagger 
 the stoutest nerves ; for there, in a comparatively open spot, 
 among the long grass, lay the body of a man, but so decomposed 
 by the elements, and so torn and mangled by birds and beasts, 
 that, but for its clothing, there was nothing to denote humanity 
 about it. The skull was separated from the trunk, and the coat 
 only hung on a heap of bones. The man instantly reported his 
 fearful discovery to the authorities, who went to the spot and took 
 possession of the remains, and of an open razor that was found 
 lying beside them. Active enquiries were set on foot to ascertain 
 the identity of the body, and by what strange fate it had come in 
 such a spot, and lain there so long ; for the opinion of the medical 
 men who examined it was, that the body had been in the wood 
 some four months. Had no one disappeared about that 
 time ? or was there no recollection of any stranger having been 
 seen in the neighbourhood passing by or through it, or stopping 
 at a village inn or beer-shop ? None. Every inquiry was made 
 in the neighbourhood, but no traces of a missing man were found. 
 The clothes were searched, and three halfpence in copper and a 
 bunch of keys were found in the pockets. The clothes them- 
 selves indicated that the deceased had been, at one time at 
 least, in a respectable sphere of life, for the coat on his back (he 
 had no waistcoat) and the boots on his feet were well made. His 
 linen was marked "T. H." Then came the question, had he
 
 SUSSEX TRAGEDIES AND ROMANCES. 199 
 
 destroyed himself, or had he been murdered ? The evidence pro- 
 duced at the inquest was inconclusive on this point The razor 
 found beside him might have been the means of destruction in his 
 own hands, or those of others. Decomposition left no traces for 
 medical science to raise even a surmise upon. All that could be 
 done at the time was to return an open verdict of " Found Dead," 
 to take possession of the keys, clothes, &c., and to advertise the 
 facts as extensively as possible. These steps were taken ; but 
 they never led to the identification of the dead man. From the 
 time he was found in the wood by the idiot-boy (who was examined 
 at the inquest, but from whom nothing intelligible could be 
 gathered as to the state in which he first found the body though 
 that must have been early after death) up to the present moment, 
 his name, country, occupation, whence he came or whither he was 
 going, are a mystery. No eye had marked his approach to the 
 spot on which he was so suddenly and so mysteriously to close his 
 existence ; by what terrible means there can be little doubt, for 
 upon this evidence did rise up sufficient to remove all moral doubt 
 that the man was foully dealt with. " Just after the inquest," said 
 a party who had taken an official part in the inquiry, in answer to 
 our questions, "just after the inquest, I was telling an old man, 
 who is very deaf, all about it ; and when I had done, ' Ah, yes,' 
 he said, ' I remember very well seeing the blood along the road 
 about that time ; ' " and," continued my informant, " no sooner 
 had he uttered the words than I, too, recollected seeing a line of 
 blood along the road by the gate, and others even said they re- 
 collected seeing blood on the gate itself." " How long," we en- 
 quired, " was this before the body was found ?" " About four 
 months, which must have been the time of the man's death. I 
 supposed," continued my informant, " at the time that somebody 
 had cut himself, or had bled at the nose, and took no further 
 ^notice. But of the fact I had a perfect remembrance, and it left 
 no doubt upon my mind that the man ha i been murdered 
 attacked in the road most probably, and dragged over the gate to 
 the spot where he was found." 
 
 Another circumstance strengthens this opinion, and at one
 
 200 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 time seemed to give a clue to the discovery of the murderer. A 
 pedlar's box, stripped of its contents, was found in a low part of 
 Southover, and was sent to the Lindfield authorities, who still 
 have it. The keys of the deceased did not fit this box ; but it 
 seems to point to the occupation of the man and to explain 
 both the motive for the crime, and the reason why the body was 
 never owned. The man was a wanderer perhaps a foreigner ; 
 he travelled from place to place, late and early. In his journey 
 to Lindfield he was either tracked, or had bad companions. The 
 road by Costell's Wood is lonely there is no house within a 
 quarter of a mile in any direction, and high trees on each side 
 darken the path. He was doubtless attacked at disadvantage, 
 robbed, and murdered, or partly murdered, and left in the wood, 
 with the instrument of death by his side. And there he lay for 
 four long months, not forty yards from the high road, yet hid 
 from all but the wondering eyes of the poor idiot boy. J7e, 
 doubtless, had seen the murdered man as he lay fresh in his 
 newly-shed blood, some think, before life had fled ; but, how- 
 ever that may be, there is no doubt that day after day he came 
 and gazed upon the terrible sight, and marked how the birds 
 pecked at its eyes and the rats or dogs fed on its flesh, and how 
 it mouldered away beneath the rains and the dews, until it had 
 become the thing of bones that it was found. 
 
 In some respects this undiscovered crime will remind the 
 local reader of a murder likewise undiscovered which was 
 committed only nine years ago in the same district, but nearer to 
 Cuckfield. In this case, too, the body of a man unknown was 
 found who had been struck down by a murderous blow, evidently 
 dealt from behind as he was crossing a " gully " in a meadow near 
 Cuckfield Church the path across this " gully " being a short 
 cut, by which, in going from Hayward's Heath to Brighton, 
 the town of Cuckfield may be avoided. To do this was, no 
 doubt, the object of the murdered man, for it was afterwards 
 ascertained that he had been concerned in some burglarious 
 robberies near London and was flying from the pursuit of the 
 police. The shoes he was wearing were identified as part of the
 
 SUSSEX TRAGEDIES AND ROMANCES. 2OI 
 
 booty of one of these robberies. He was also, it was afterwards 
 discovered, in the neighbourhood of Cuckfield for another 
 purpose. He had had an accomplice in some of his burglaries, 
 and he had threatened this man, who lived at Croydon, with 
 exposure unless he gave him some "hush money." An appoint- 
 ment had been made for an interview in a lonely part of Sussex, 
 and here, at an inn at Balcombe, the murdered man passed some 
 hours on the evening of the night (Saturday, the 27th November, 
 1869) on which he was to meet his accomplice. Whether he met 
 him or not, who can say ? but on the following Monday morning 
 the fugitive burglar, for such he was, was found lying dead in a 
 ditch at the back of Cuckfield with a fractured skull, and the 
 instrument with which the blows were inflicted, called a " jemmy," 
 and used by burglars, was afterwards found in an adjacent pond, 
 into which it was doubtless flung immediately after the committal 
 of the crime. 
 
 The police were unable to find any clue to the murderer 
 any, at least, sufficient to charge him with the crime. Both the 
 murdered man (whose name was Greenhead) and the murderer 
 had concealed their movements so well that they were never seen 
 together. The accomplice referred to a man named Rowland 
 was subsequently apprehended, and convicted, at the Sussex 
 Assizes, of a robbery at Croydon, where he lived, and was sen- 
 tenced to a year's imprisonment. 
 
 Here, again, in the presence of an undiscovered crime, we 
 may say, in the powerful language which Hood places in the 
 mouth of Eugene Aram, whose crime was committed under 
 somewhat similar circumstances to the above, one more 
 murderer 
 
 " Walks the earth 
 Beneath the curse of Cain, 
 
 With crimson clouds before his eyes, 
 And flames about his brain ; 
 
 For blood has left upon his soul 
 Its everlasting stain ! " 
 
 The late Editor of the Sussex Archaeological Collections, the
 
 202 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 Rev. E. Turner, in one of his latest contributions, expresses his 
 satisfaction, and surely all humane persons will join with him in 
 doing so, at the disappearance from our highways and byeways 
 of those gibbets which used to mark the spot where a crime had 
 been committed and where justice had exacted its most fearful 
 penalty. To make it more durable and more terrible, the culprit 
 used sometimes to be hung in what was called " chains " that is, 
 in a framework constructed of iron hooping, to which the rotting 
 flesh and clothes and the bleaching bones long hung after wind 
 and rain had done their worst upon them. In this way the body of 
 Tapner, the Chichester smuggler, who took a leading part in the 
 cruel murders of Galley, the Revenue Officer, and his witness r 
 Chater, was exposed at the Old Broyle, in the immediate vicinity 
 of Chichester, and another of the same gang, named Carter, was 
 hung near Rake, on the Portsmouth road, in 1749. One of the 
 last exhibitions of this kind, which, not improbably, by accustoming 
 men to the spectacle of horrors, did more to harden than to appal 
 them, took place in Sussex in the instance of two brothers, named 
 Drewitt, convicted in 1799 of robbing the Portsmouth mail on 
 North Heath Common, near Midhurst, and sentenced to be hung 
 in chains. The first part of the sentence was carried out at 
 Horsham, where the men were tried, and then, in accordance with 
 custom, their bodies were brought to the place where the crime 
 was committed and exposed in the way we have described. One 
 of the Drewitf s, the younger brother, died protesting his innocence, 
 and the belief is still prevalent at Midhurst and its neighbourhood, 
 to which they belonged and where they were well known, that he 
 was guiltless of the crime for which he suffered, but that he could 
 not clear himself without implicating his father, and, rather than 
 do this, went a victim to the gallows for the crime of a parent. 
 It is remarkable that the last instance in this County of a 
 barbarous custom should be thus coupled with a noble act of self- 
 devotion on the part of one of the so-called culprits. 
 
 Poisoning has never been looked upon as an English crime ; 
 and it is remarkable, therefore, that a country town like Lewes 
 should, so early as 1679, have been the scene of a deed of this
 
 SUSSEX TRAGEDIES AND ROMANCES. 203 
 
 nature, which would have been more in keeping with the soil and 
 manners of Italy. The story, as told by a Lewes chronicler, has 
 all the elements of a tragic romance. 
 
 A close intimacy had long existed between two young men of 
 the town, Robert Brinkhurst, a cutler, and William Moor, " bred 
 a draper " (to adopt the phraseology of our local authority), but 
 heir to a considerable landed property. After some years' friend- 
 ship, a petty difference sprang up between them, but was soon 
 adjusted, leaving them, apparently, with the old feelings of 
 regard for each other. Shortly afterwards, Moon (who suffered 
 from a tainted breath) received, through the London carrier, a 
 packet signed with the initials of a friend, and containing a 
 powder, which was strongly recommended as a remedy for the 
 complaint he suffered from. The contents of the paper were 
 arsenic, and had been sent by Brinkhurst. The victim did not 
 fall into the snare at once. He was uncertain whether he was to 
 take all the powder in one dose or in parts. He therefore 
 wrote to his friend in London to ascertain this point. 
 Unfortunately, he commissioned Brinkhurst himself to carry 
 the letter to the London carrier, who then, it would 
 seem, stood in lieu of a Post Office, and the false 
 friend, destroying the letter, contrived, by the agency of an 
 acquaintance in London, to send a reply to it, purporting to come 
 from the sender of the former parcel, and directing his victim to 
 swallow the powder in one dose. He did so on the Tuesday 
 and, after suffering four days' great agony, died on the succeeding 
 Saturday ; Brinkhurst waiting on him during that time (as Palmer 
 did on his friend Cooke), and putting on all the show of grief and 
 sympathy. How complete was his hypocrisy, and how real the 
 affection of Moor was for him, was now shown in a way which 
 ought to have overwhelmed him with remorse. By his friend's 
 will, he was not only forgiven a debt of $o (in all probability, 
 one of the incentives to the murder), but was left a legacy of that 
 amount, together with Moor's watch and other tokens of friendship. 
 
 So far, all had gone well for the murderer. The burial took 
 place, and, to quote our authority for these facts, " Brinkhurst
 
 204 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 returned home, in seeming security, to exult in the consummation 
 and profit of his crime." His triumph, however, was but short- 
 lived. Moor had not destroyed the two forged letters that he 
 received from London, and these, falling into the hands of his 
 friends, raised a suspicion of foul play. The London carrier 
 was questioned, and he now recollected that he had, 
 some time before, brought down a parcel to the deceased, 
 which had been given to him in Southwark by a person 
 unknown ; also, that he had somewhere by him a letter addressed 
 to this party in Southwark, which, being refused to be taken in, 
 he the carrier brought back again to Lewes, but, not knowing 
 the writer of it, had laid it by. On the very day of Moor's inter- 
 ment, this letter, by a remarkable coincidence, was found by the 
 carrier ; and, on being opened, it was found that Brinkhurst was 
 the writer of it, and its purport left little or no doubt that the 
 other communications received by Moor had come from or been 
 suggested by him. He was accordingly apprehended and taken 
 before the Lewes Justices, to whom, we are told, he partly con- 
 fessed his guilt. Being interrogated as to the nature of the 
 powder he had procured, he pretended not to know its name, but 
 said that, if he saw it again, he should recognise it. The Magis- 
 trates, unsuspicious of any design on the prisoner's part, directed 
 an apothecary of the town to bring samples of different poisons 
 that Bringhurst might point out the one he had used. This was 
 done, and the prisoner, to the horror of the lookers-on, snatched 
 up a parcel of yellow arsenic, and swallowed a considerable quan- 
 tity of it before he could be prevented. 
 
 This desperate act stopped all further judicial proceedings. 
 We are not told if any attempts were made to obviate the action 
 of the poison by an emetic or otherwise only that he " lan- 
 guished from the Tuesday till the Saturday evening " exactly the 
 same time that his friend had suffered " tormented alike by 
 bodily pangs and remorse" and then died. His body was 
 refused Christian burial. It was taken in a dung cart, without a 
 coffin, to the cross roads near Spittle Barn, and there flung into a 
 hole dug north and south, "from some absurd, superstitious
 
 SUSSEX TRAGEDIES AND ROMANCES. 205 
 
 notion," says the local historian, " a stake having been first driven, 
 with moral barbarity (!), through the uncovered corpse." 
 
 To find a local parallel to this Lewes tragedy of the i7th 
 century, we must pass on to our own town of Brighton in the 
 igth century, where, on the 23rd of May, 1866, a Dr. Warder 
 arrived from Scotland, and took lodgings for himself and wife in 
 Bedford-square. He had only been married ten months ; he was 
 in the prime of life, 45 or 46 years of age, and yet the lady 
 was his third wife. He had married her five months after the 
 death of his second wife, a Scotch lady a widow who had only 
 survived her union with Dr. Warder eight months. Her life had 
 been insured by her husband. This second marriage took place 
 in 1865. The death of the first wife had occurred two years 
 before, in 1863, and followed quickly after a temporary separa- 
 tion ; so that with Dr. Warder marriage and death had followed in 
 quick succession. 
 
 And now again he had a sick wife. It was partly on that 
 account that she came to . Brighton, where she had a brother, 
 like Dr. Warder, in the medical profession, but who had never 
 met his brother-in-law until he came to Brighton. The marriage, 
 indeed, of his sister with Dr. Warder had been a great surprise 
 to him and all the members of her family. But she had been a 
 friend of the second wife, and this, doubtless, facilitated the 
 union ; and she possessed a small fortune of some ^500. The 
 symptoms of Mrs. Warder's illness set in more strongly after her 
 arrival in Brighton, and were of a nature to baffle all the skill of 
 her brother ; of a skilful Brighton physician called in Dr. Taaffe ; 
 and of her own husband. The care and affection bestowed by 
 this latter on the suffering lady were worthy of all praise ; he rarely 
 left her bedside, and he performed all the duties of a nurse. Still, 
 the ailment baffled both skill and care ; the pacient grew weaker 
 and weaker, and was sinking rapidly without any apparent cause. 
 
 This did not escape the notice of the Brighton physician ; 
 it was abnormal, and at last it aroused a dreadful suspicion in 
 his mind. The form in which he gave effect to this was to 
 request that a nurse should be called in ; that another medical man
 
 2O6 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 should be associated with himself; and that for some days the 
 husband should not be with his wife. This advice was given to 
 the brother on the 3oth of June. On the following day Dr. Taaffe 
 and he were to meet at the house of the latter to arrange their 
 future line of action. Early on the morning of that day a Sunday 
 Mrs. Warder died. Her husband had been with her all the 
 Saturday night. How he employed it, who can doubt ? It was 
 the last time that he would, in all probability, be allowed to act 
 as nurse to the poor lady. Suspicion, he must have felt, was 
 awake, and what he had to do, if done at all, must be done 
 quickly. On the landlady, in answer to his summons, entering 
 the room on Sunday morning, Dr. Warder, addressing her, ex- 
 claimed, "She is dying." Mrs. Warder was, indeed, already 
 unconscious, and, before her brother or Dr. Taaffe could be 
 summoned, she was a corpse. The grief of her husband, after 
 death, was as marked as his attentions to her during life had been 
 unremitting. 
 
 But Dr. Taaffe refused to certify -to the cause of death. 
 Hence an inquest was necessary, and, as a matter of course, a 
 post-mortem examination was ordered by the Coroner, and the 
 enquiry adjourned to await the result of an analysis by Dr. Taylor. 
 The inquest was held on the Wednesday. The burial of Mrs. 
 Warder took place on the Saturday. It was attended by Dr. 
 Warder and Dr. Taaffe, with what feelings by the former who 
 can realise ? Those of the latter were subsequently avowed ; he 
 looked upon the husband as the murderer of the wife whose 
 remains he was following to the grave. Suspicion was so far 
 aroused that a watch was set by the police on the movements of 
 Dr. Warder. But, after returning to his lodgings from the 
 funeral, he managed to evade this and went up to London. In 
 the evening of Monday he returned to his lodging cool and col- 
 lected, according to his landlady, whom he requested to make out 
 her bill, and on the following morning she found the full amount 
 on the table, with $ in excess as compensation for loss caused 
 by the illness, inquest, &c. But Dr. Warder himself was gone. 
 He had not passed the night at his lodgings.
 
 SUSSEX TRAGEDIES AND ROMANCES. 207 
 
 The scene of the tragedy is now shifted to the Bedford 
 Hotel, where, at a quarter to twelve on the Monday night, a 
 traveller presented himself, with a black leather bag, and desired 
 to be shown at once to a bedroom. His manner was quite cool 
 and collected. The day was far advanced before the chamber- 
 maid thought of calling the late arrival, and when she did so there 
 was no reply. She tried the door. It was unlocked. She 
 entered the room and looked in ; and she saw Dr. Warder for it 
 was he lying dead on the bed. He was undressed, but the bed- 
 clothes were undisturbed. On the drawer by the side of the 
 bed stood a small blue bottle, capable of holding 10 drachms 
 and still containing 4 drachms of prussic acid. Whoever 
 swallowed these 6 drachms could only have had time to put 
 the bottle where it stood ; he could not even draw the bed- 
 clothes over his face before death seized him. 
 
 Of course, an inquest was held on the body, and a post- 
 mortem examination of the brain shewed it to be healthy and its 
 structure normal; there was nothing to indicate insanity, from 
 which, it was said, some of his family had suffered. A verdict of 
 Jelo de se was returned, and the body was interred in the Parochial 
 Cemetery without any religious ceremony and with no inscription 
 to say who lay beneath. The wife had been interred on the yth 
 July ; the husband was buried on the 12th. 
 
 At the adjourned inquest on Mrs Warder, Dr. lay lor 
 attended to report the result of his analysis. There was no 
 vestige of poison in the organs, but they showed no other cause 
 of death, and, from their appearance and the evidence already 
 adduced, Dr. Taylor had no doubt that death had been caused 
 by poison, and the jury returned a verdict that Ellen Vivian 
 Warder died from the effects of aconite, administered wilfully by 
 her late husband, Alfred William Warder. 
 
 The letters left by Dr. Warder at his lodgings on the night of 
 his quitting them for the Bedford, addressed to friends, contained 
 a virtual confession of his crime. After giving some directions 
 about his property and his children by the first marriage, he wrote, 
 " There is no escape for me, as you will find when you know all."
 
 208 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 There was, indeed, none. Success in former cases (for the second 
 wife died under similar symptoms to those of the last, and of the 
 fate of the first there can be no doubt) had made the poisoner 
 rash, and when he put the finishing stroke to his last crime he 
 rushed on inevitable detection. It seems strange that he should 
 have returned from London after, doubtless, procuring there the 
 means of suicide. But who can explain the workings of a mind 
 enmeshed in such a terrible net? That he fully realised his 
 situation after the holding of the first inquest was demonstrated 
 by the evidence of his landlady as to his frantic action in rushing 
 to the window, from which she thought he would have thrown 
 himself, and by the blow with which he fractured the mirror in 
 the room and cut his face and throat with the broken fragments 
 of glass. But this impulse towards despair and self-destruction 
 was restrained for a time only to gather force and be carried out 
 in a more terrible, if a more collected, manner. 
 
 There is a general resemblance in the circumstances of the 
 two events at Lewes in the t7th and at Brighton in the igth 
 century in the deadly means employed ; the chance of escape j 
 and then the sudden flashing out of the truth and the self-inflicted 
 punishment of the culprit. But the relations of the parties in the 
 modern crime were closer and the circumstances surrounding it 
 more terrible. 
 
 Passing over the twin tragedies of Celia Holloway and 
 Hannah Hobbs, the one brought home so completely to the 
 guilty party, the other still shrouded in the mystery which involved 
 it from the very first, as too revolting in their details to be told 
 again, we come upon another undiscovered crime, connected with, 
 though not committed in, Brighton, which stands out from the 
 ordinary class of " bloody deeds," not only by the social position 
 of the victim, and the utter failure to discover his " takers-off," 
 but by the strange circumstance which preceded the deed, and by 
 the puzzling fact which, after a considerable lapse of time, re- 
 called the memory of it. 
 
 We refer to the death of Mr. George Stonhouse Griffith, the 
 owner of the Rock Brewery, in Brighton, on the night of Tuesday, 
 February 6th, 1849.
 
 SUSSEX TRAGEDIES AND ROMANCES. 209 
 
 At the time of his death few men were better known at 
 Brighton than Mr. Griffith. He was indeed a new comer ; he had 
 resided in Brighton little more than three years, and he was a 
 stranger when he came ; but his manners were open, frank, and 
 pleasant, and his countenance was in harmony with his manners. 
 It was a pleasant and good-looking one. Then his position as 
 the head of a brewing .establishment (he had previously been 
 connected with the law), was a good one, and he had taken the 
 popular side in local politics, and distinguished himself as a 
 Commissioner by his spirited opposition to the Clerk of that body, 
 Mr. Lewis Slight, then exercising a predominant influence over 
 that body, but with a growing opposition to his rule in which Mr. 
 Griffith took a leading, if not a very successful, part. 
 
 Such was Mr. Griffith's position ; a man happy in his domestic 
 circumstances with a wife and children at the head of a large 
 and, it is to be presumed, prosperous business, enjoying good 
 health, good spirits, and the good opinion of his fellow-townsmen, 
 on the day in February, 1849, on which he set out on that 
 journey from which he never returned alive. 
 
 It was customary with the " house " to visit its customers in 
 the north-west of Sussex, at Horsham, Henfield, &c., on the 
 first Tuesday of the month ; and at one time Mr. Griffith made 
 the journey himself; but for the twelve months preceding this 
 February of 1849 he had discontinued it; his head clerk, Mr. 
 Martin, taking his place. A circumstance, however, now occurred 
 which induced him once more to make the journey. A warning 
 letter was received early in January by Mr. Martin, couched in the 
 following terms : 
 
 "SIR, Some parties intend to rob you next time you goes to 
 Horsham, so bee on your gaaxL" 
 
 This singular epistle was directed to " Mr. Mertens, Griffis 
 Bruery," and the post-mark showed that it had been put into the 
 box of the Trafalgar-street receiving house of the Brighton Post 
 Office. The handwriting was evidently a disguised one ; in the 
 
 p
 
 210 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 opinion of those expert in such matters it was written with the left 
 hand, and the bad spelling was evidently assumed, it being 
 altogether unlikely that a person who could spell such a word as 
 " parties " correctly, would stumble at " bee " and " gard." 
 
 The letter was, of course, shown to Mr. Griffith by his 
 clerk, and its effect was, to induce him again to make the journey 
 himself, taking with him a pair of pocket pistols, which Mr. 
 Martin had borrowed of a friend in case he had gone. An offer 
 made by the Chief Officer of the Brighton Police (Mr. Chase), 
 to whom the letter was also shown, to accompany Mr. Griffith on 
 the return journey by night was declined by him, as was also the 
 company of Mr. Martin. He wished, he told the latter, to give 
 a young friend staying with him a drive. However, he eventually 
 went alone, in a light gig hired for the occasion. He was a fine, 
 athletic man, in the prime of life, between 42 and 43 a 
 formidable antagonist for any single assailant, and, with fire-arms, 
 it might have been thought, a match for many. He seems to have 
 had no fears ; he did not even tell his wife of the anonymous 
 letter. And yet he was a cautious and prudent man, as is testified 
 by the fact that not long before he had insured his life for a large 
 sum. 
 
 The out-journey was made in safety. Horsham, West 
 Grinstead, Henfield were called at and accounts collected. At 
 the former place the wife of the landlord, Mrs. Ansell, remarked 
 on the lateness of the hour and the fact that some robberies had 
 been recently committed in that vicinity, whereupon, according to 
 her statement at the subsequent inquest, Mr. Griffith took out of 
 his pocket a red bag containing fire-arms. Never having seen 
 such a weapon before, she asked him if it was a pistol > He 
 replied "Yes," and proceeded to unscrew it, putting in first a 
 round ball, and then, at the trigger part, some powder. As he 
 was replacing the loaded weapon in the bag, the string broke, and 
 he put the pistol in the right-hand pocket of his great coat. He 
 then took out another bag, also containing a pistol, on which a 
 neighbour of Mrs. Ansell who was present asked if that too was 
 loaded ? Mr. Griffith replied, " No. I'll warrant the other will
 
 SUSSEX TRAGEDIES AND ROMANCES. 211 
 
 be enough for one man. I shall not give up my money easily." 
 He did not take the second pistol out of the bag ; but Mrs. 
 Ansell saw the end of the weapon in it. 
 
 Mr Griffith was now on his return-journey to Brighton, and 
 night had set in. But it was not dark ; for the moon, though 
 obscured by a hazy atmosphere, cast a bright light, almost as 
 strong as day, upon the surrounding country. When he reached 
 Henfield it was half-past eight He took tea with the landlady of 
 the White Hart, who afterwards spoke of him as being in high 
 spirits, and as playing with her children in his usual kind way. 
 She paid him a $ Brighton Union Bank note, the number 
 of which, with the business habits peculiar to him, he 
 entered in his memorandum-book. He left Henfield at 10 minutes 
 to 9, and at 5 minutes past 9 he passed through Terry's Cross- 
 gate, a mile and a half further on the road to Brighton. He was 
 then driving steadily at about six miles an hour. The gate- 
 keeper was expecting him, and exchanged salutations with him as 
 he passed through without stopping. The next turnpike was 
 Dale Gate, about three miles further on, and here, too, the gate- 
 keeper was expecting him between 9 and 10 o'clock. But he 
 never came. The road between Terry's Cross-gate and Dale 
 Gate is very lonely, but open. To the right, coming towards 
 Brighton, the country slopes up to the South Downs in wide open 
 fields, with "occupation roads," lined by low hedges, running 
 down from the hills to the highway. Mr. Griffith was now 
 skirting one of these sloping fields, called the " Deadway's Field." 
 After leaving Terry's Cross Gate, there is a strong rise in the road, 
 up which the horse must have walked, and here, one would have 
 thought, would have been the spot selected for a robbery, for from 
 neither side is a habitation to be seen. This, however, was passed 
 in safety, and then, on arriving at the top of the ascent, New- 
 timber Church comes into sight, and, on the same side, the left, 
 a farmhouse and a cottage. This point, too, was passed without 
 obstruction ; and now, after a short fall in the road, there is 
 another rise not so sharp as the former one, but still sufficient, 
 with the heavy state of the road and the long journey of the
 
 212 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 horse, to bring it to a walking pace. Here the attack must have 
 been made, for at this spot about 600 yards from Dale Gate 
 the lifeless body of Mr. Griffith was found, between one and two 
 o'clock in the morning, by a party of gentlemen returning home 
 late from a shooting party at Newtimber, to whom Mr. Griffith 
 was well known. He was lying on his back, with his great coat 
 torn open (a button was off it), and the knees of his trousers and 
 the front part of his dress stained vvith mud, but no other sign of 
 violence beyond the immediate cause of death. This was a pistol 
 shot in the centre of the chest, high up, and so close to the body 
 when fired that it had scorched Mr. Griffith's shirt and 
 a piece of chamois leather which he wore beneath it, 
 and a part of the wadding had gone into the wound. This 
 must have been instantly fatal ; for the bullet, after passing 
 the breast bone, took a side direction and went right through the 
 heart, in which it was found lodged. The conclusion was, that, 
 after receiving it, the unfortunate gentleman fell on his back and 
 was so suffered to remain while he was robbed, his pockets being 
 turned inside out. But in that case he must either have alighted 
 or been dragged from his vehicle, and then shot, for the medical 
 man examined at the inquest, Mr. Harry Mills Blaker, was decided 
 on the point that he was standing when shot, and immediately 
 fell backwards and died. He might have uttered, said Mr. Blaker, 
 one shriek or moan,- and such a death-shriek was heard by the 
 keeper's wife at Dale Gate at half-past nine. 
 
 But, however instantaneous the death of Mr. Griffith, it was 
 obvious that he was not surprised by his assailants, and did not 
 die without a struggle. It would have been impossible, in such 
 an open country, and on so light a night, to come upon him 
 unawares, forewarned as he had been and prepared as he was for 
 the attack ; and then, too, as a proof that he was not so surprised, 
 he had had time to take off his right-hand glove and to draw and 
 discharge, or attempt to discharge, a pistol. The weapon 
 was found on the road two yards and a half from his body. 
 Then, too, his whip was broken, as though by a blow given with 
 it, and the reins had been cut, and a portion of them was found
 
 SUSSEX TRAGEDIES AND ROMANCES. 21$ 
 
 lying on the road, with a clasped knife, by which, no doubt, it had 
 been done ; and Mr. Griffith's hat and empty purse, and with them 
 the frame of a pair of spectacles, with some crape attached to it, 
 intended, it may be presumed, to conceal an assailant's face, were 
 also lying in the road near the dead body. When, too, the gig, 
 which had been turned round towards Henfield, was examined, 
 it was found that the step had been forced round in a way that 
 could only have been effected by great violence. There were no 
 marks of blood or other signs to denote a struggle in the gig, only 
 the cut reins and the broken whip and the twisted step ; nor did 
 the ground, where Mr. Griffith was lying, show any signs of a 
 struggle. But the above facts are conclusive that there must have 
 been a struggle between Mr Griffith and his assailants before the 
 fatal shot was fired. 
 
 The booty resulting from the deed could not have been 
 great. It was supposed that Mr. Griffith had upon him about 20 
 in cash ; he had taken a cheque of ^13 on the Chichester Bank, 
 and 3-jCS Brighton Union Bank note. These were missing, and 
 his watch a gold one had been wrenched off the gold chain 
 by which it hung round his neck ; but a considerable part of the 
 chain itself was found attached to the back part of his neck, as 
 if flung round by the violence of the rupture, and a gold 
 mourning ring was still on his finger. 
 
 The excitement caused by the event in Brighton and in the 
 County generally, when made known, cannot easily be described. 
 If such a man, so armed and forewarned, could thus be attacked 
 and murdered on a highway so much frequented as that between 
 Dale Gate and Henfield, who could be safe ? A reward of ^300 
 was offered ;ioo by the Government, and ^200 by private 
 subscription to anyone who could give evidence that would lead 
 to the conviction of the murderers, and a free pardon to any party 
 who did not actually commit the crime. Both the East Sussex 
 and the Brighton Constabularies put forth their utmost efforts to 
 obtain some clue. But without avail. The Coroner's Inquest, 
 held at the Plough Inn, at Piecombe, brought out the above facts, 
 and ended in a verdict of " Wilful murder against some persons
 
 214 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 unknown," the jury giving it as their decided opinion that more 
 than one person must have been concerned in the crime. But 
 not the slightest evidence was forthcoming as to the guilty parties. 
 The question was asked by a juror whether the fatal shot might 
 not have been fired by deceased himself, either in a struggle or 
 otherwise? But to this a decided negative was given by Mr. 
 Blaker. It was impossible, he said, that deceased could have 
 inflicted such a wound on himself. The bullet came straight from 
 the orifice of the pistol. This put the hypothesis of a suicide out 
 of Court, and it was never raised by the parties whom it most 
 concerned to do so : the Insurance office. 
 
 It has been named that one of Mr. Griffith's pistols was found 
 lying near him on the road. The pan was open and the trigger 
 down, so that it had been pulled. But, upon being examined by 
 the police, it was found that the barrel was clean, and the 
 constable who took charge of it after it was picked up expressed 
 his belief that it had not been discharged, and, therefore, could 
 not have been loaded by Mr. Griffith. A loaded pistol was found 
 in the right hand pocket of his great coat where he had been 
 seen to place one by Mrs. Ansell at Horsham and at that time, 
 it will be recollected, Mr. Griffith said the other pistol, which was 
 in a bag, was unloaded. The inference, then, is, that when Mr. 
 Griffith saw he was about to be attacked, he drew forth the 
 unloaded weapon, and that the one shot heard, for several 
 witnesses spoke distinctly to hearing the report of one shot, and 
 one only, at the time, half-past nine, at or about which Mr. 
 Griffith must have reached the " Deadways field," and that it came 
 from that direction, must have been that fired by his murderers. 
 That Mr. Griffith should have made such a strange and so fatal 
 a mistake, and that such a powerful man should have been pulled 
 from his vehicle and have suffered a pistol to be discharged so 
 close to him as to burn his clothes, does seem strange, and 
 certainly bears out the conclusion of the jury that more than one 
 person were concerned in the crime. In which case detection 
 should have been easy, especially when the anonymous letter 
 points to the probability, if not certainty, that the criminals were
 
 SUSSEX TRAGEDIES AND ROMANCES. 21$ 
 
 known to the writer of it, and thus brings a third party into the 
 field. Yet neither the writer of that strange letter, nor any other 
 party to the crime, came forward to claim the reward offered, 
 coupled as it was with a promise of forgiveness to any except the 
 actual murderer. 
 
 If the motive to the deed had been personal revenge, this 
 could be understood. But the anonymous warning was against 
 robbery, and a robbery was perpetrated, though here, again, a 
 remarkable circumstance comes to throw additional mystery over 
 the affair. Seven years after the death of Mr. Griffith, when all 
 hope had died out of any further light being thrown on it, an 
 important part of the booty the gold watch, with a fragment of 
 the broken chain attached to it was found in a pond which was 
 being " mudded " at Nutknowl, which lies by the side of the 
 highway between Henfield and the spot where Mr. Griffith's body 
 was found. How did it come there ? Did the murderer, fearful 
 of being found in possession of so damning a piece of evidence, 
 fling it away almost as soon as he had got it ? Then why did he 
 take it at the peril of his life ? Robbers especially highwaymen 
 do not act in this way, unless in immediate danger of appre- 
 hension, and nobody ran this risk as a murderer of Mr. Griffith. 
 A few people of doubtful character were questioned as to their 
 whereabouts on the night in question ; but nobody was ever taken 
 into custody or even lay under suspicion. There was a rumour 
 about two men being seen in the neighbourhood on the day of 
 the murder; but they could not have been Brighton men, or 
 they would have been marked and known ; and if strangers, how 
 is the warning letter to be explained ? This points to a long- 
 planned robbery, and if so, it must have been planned by men 
 living in the same town as the writer of the letter and the intended 
 victim resided in that is, Brighton. It must not be forgotten, 
 too, that the warning letter was sent, not to Mr. GrLiith, but to 
 Mr. Martin, his clerk that he was the party who, in the ordinary 
 course of events, would have made the journey, and he, therefore, 
 must have been the object of attack, and not Mr. Griffith. This 
 does away with the idea of personal revenge as a motive to the 
 crime.
 
 2l6 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 There is one circumstance in this mysterious crime to which 
 we have not referred, namely, the presumptive evidence of a desire 
 for concealment on the part of one of the murderers, in the shape 
 of the mask formed by the spectacle frame and the crape. Was, 
 then, the assailant known to his intended victim ? If so, he could 
 not have been unknown to Mr. Griffith's friends and dependents, 
 to Mr. Martin especially, whom he must have expected to meet, 
 and he could scarcely have avoided suspicion. None such 
 ever fell on any individual. How singular, too, that this piece of 
 disguise (which might have led to detection) and the knife with 
 which the reins were cut should have been left in the road, when 
 they might have been, in a comparatively clear night, so easily 
 carried off ! for it was some hours before any passer-by came to 
 discover the body. Yet the men who did not do this took the 
 precaution to turn round the horse and gig to prevent an alarm at 
 Dale Gate ! 
 
 From first to last, then, from the receipt of the anonymous 
 and warning letter to the finding of the lost watch, the death of 
 Mr. Griffith is involved in a strange mystery. That an act so fore- 
 seen and so guarded against should have been successful, is not 
 the least extraordinary part of it. The chances were a hundred 
 to one against the success of the attack : against the journey being 
 made at all, after the warning given ; against its being made alone, 
 or on that day or at that time of night, without which the crime 
 could not have been committed, also against the party attacked 
 being unarmed, or rather against the weapon he used being 
 unloaded, and against the one shot fired at him being fatal ; and 
 with more than one shot the chances of an alarm being given 
 would have been more than doubled. Even that one report was 
 heard by several persons. Then, when the crime had been suc- 
 cessfully perpetrated, that the escape from detection, or even 
 suspicion, should have been so complete, is most remarkable. 
 That there should have been a person of some education and 
 intelligence cognizant of a criminal intention, ready to give a 
 warning, and yet, when a great crime had been committed, deaf to 
 all the appeals and rewards of justice, does excite our wonder,
 
 SUSSEX TRAGEDIES AND ROMANCES. 21 7 
 
 and lead us to question the truth of the old adage that " Murder 
 will out," or, " though it have no tongue, will speak with most 
 miraculous organ." 
 
 Sussex has not furnished many contributions to the romance 
 of County History. Its County families have, for the most part, 
 led a quiet, secluded, respectable life, pursuing their bucolic 
 pleasures, and discharging their Magisterial duties, with a homely 
 kind of ambition that has preserved them from those temptations 
 and dangers, not to say crimes, that attend on a more brilliant 
 mode of life. There have, of course, been exceptions to this rule. 
 The tragical fate of Lord Dacre " of the South," in the reign of 
 Henry the Eighth, was one of these ? and has already been 
 recorded in these pages. The adventurous careers of the three 
 Shirley's, whose love of wandering took them into the East and 
 made one of them the favourite of Shah Abbas, are another 
 instance of departure from the home-staying habits of Sussex 
 gentry. But, as a rule, the biography of our Sussex County 
 families furnishes few materials for that romance in which many 
 other Counties are so rich ; and where the novelist or romance- 
 writer has, like Horace Smith, in his " Brambletye House," or 
 Harrison Ainsworth, in his " Rookwood," made Sussex the scene 
 of his story, it is to his invention rather than to historical or bio- 
 graphical fact that he has been indebted for any exciting or 
 tragical events that may have figured in it. 
 
 There is, however, one incident in the history of a Sussex 
 family overlooked by novelists and romancists, and, so far as our 
 knowledge extends, unnoticed by our County annalists, which 
 makes good the saying that " fact is strange stranger than 
 fiction," and, as it casts no slur on any survivors of those who 
 took part in it, may be told without offence. 
 
 In July, 1820, a trial came on in the Court of Queen's Bench, 
 before the Lord Chief Justice and a Special Jury, upon the direc- 
 tion of the Lord Chancellor, to try whether the plaintiff, Eliza 
 Ann Harriet Sergison, was the daughter of the late Colonel 
 Francis Sergison, or whether she was a supposititious child imposed 
 upon the family by the contrivance of his wife.
 
 2l8 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 The Colonel Francis Sergison in question was the second son 
 of Francis Jefferson, Esq., a native of Yorkshire, and who had 
 taken the name and arras of the Sergisons of Cuckfield Place, 
 Sussex, on marrying the heiress of that family, and also of the 
 Wardens. His second son Francis entered the army, and must, 
 in those active times, have seen some service, for he rose to the 
 Colonelcy of the 62nd Regiment. But in the year 1806 he was 
 residing in Dublin upon half-pay, having, we are told, dissipated 
 the greater part of his fortune, and being, in fact, so reduced in 
 circumstances that he was thrown into the Dublin Gaol for debt. 
 Here he met with a companion in misfortune a widow named 
 Cronin a woman of great personal attractions, but not of the 
 most reputable character, for it was admitted that since the death 
 of her first husband, a journeyman coach-builder, she had borne 
 two illegitimate children, one of whom had been born on the 1 8th 
 of March, 1806, as her marriage with Colonel Sergison took place, 
 within the walls of the Dublin prison, on the 3oth of April follow- 
 ing ! The Colonel's first wife, too, had only died a few weeks 
 previous to the ceremony, so that little else is needed to bear out 
 the statement made on the trial that Colonel Francis Sergison was 
 a hasty, passionate man, very fond of having his own way ! 
 
 The newly-wedded couple soon after contrived to gain their 
 liberty, but lived for some time in embarrassed circumstances in 
 Dublin ; and it was during this period that the events took place 
 which were the subject of the trial at the Court of Queen's Bench 
 in 1820 13 years afterwards. 
 
 During the temporary absence of Col. Sergison sent out of 
 the way, it would seem, by design, on a visit to one of his wife's 
 illegitimate children Mrs. Sergison represented that she had been 
 confined, and presented to him, on his return, a female child as 
 his own offspring. It was, to all appearance, accepted by him as 
 such without suspicion, for he had believed his wife to be in the 
 family way, and the child was brought up by him as his heiress. 
 In the following year, 1808, the Colonel and his wife came to live 
 in England, and in 1811, by the death of his elder brother, Mr. 
 Warden Sergison, of Cuckfield Park, without issue, he came into
 
 SUSSEX TRAGEDIES AND ROMANCES. 219 
 
 the fine family property at Cuckfield, Sussex. And here he lived, 
 with his wife and his reputed daughter, Eliza Ann Harriet, up to 
 the time of his death, in 1812, Not only was the girl acknow- 
 ledged as his heiress, but she also inherited a considerable fortune 
 by the death of his mother, the 1ni|ess of the Wardens and 
 Sergisons. For some years the widow of the late Colonel must 
 have continued in the enjoyment of this, for the trial to decide 
 the question of birth did not, as we have said, take place until 
 July, 1820, when the child must have been nearly 13 years of age. 
 How long the proceedings lingered in Chancery, whence they 
 issued by the writ of the Lord Chancellor, Lord Eldon (not the 
 most expeditious of Judges !) we do not know ; but they 
 were instigated at the instance of the Rev. Mr. Pritchard, 
 who had married a younger sister of the Colonel, and 
 who, by his death, became the only surviving representative of the 
 Sergison and Warden families, that is, in case of no issue being 
 left by the Colonel. The legitimacy, therefore, of Eliza Ann 
 Harriet Sergison became a vital question to the family. Doubtless 
 some suspicious rumours had got abroad, which had reached the 
 ears of the Pritchards, and caused them to set enquiries on foot 
 in Ireland. And these at length ripened to a point which justified 
 legal steps, and brought about the trial in England. They must 
 have been conducted with great ability, for Mrs. Sergison, the 
 pseudo-mother of the girl who was made plaintiff in the case, 
 went into Court with the greatest confidence, and her cause, as it 
 really was, was conducted by the Solicitor-General of the day. 
 Mrs. Sergison, described as being a very fine woman, swore 
 positively that the child was hers by her late husband, 
 Colonel Francis Sergison, and appealed to the testimony of 
 several persons who were present at the birth ; naming one 
 Fitzsimmons as the accoucheur. Several of these persons were 
 called as witnesses, and swore, some to the pregnancy of Mrs. 
 Sergison previous to the birth, and some to the actual birth of the 
 child. 
 
 But, at the very time these witnesses and Mrs. Sergison were 
 thus giving their evidence, the most conclusive proof was in the
 
 220 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 hands of the opposite party of its falsehood, and not a small 
 portion of this proof was furnished by the acts of Mrs. Sergison 
 herself. 
 
 Mr. Scarlett (the first Lord Abinger), who conducted the 
 defence, began his speech by telling the Solicitor-General that he 
 (the Solicitor-General) was not aware of the case which he sup- 
 ported and that the lady who had sworn so firmly before the Court 
 had perjured herself in every word she had uttered. He proceeded 
 to prove this by reading letters from Mrs. Sergison to witnesses on 
 the other side, imploring them to go abroad or otherwise keep out 
 of the way, and to communicate with her for that purpose, un- 
 known to her solicitor. He then called these people, including a 
 female a Mrs. Gibson whom Mrs. Sergison had called in to aid 
 and assist her in the fraud also the accoucheur, Fitzsimmons, 
 and the real mother of the child, one Ann Magin, a servant at a 
 Dublin public-house. From their statements it appeared that in 
 January, 1807, whilst Col. Sergison was away, his wife went to 
 Mrs. Gibson, with whom she had previously been acquainted 
 whilst the wife of Cronin, and said she had supposed herself to 
 be with child, and dreaded the Colonel's violence when he 
 should discover her mistake and his disappointment. She 
 had, therefore, in conjunction with her servant, Nelly Cunning- 
 ham, formed a plan for imposing a supposititious child 
 upon him. This plan she disclosed to Mrs. Gibson, and they 
 proceeded to put it in execution. It had been previously ascer- 
 tained, by Mrs. Sergison's servant, Nelly Cunningham, that a 
 servant at a public-house, named Ann Magin, had been delivered 
 four days before of an illegitimate child, and this woman was 
 induced to part with the child a female one, with black eyes and 
 dark hair for three halt-crowns. It was taken by Nelly Cunningham 
 to a house in Angier-street, where Mrs. Sergison and Mrs. Gibson 
 were waiting for it ; and there Mr. Fitzsimmons, an accoucheur, 
 was sent for, and, after a conversation with Mrs. Sergison, consented 
 to play his part in the deception. The child was then taken by 
 Mrs. Sergison and Mrs. Gibson in a coach to the lodgings of the 
 former in Parliament-street, and was carried upstairs by Mrs.
 
 SUSSEX TRAGEDIES AND ROMANCES. . 221 
 
 Gibson in her muff ; something having been given it to make it 
 sleep. In half-an-hour after Mr. Fitzsimmons came. Mrs. 
 Sergison then went to bed, and the child was laid on the bed by 
 her. The trick was never suspected by Colonel Sergison, who 
 looked upon the child as his own, and died in that belief. In all 
 respects it was brought up and treated as the heiress of the Sergison 
 family. Yet, as Mrs. Gibson told Mrs. Sergison in 1819, when the 
 latter went to Dublin with her supposed daughter, in order to 
 induce her (Mrs. Gibson) to go to America, at that very moment 
 the real mother of the child was selling apples at the corner of the 
 street in which they were ! 
 
 In addition to this viva voce evidence, letters were produced 
 from Mrs. Sergison to Nelly Cunningham (dead at the time of the 
 trial) to show that Nelly was acquainted with the secret of the so- 
 called Miss Sergison's birth and extraction, and that she received 
 an annuity as the price of her silence. In fact, there could be 
 no doubt of the fraud, and the jury had no difficulty, under the 
 direction of the Lord Chief Justice, in coming to a verdict for the 
 defendant, the effect of which was to establish the illegitimacy of 
 Eliza Ann Harriet Sergison and to transfer the Sergison and 
 Warden estates to the rightful heirs, the Pritchards, by whom the 
 surname and arms of Sergison were forthwith assumed, and by 
 whose descendants they are now borne. 
 
 What became of Mrs. Colonel Francis Sergison and the poor 
 girl who was made the innocent instrument of her fraud, we are 
 not able to say. In all probability, the former had a provision for 
 life, as the widow of Colonel Sergison, and no further proceedings 
 seem to have been taken against her, for perjury or fraud. The 
 child of the Dublin applewoman was, it is to be hoped, either 
 maintained by her or some provision made for it by the Sergison 
 family. The escape of the latter from being made the victims of 
 a cunningly-devised scheme was a narrow one ; if successful, it 
 would have been a singular, but perhaps not unique, mode of 
 keeping up the line of descent of two ancient families ! As it is, 
 the san% azule of the Wardens and Sergisons flows unsullied in the 
 veins of its head, Captain Warden Sergison, of Cuckfield Park,
 
 222 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 and, seeing how numerous are the branches to the family-tree, 
 there is little likelihood of its being exhausted. 
 
 Another romantic incident and of a more touching character 
 unstained, too, by any associations of crime, is furnished by the 
 local history of Maresfield, and is told so unaffectedly by the late 
 Rector of that parish, the Rev. E. Turner, that we give it in his 
 language. When touching on the family mansion, at Maresfield, 
 of the Relphes, of " Marshalls," he says : 
 
 " The melancholy circumstances attending the death of a 
 female of this family, resident in Buxted, and of a gentleman 
 named Atkinson, to whom she was affianced, was deemed by Mr. 
 Mitchell, the then rector of Maresfield, of sufficient interest to 
 merit more than a mere formal register of their burial. He has 
 therefore recorded them in a Latin note ; and they are certainly, 
 as Mr. Mitchell commences by saying, worthy of being delivered 
 down to posterity. The entries of their burial are i 
 
 " 1742. Dec. I4th, buried Mrs. Mary Relfe, of Buxted. 
 " 1742. Dec. 15th, Mr. James Atkinson, of London. 
 
 "A mutual attachment, he continues, had for some time 
 existed between them, and the day fixed for their marriage was 
 close at hand, when a special messenger unexpectedly arrived in 
 London, where Mr. Atkinson appears to have held some public 
 appointment, for the purpose of announcing the sad intelligence 
 of the dangerous illness of the lady. He hastened to Buxted, and 
 found the object of his dearest affections at the point of death. 
 Gratified by the sight of her lover, and at this proof of his sincere 
 attachment to her, she revived a little at the sight of him, and 
 lived, contrary to all expectation, two days after his arrival, 
 during which time he continued by her bedside, administering 
 to her wants, and refusing to take food, or to be in any way com- 
 forted. She died on the evening of Sunday, on which day, sick in 
 body, but much more sick in mind, he took to his bed, and there 
 lay, overpowered by the intensity of his grief, and praying 
 continually for relief by death, until the following Sunday, when 
 he died, at the very same hour in the evening that she expired ;
 
 SUSSEX TRAGEDIES AND ROMANCES. 223 
 
 his death having taken place the day she was buried, and he him- 
 self being buried the very day they were to have been married. 
 They are interred, side by side, in the churchyard of this parish, 
 at the east end of the chancel. As the name of Atkinson occurs 
 frequently in the registers about this time, the broken-hearted- 
 swain in this case was probably a native of Maresfield, as well as 
 the lady to whom he was so devotedly attached." 
 
 We think it is Dr. Johnson who doubts if such a thing as a 
 broken heart is to be found within the range of pathological 
 science. But, if the above facts be true, and there is every 
 reason to receive them as such, the strong sympathy between 
 two human beings which we call love has been the cause of 
 death, and it little matters in what region of the body the cause of 
 dissolution lay. In figurative speech, if not in actual fact, James 
 Atkinson died of a broken heart.
 
 224 
 
 SUSSEX POETS. 
 
 TT may be questioned if any County can produce four 
 greater names in English literature than those of John 
 Fletcher, Thomas Otway, William Collins, and Percy Bysshe 
 Shelley. These are the Dii majores of Sussex. We have also 
 many poets of the second and third class, not unknown to fame, 
 but better known in their own day than they are now. Amongst 
 these are Hayley, Hurdis, Charlotte Smith, Clio Rickman, George 
 Frederick Richardson, Charles Crocker, and Charles Verral. 
 
 To the four great names that head our roll of Sussex Poets 
 it would be impossible for any writer, short of the highest order, 
 to do full justice. To make use of Fletcher's own magnificent 
 language, in which he makes Caesar mourn over the murdered 
 Pompey, 
 
 " Nothing can cover their high fame but Heaven ; 
 No pyramids set off their memories, 
 But the eternal substance of their greatness, 
 To which we leave them." 
 
 But, before referring to these great poets, three of whom 
 were dramatists (for Shelley is entitled to take rank with 
 Shakspeare, Marlowe, Webster, Fletcher, and Otway, by virtue of 
 his " Cenci "), we ought not to forget that the precursor of all 
 these sons of fame the first Englishman who wrote a tragedy 
 worthy to be so called was a native of Sussex : Thomas 
 Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, afterwards Earl of Dorset. "The 
 earliest tragedy," according to Hazlitt, in his lectures on the 
 Elizabethan Dramatists, "that we have that of Ferrex and 
 Porrex, or Gordubuc, as it has been generally called," was his 
 production, and was in that blank verse which, as subsequently 
 used by Marlowe and then by Shakspeare, became the most
 
 SUSSEX POETS. 225 
 
 powerful vehicle for passion and pathos since the days of Eschylus 
 and Sophocles. " Gordubuc " was first acted, and with applause, 
 before Elizabeth in 1561, when its author was still a young man. 
 Hazlitt, judging it by comparison with what came later, is severe 
 upon it. "As a work of genius," he says, "it may be set down 
 as nothing, for it contains hardly a memorable line or passage. As 
 a work of art, and the first of its kind attempted in the language, 
 it may be considered as a monument of the taste and skill of the 
 author." He quotes some passages which go far to overthrow his 
 unfavourable judgment. Certainly there is poetic genius in the 
 following lines, in which the heroine laments over the untimely 
 death of her lover, Ferrex : 
 
 " Ah ! noble prince, how oft have I beheld 
 Thee mounted on thy fierce and trampling steed, 
 Shining in armour bright before the tilt, 
 And with thy mistress' sleeve tied on thy helm, 
 And charge thy staff to please thy lady's eye, 
 That bowed the head-piece of thy friendly foe ! 
 How oft in arms on horse to bend the mace, 
 How oft in arms on foot to break the sword, 
 Which never now these eyes may see again ! " 
 
 Does not this passage recall as well as anticipate those of a 
 great poet of our own days : 
 
 " So like a shattered column lay the King, 
 Not like that Arthur who, with lance in rest, 
 From spur to plume a star of tournament, 
 Shot thro' the lists at Camelot, and charged 
 Before the eyes of ladies and of Kings." 
 
 The thought and feeling are the same in both, and even in 
 the imagery there is resemblance enough to make the parallel a 
 striking one. Both have the true touch of pathos, and the ring of 
 chivalry, in them. 
 
 But we must leave Thomas Sackville in his glory as the first 
 writer of English tragedy, to come to a greater than he : John 
 Fletcher, the author of " The Faithful Shepherdess," one of the
 
 226 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 sweetest and richest Pastoral Poems ever written, worthy of 
 Arcadia itself in its most palmy days, and the writer, first in 
 conjunction with his friend, Francis Beaumont, and afterwards by 
 his unaided pen, of a large number of plays, of almost every style, 
 from that of Seneca to that of Plautus. In speaking of 
 " The Faithful Shepherdess," Hazlitt says it comes near to 
 Spenser in a certain tender and voluptuous sense of natural beauty, 
 whilst in the playful and fantastic expression of it he approaches 
 Shakspeare ; and he quotes some passages which bear out the 
 eulogy. Here is one : the description of a spot well fitted for 
 love, described by Chloe to Thenot : 
 
 -" Here be woods as green 
 
 As any, air likewise as fresh and sweet 
 As where smooth Zephyrus plays on the fleet 
 Face of the curled stream, with flow'rs as many 
 As the young Spring gives, and choice as any ; 
 Here be all new delights, cool streams and wells, 
 Arbours o'ergrow with woodbine ; caves and dells ; 
 Chuse where thou wilt, while I sit by and sing, 
 Or gather rushes, to make many a ring 
 For thy long fingers ; tell thee tales of love, 
 How the pale Phoebe, hunting in a grove, 
 First saw the boy Endymion, from whose eyes 
 She took eternal fire that never dies ; 
 How she conveyed him softly, in a sleep, 
 His temples bound with poppy, to the steep 
 Head of old Latmos, where she stoops each night, 
 Gilding the mountain with her brother's light, 
 To kiss her sweetest." 
 
 The invocation of Amaryllis to Pan, the God of Shepherds, 
 to save her from the violence of the Sullen Shepherd, for Syrinx* 
 sake 
 
 " For her dear sake 
 
 That loves the rivers' brinks, and still doth quake 
 In cold remembrance of thy quick pursuit " 
 
 this has the magic touch of Shakspeare in it ; and in some
 
 SUSSEX POETS. 227 
 
 passages it is obvious that Fletcher set a copy which Milton was 
 not loath to follow in his Comus Ex. gr. : 
 
 " Yet I have heard, (my mother told it me, 
 And now I do believe it), if I keep 
 My virgin flow'r uncropt, pure, chaste, and fair, 
 No goblin, wood-god, fairy, elf, or fiend, 
 Satyr, or other power that haunts the groves, 
 Shall hurt my body, or by vain illusion 
 Draw me to wander after idle fires ; 
 Or voices calling me in dead of night 
 To make rne follow, and so tole me on 
 Thro' mire and standing pools to find my ruin ; 
 Else, why should this rough thing, who never knew 
 Manners, nor smooth humanity, whose heats 
 Are rougher than himself, and more misshapen, 
 Thus mildly kneel to me ? Sure there's a pow'r 
 In that great name of Virgin, that binds fast 
 All rude uncivil bloods, all appetites 
 That break their confines : then, strong Chastity, 
 Be thou my strongest guard, for here I dwell 
 In opposition against fate and hell !" 
 
 " The lady " in Comus does but repeat this pure sweet strain of 
 our great Sussex poet. 
 
 When we consider that the hand that writ this sweetest of 
 pastoral poems was also the author (in conjunction, it is thought, 
 with Shakspeare himself) of " The Two Noble Kinsmen," and 
 that he soars in it to Shaksperian heights also that he wrote the 
 play of " Philaster, or Love lies a Bleeding," in which, as Hazlitt 
 says, " The passages of extreme romantic beauty and high-wrought 
 passion are out of number " ought we not to think much of our 
 Sussex poet ? Ought nut Rye to be very proud of having given 
 birth to him? It did so, it would seem, in 1579. His father, 
 Ur. Fletcher, was then Vicar of Rye, and subsequently held in 
 succession the Sees of Bristol, Worcester, and London owing 
 them, apparently, as much to his good looks (Queen Elizabeth ever 
 liked a handsome face in a man) as to his piety or learning. 
 Marrying, however, a second time, once too often for his Royal
 
 228 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 and fickle mistress, he fell into her displeasure, and so pined 
 away and died most unbishoplike ! It was, probably, this reverse 
 of fortune to his father that caused the son, like so many young 
 men of the day, to take to play-writing. Upon leaving the 
 University, and finding a congenial spirit in Francis Beaumont, 
 also fresh from College, these twin-Poets set up a partnership 
 which aimed at nothing less than rivalry of Shakspeare, and 
 the produce of which was accepted by a later age as superior to 
 his work. This decision has, of course, long been reversed, and 
 the space which separates Shakspeare from all other poets becomes 
 greater and greater as Time rolls on. Yet, so far as Shakspeare 
 can be approached, he is approached by Fletcher. Speaking of 
 him and Shakspeare's other great contemporaries, Hazlitt says : 
 
 " They are a mighty phalanx of kindred spirits closing him 
 (Shakspeare) round, moving in the same orbit, and impelled by the 
 same causes in their whirling and eccentric career. They had the 
 same faults and the same excellences ; the same strength and depth 
 and richness, the same truth of character, passion, imagination, 
 thought, and language, thrown, heaped, massed together without 
 careful polishing or exact method, but poured out in unconcerned 
 profusion from the lap of nature and genius in boundless and 
 unrivalled magnificence. The sweetness of Deckar, the grace 
 of Fletcher and his young-eyed wit, Jonson's learned sock, the 
 flowing vein of Middleton, Heywood's ease, the pathos of Webster, 
 and Marlow's deep designs, add a double lustre to the sweetness, 
 thought, gravity, grace, wit, artless nature, copiousness, ease, pathos, 
 and sublime conceptions of Shakspeare's Muse. They are indeed 
 the scale by which we can best ascend to the true knowledge and love 
 of him. Our admiration of them does not lessen our relish for him ; 
 but, on the contrary, increases and confirms it." 
 
 Fletcher died unmarried, in 1625, it is supposed of the 
 plague then raging in London, and was buried at St. Mary's, now 
 St. Saviour's, Southwark. Little or nothing is known of his habits 
 of life, except that he and Beaumont were gay young men, 
 " about town," " noble-swelling spirits," affecting a more 
 aristocratic, or, as we should say now-a-days, fashionable tone and 
 air than their great contemporaries. With these, however, we 
 know, from Beaumont's poetic description to Jonson of what they
 
 SUSSEX POETS. 229 
 
 did at the Mermaid, they mingled, and the very talk of the two 
 friends is said to have been a " comedy." Sometimes, too, it 
 must have been something higher, for how richly stored must have 
 been the minds of which such gems as these were the out-flow : 
 
 MELANCHOLY. 
 
 " Hence, all you vain delights, 
 As short as are the nights 
 Wherein you spend your folly ; 
 There's nought in this life sweet, 
 If man were wise to see't, 
 But only melancholy. 
 Oh, sweetest melancholy ! 
 Welcome folded arms and fixed eyes, 
 A sight that piercing mortifies : 
 A look that's fasten'd to the ground, 
 A tongue chain'd up without a sound ; 
 Fountain heads, and pathless groves, 
 Places which pale passion loves : 
 Moon-light walks, when all the fowls 
 Are warmly hous'd, save bats and owls ; 
 A midnight bell, a passing groan, 
 These are the sounds we feed upon : 
 Then stretch our bones in a still, gloomy valley ; 
 Nothing so dainty sweet as lonely melancholy." 
 
 MAN. 
 
 " Like to the falling of a star, 
 Or as the flights of eagles are, 
 Or like the fresh Spring's gaudy hue, 
 Or silver drops of morning dew, 
 Or like a wind that chafes the flood, 
 Or bubbles which on water stood : 
 E'en such is man, whose borrowM light 
 Is straight call'd in and paid to-night : 
 The wind blows out, the bubble dies ; 
 The Spring intomb'd in Autumn lies ; 
 The dew's dried up, the star is shot, 
 The flight is past, and man forgot" 
 
 There is a honeyed sweetness in this verse which has never
 
 230 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 been surpassed. And yet we question if many Sussex ears have 
 feasted on it before. And Rye, has she any memorial of her 
 greatest son ? We wot not. Otway has not long had one at his 
 birth-place, and Horsham knows nothing of Shelley. But poets 
 like these need no monuments beyond their own works. They 
 alone are indestructible. 
 
 Thomas Otway was born in 1651, in the little village of 
 Trotton (West Sussex), of which his father was curate, and sub- 
 sequently Rector of the adjacent parish of Woolbeding. The 
 spot is well-fitted by its rural beauty and picturesque scenery for 
 a pastoral poet. But Otway's genius did not lie, like Fletcher's, 
 in this direction ; nor was there, in the licentious age of the 
 second Charles, much demand for that kind of poetry. A new 
 taste and a new style of literature had been imported from France, 
 and a license was permitted, nay, demanded, of writers for the 
 stage that even the later dramatists of James's days would have 
 scarcely satisfied. The R.ochesters, the Davenants, and the 
 Ethereges were now in the ascendant ; and even men of 
 true genius, like Dryden and Otway, had to swim with the 
 stream. 
 
 At the age of 18 years Otway, like Fletcher, was sent (from 
 Winchester School) to the University of Oxford, which he left in 
 1670 without a degree, and betook himself, not to his Sussex 
 home, but to London, "to seek his fortune." The reason for 
 this step was pointed out by us in the Brighton Herald 20 years 
 ago. An examination of the parish register of Woolbeding* 
 at that time led to the discovery, not only of the entry 
 of Otway's birth, but of the death of his father, then Rector of 
 Woolbeding, in February, 1670. The death of the father, in 
 Otway's as in Fletcher's case, threw the son on his own resources, 
 at the early age of 19, and his tastes, probably, as well as his 
 necessities drew him to the stage. In one of his minor poems, 
 
 * Made by the courtesy and with the assistance of the Kev. F. Bourdillon, 
 then the Incumbent of Woolbeding.
 
 SUSSEX POETS. 2JI 
 
 " The Poet's Complaint of his Muse," he thus describes his 
 own situation at this time : 
 
 " I am a wretch of honest race : 
 My parents not obscure, nor high in title were : 
 
 They left me heir to no disgrace : 
 My father was (a thing now rare) 
 Loyal and brave : my mother chaste and fair. 
 Their pledge of marriage-vows was only I ; 
 Alone I liv'd, their much-lov'd fondled boy ; 
 They gave me generous education high, 
 They strove to raise my mind, and with it grew their joy. 
 The sages that instructed me in Arts, 
 And knowledge, oft would praise my parts, 
 And cheer my parents' longing hearts. 
 When I was called to a dispute, 
 My fellow-pupils oft stood mute : 
 Yet never envy did dis-join 
 Their hearts from me, nor pride distemper mine. 
 Thus my first years in happiness I past, 
 
 Nor any bitter cup did taste ; 
 But oh ! a deadly potion came at last 
 
 As I lay loosely on my bed, 
 
 A thousand pleasant thoughts triumphing in my head, 
 And as my senses on the rich banquet fed, 
 A voice (it seem'd no more, so busy I 
 Was within myself, I saw not who was nigh) 
 Pierc'd thro' my ears ; Arise, thy good Senander's dead. 
 It shook my brain, and from their feast my frightened senses fled. 
 
 From thence sad discontent, uneasy fears, 
 And anxious doubts of what I had to do, 
 
 Grew with succeeding years. 
 The world was wide, but whither should I go ? 
 I, whose blooming hopes all witherM were, 
 Who'd little fortune and a deal of care ! 
 To Britain's great Metropolis I stray'd, 
 
 Where fortune's general game is play'd ; 
 Where honesty and wit are often prais'd, 
 But fools and knaves are fortunate and rais'd. 
 My forward spirit prompted me to find
 
 232 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 A converse equal to my mind : 
 But, by raw judgment easily misled, 
 
 (As giddy callow boys 
 
 Are very fond of toys) 
 
 I miss'd the brave and wise, and in their stead 
 On every sort of vanity I fed. 
 Gay coxcombs, cowards, knaves, and prating fools, 
 Bullies, of o'ergrown bulks and little souls, 
 Gamesters, half-wits and spendthrifts, (such as think 
 Mischievous midnight frolics bred by drink 
 
 Are gallantry and wit, 
 Because to their lewd understandings fit), 
 
 Were those wherewith two years at least I spent, 
 To all their fulsome follies most incorrigibly bent : 
 
 'Till at the last, myself more to abuse, 
 
 I grew in love with a deceitful Muse." 
 
 To put this in plain prose, the ex-collegian of 19 joined 
 the Duke of York's company of players, and became an actor. 
 But, like so many other playwrights, his success on the stage 
 was small. It gave him, however, that knowledge of stage 
 business which is so essential to the dramatist. At the 
 age of 25, he produced his first drama, the tragedy of 
 " Alcibiades " a remarkable work as the first attempt of so young 
 a man, though with many faults. This was quickly followed, 
 if we are to credit Otway's own preface to it, by the tragedy of 
 " Don Carlos, Prince of Spain " a much higher effort, and con- 
 taining passages of great beauty ; many of them in those triplets 
 which Dryden afterwards adopted and made such good use of in 
 his translation of Virgil. This was succeeded by a translation of 
 Moliere's " Fourberies de Scapin," and by a comedy called 
 " Friendship in Fashion." The character of this latter may be 
 inferred from the fact that when it was revived at Drury Lane in 
 1749 'it was hissed off the stage for its grossness and immorality. 
 Even when originally produced, it could not have had much 
 success. Otway's genius did not lie towards comedy, which 
 became mere buffoonery in his hands, or worse than that. 
 
 A break now takes place in Otway's career as a dramatic
 
 SUSSEX POETS. 233 
 
 author ; he accepted a commission as cornet in some troops sent 
 by the English Government into Flanders, and underwent some 
 of the hardships of a soldier's life, without reaping any of its 
 glory or more solid fruit. On returning to England, which he did 
 a beggar, he turned his military experience to account by writing 
 a play, " The Soldier's Fortune," which had a successful run ; and 
 any reader of it in the present day will be astonished that it should 
 have done so. It is marked by a coarseness of language and of 
 action which stamps the age that could accept such a piece for a 
 picture of its manners as one of gross licentiousness. How a 
 man of feeling and of genius, as Otway undoubtedly was, could 
 produce such a piece amazes us. His excuse must be, that he was 
 starving, and that he wrote for the age. And this is but a poor 
 one for such trash. 
 
 In the play that followed " The Soldier's Fortune " Otway 
 returned to tragedy, and to that vein of pathos in which his 
 strength lay. This was "The Orphan," one of the two plays on 
 which his fame rests for that master}- of pathos and tenderness in 
 which he has never been surpassed, and only equalled by Shaks- 
 peare himself. There are some passages in " The Orphan " 
 which rise to the highest point of passion, especially that in which 
 Polydore, after his treachery to his brother and his discovery that 
 Monimia has been secretly married to Castalio, bursts into the 
 following " fine frenzy : " 
 
 " Then thus let's go together, 
 Full of our guilt, distracted where to roam, 
 Like the first wretched pair expell'd their Paradise. 
 Let's find some place where adders nest in Winter, 
 Loathsome and venemous : where poisons hang 
 Like gums against the walls ; where witches meet 
 By night and feed upon some pampered imp, 
 Fat with the blood of babes : There we'll inhabit, 
 And live up to che height of desperation ; 
 Desire shall languish like a withering flower, 
 And no distinction of the sex be thought of. 
 Horrors shall fright me from those pleasing harms, 
 And I'll no more be caught with beauty's charms, 
 But when I'm dying take me in thy arms."
 
 234 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 After an interval unworthily employed in giving a new shape 
 to Shakspeare's " Romeo and Juliet," which was produced under 
 the classical form of " Caius Marius," Otway again asserted his 
 native genius and produced the nearest approach to Shakspeare 
 that the English, or, perhaps, any stage, has seen since the days 
 of Elizabeth and James. This was the tragedy of "Venice 
 Preserved," the chief characters of which have ever been selected 
 by our greatest actors and actresses our Keans and Kembles, 
 Siddons and O'Neils- as a vehicle for their histrionic powers. 
 This was the highest and ripest fruit of Otway's genius. It was 
 also the last. The life he led in London alternated between 
 excess and starvation, and it is a tradition of literature that his 
 death was owing to the latter. His means may be guessed at 
 from the fact that he only received ^"15 for the copyright of 
 " Venice Preserved ! " He was in his 34th year, and. in the full 
 maturity of his powers : he had genius, experience, the ear of the 
 public, and, if we may believe his dedications to the Duke and 
 Duchess of York, &c., he enjoyed the favour of the Court. But 
 all were thrown away in that reckless and riotous life which was 
 the fashion of the second Charles's days. The closing catas- 
 trophe of the Sussex dramatist's career had now come. He was 
 hiding, so runs the story, from his creditors at a public house 
 on Tower Hill, in a penniless condition, when, meeting a friend, 
 who gave him a guinea, he hurried to buy a roll of bread, eating 
 which with the voracity of a starving man, he was choked by the 
 first mouthful. So perished, miserably and obscurely, a writer 
 who, according to Johnson, has caused more tears to be 
 shed on the stage for his Belvidera and Monimia than even 
 Shakspeare has for Juliet and Desdemona, and who, in an age 
 when bombast and obscenity divided the stage between them, 
 went to Nature for his materials, and knew how to wring the 
 human heart with sympathy for human suffering. He had great 
 faults, but he had still greater beauties, and these latter were his 
 own, whilst the former were those of the age in which it was his 
 hapless lot to be cast. When it is considered that at the age of 
 19 years he was thrown upon his own resources for a living, and
 
 SUSSEX POETS. 235 
 
 in such a city as London, in such a reign as that of Charles the 
 
 Second, it is wonderful that he retained such vigour and freshness 
 
 of thought such healthiness of feeling, as enabled him to picture 
 
 the virtues and sorrows of a wife such as "Belvidera. He never 
 
 apparently re-visited, as Shakspeare so often did, his rural home 
 
 the little village of Trotton, with its Church and river and 
 
 picturesque scenery, nestling under the beautiful hills of Sussex 
 
 and Hampshire to drink in the fresh air and draw inspiration 
 
 from the fair sights of the country. The home-ties snapped by 
 
 the death of his father were never re-knit. Otway seems to have 
 
 drifted about, a waif of London life now in luck, now out of it, 
 
 but oftener the latter than the former, until a wretched death 
 
 closes the struggle. Yet his mother still lived, and in the old 
 
 Sussex home of Woolbeding ; she did not die until 1703, and, 
 
 with a heart capable of such intense feeling as Otway's was, his 
 
 thoughts must have sometimes travelled to her, and to that 
 
 beautiful village in which the early part of his life was passed. 
 
 Perhaps he looked forward to achieving fortune as well as fame 
 
 before returning "home." For it is obvious that, demoralising as 
 
 Otway's mode of life may have been, his genius had been 
 
 ripening. His last production, " Venice Preserved," is far above 
 
 all his other works. Strike out one or two attempts at comic 
 
 scenes, and both the incidents and the verse of the remainder 
 
 have a strength which soars into the highest region of poetry and 
 
 passion. Love was the natural element of Otway, but whilst in 
 
 Monimia and other characters there is a dangerous voluptuousness 
 
 in the pictures drawn of it, in Belvidera it is pure as well as 
 
 impassioned, and the whole play gave promise that, had 
 
 Otway lived, he would have reached a still higher point of 
 
 excellence. 
 
 As it was, he sank, at the age of 34, into a nameless grave, 
 his remains were interred in a vault under the Church of St. 
 Clement Danes, and it is only within the last 30 years that a 
 tribute to his memory has been erected (by W. Jolliffe, Esq.) in 
 his birth-place, in the shape of a brass-plate let into the wall of
 
 236 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 the Parish Church at Trotton, and bearing the following inscrip- 
 tion : 
 
 " Hoc monumentum, quantumvis simplex, 
 
 Memoria sacratum sit 
 
 THOMAS OTWAY, Armigeri, 
 
 Poetarum Tragicorum qui in Britannia enotuerunt, 
 
 Facile Princeps. 
 
 Hoc Pago natus anno 1651. 
 
 Eheu ! egestate acerrima gravatus 
 
 Naturae concessit 1685. 
 
 Abi, Lector Amice ! 
 
 Et vicibus praecellentis ingenii prospectis, 
 
 Quamcunque Deus tibi fortunaverit horam, 
 
 yEternitatem cogita." 
 
 The third great name on our Sussex roll of poets is that of 
 William Collins. He also belongs to the western part of the 
 County. He was a native of Chichester, and, like Otway, a 
 Winchester boy, and a graduate of St. Magdalen's, Oxford. But 
 here the parallel ends. The family of Collins, though of the 
 trading class, were in good circumstances ; his father was thrice 
 Mayor of Chichester, and, when he died, his brother-in-law, 
 Lieut-Colonel Martyn, a distinguished officer in the army, took 
 his nephew, William, under his protection. At his uncle's invita- 
 tion, after taking his degree as a Bachelor of Arts, Collins went 
 over to Flanders, where Col. Martyn was then serving with his 
 regiment, it is a curious coincidence that both Otway and Collins 
 should have had a taste of that unpoetical country, Flanders, but 
 he was pronounced " too indolent " for a military life, and was sent 
 back to England to see if a clerical one would suit him better. 
 For this, too, he was either disinclined, or " there was metal more 
 attractive." Indeed, his tastes from early youth were strongly 
 towards literature; and having, by the death of his mother, 
 become the owner of a little property and the master of his own 
 actions, he gave the bent to his inclination, and became a man 
 of letters. He had been the school-fellow of the Wartons, 
 Whitehead, Hampton, &c., and he 'now made the acquaintance of
 
 SUSSEX POETS. 237 
 
 Dr. Johnson, at that time the head of the London world of wit 
 and learning. The great Doctor, who afterwards became Collins's 
 biographer, speaks highly of him. " His appearance," he says, 
 " was decent and manly ; his knowledge considerable ; his views 
 extensive ; his conversation elegant ; and his disposition cheerful." 
 This latter quality contrasts strangely with what we know of the 
 after-life of Collins, for " melancholy had marked him for her own." 
 Even in his school-days he was remarked for being depressed, and 
 once, when questioned by a companion as to the cause, he 
 replied that he had had a dream : he had dreamt that, while 
 walking in the fields, he saw a lofty tree, which he strove to climb, 
 but, when he had nearly reached the top, a great branch gave way 
 and he fell to the ground. On his school-fellow laughing at him 
 for being out of spirits at such a cause, Collins said he looked 
 upon the tree as " the tree of Poetry " ; betraying at the same 
 time his poetical aspirations and his constitutional melancholy. 
 The anecdote has some resemblance to the story of Swift also a 
 prey to mental depression- who, seeing a tree struck by lightning, 
 and its topmost branches leafless, exclaimed, " Ah, I am like that 
 tree. I shall die at the top first." 
 
 The dream of the one poet and the prophecy of the other 
 were both fulfilled. Collins climbed high, and reached orre of the 
 highest branches of poetry. But here he fell not, like Otway, by 
 the stroke of Fortune, but by even a harder Fate. Fortune, in 
 the ordinary meaning of the word, was kind to him. When 
 Johnson knew him, he was, indeed, in distress, and, with his usual 
 kindness to literary brethren in trouble, the great Doctor assisted 
 him out of his temporary difficulty by helping him to sell to the 
 booksellers the commencement of a translation of Aristotle's 
 Poetics. This work, however, he never finished, for, soon after- 
 wards, his uncle, Colonel Martyn, died, leaving him a legacy of 
 ^"2,000, and this sufficed for the wants of the remaining years of 
 his life. Taking lodgings at Richmond, he seems to have indulged 
 in that vein of indolence which was noticed in early life by his 
 uncle. He wrote little, but that little was highly polished, and 
 his " Ode to the Passions " placed him on a lev-el with the finest
 
 238 SUSSEX TRAGEDIES AND ROMANCES.. 
 
 lyric poets of that, or, indeed, of any other age. It brought him 
 little profit it was sold for -10 ! but it gained him the acquaint- 
 ance of Thomson, Armstrong, Mallet, and other poets and 
 dramatists of the day, and with some of these it is to be feared 
 that Collins, by free living and late hours, increased that natural 
 debility which lay at the root of his subsequent malady. Perhaps, 
 of all gifts, that of competency the means of living in idleness 
 is the most dangerous that a man predisposed to melancholy 
 can receive. If Collins had had his living to earn, he might have 
 preserved his reason for many years. As it was, the cloud 
 which was " no bigger than a man's hand " in youth grew 
 and grew until it clouded the whole of his intellect. Had he had 
 some fixed occupation had he been compelled to translate the 
 Poetics of Aristotle, of which Johnson speaks, or to write the 
 History of the Revival of Learning, which he planned with 
 Warton, it might have changed his fate, and he might, like 
 Johnson himself, have striven successfully against this morbid 
 melancholy which assailed them both. But his uncle's liberality 
 had relieved him from immediate pressure, and though he after- 
 wards projected many works, prose and poetical, he completed 
 little or nothing, and the only poem he published was his Dirge 
 for Cymbeline, " To Fair Fidele's grassy tomb," printed in the 
 Gentlemaris Magazine of 1749. He had now left Richmond, 
 and resided for a time, first in his native place Chichester and 
 then in Bath. The clouds were gathering around him. To 
 scatter them, he tried a tour in France, -but without success ; and, 
 returning to England, was seized, whilst with some friends at 
 Oxford, with the first attack of insanity, and became for a time an 
 inmate of a private asylum. Hence he was removed by his sister 
 to her residence near the Cathedral of Chichester, and in the 
 cloisters of this edifice he was wont, it is said, to wander, giving 
 vent to the distresses of his mind in lamentations and sobs. But, 
 though the branch of the tree he essayed to climb was broken 
 though no longer able to write, or even to study, all light was not 
 shut out. At this period of Collins's career he was seen once by 
 his old friend, Dr. Johnson. It was after his return from France,
 
 SUSSEX POETS. 239 
 
 and when awaiting his sister at Islington. ''There was no 
 apparent insanity (we quote from Mr. M. A. Lower's admirable 
 piece of biography in his " Worthies of Sussex ") but he had 
 given up study and travelled with no other book than a New 
 Testament, such as children carry to school. Johnson took it into 
 his hand, from simple curiosity as to what book a classical scholar 
 (for Collins, besides being a thorough classical scholar, was 
 master of Italian, French, and Spanish) had chosen for his vade 
 mtcum. ' I have but one book,' said the poor stricken poet ; 
 'but that is the best.'" 
 
 It is to this incident that Hayley refers, in those lines 
 (beneath Flaxman's monument to Collins in Chichester Cathedral) 
 which are, perhaps, the finest he ever wrote : 
 
 " Ye who the merits of the dead revere, 
 Who hold misfortune sacred genius dear 
 Regard this tomb, where Collins' hapless name 
 Solicits kindness with a double claim. 
 Though Nature gave him, and though Science taught, 
 The fire of Fancy and the reach of Thought, 
 Severely doomed in penury's extreme 
 He passed in maddening pain Life's feverish dream ; 
 While rays of genius only served to show 
 The thickening horror and exalt his woe. 
 Ye walls, that echoed to his frantic moan, 
 Guard the due records of this graceful stone ! 
 Strangers to him, enamoured of his lays, 
 This fond memorial to his talents raise ; 
 For this the ashes of the Bard require 
 Who touched the tenderest notes of Pity's lyre ; 
 Who joined pure faith to strong poetic powers ; 
 Who, in reviving Reason's lucid hours, 
 Sought on one Book his troubled mind to rest, 
 And rightly deemed the Book of God the best. :> 
 
 In penning these fine lines,Hayley rose to the level of his theme, 
 and proved, if his age erred in thinking him a poet, that he could 
 at least write poetry. Collins lived until 1759 (he was born in 
 1721) and then expired in the arms of his sister, and was buried
 
 240 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 in the churchyard of St. Andrew's, Chichester, immediately behind 
 the house in East-street where he was born. To the world he had 
 long been dead, and though his genius was recognised even then by 
 the higher order of minds, it was not until some years after his death 
 that it received full acknowledgment as of the highest order in 
 one, and that a high, class of poetry the Ode. 
 
 There could scarcely be a stronger contrast inmoral charac- 
 ter and course of life than between Otway and Collins. Though 
 the former was the son of a clergyman and educated at Win- 
 chester and Oxford, he only refers to the clerical profession (as in 
 "The Orphan") in order to load it with insult and contempt. With 
 regard to religion, he evidently shared in the latitudinarianism of 
 the day. His morals were of the loosest, and some of his plays, as 
 we have seen, were too gross and licentious even for an age which 
 tolerated the works of Afra Behn and W T ycherley. Even in 
 "Venice Preserved " there are some scenes which no modern stage 
 would allow. Collins, on the other hand, was temperate and 
 deeply religious, and his writings were pure and moral. " He 
 was," writes one who knew him, " passionately fond of music, 
 good-natured and affable, warm in his friendship, and visionary in 
 his pursuits ; and, as long as I knew him, very temperate in his 
 eating and drinking." That his temper was equable, is demon- 
 strated by the following anecdote, told by the same friend : " It 
 happened, one afternoon, at a tea visit, that several intelligent 
 friends were assembled at his rooms to enjoy each other's 
 conversation, when in comes a member of a certain College, 
 as remarkable at that time for his brutal disposition as 
 for his good scholarship,* who, though he met with a circle 
 of the most peaceable people in the world, was determined 
 to quarrel, and though no man said a word, lifted up his foot and 
 kicked the table and all its contents to the other side of the 
 room. Our poet, though of a warm temper, was so confounded 
 at the unexpected downfall, and so astonished at the unmerited 
 
 Hampton, the translator of Polybius.
 
 SUSSEX POETS. 24! 
 
 insult, that he took no notice of the aggressor, but, getting up from 
 his chair, calmly began picking up the pieces of bread and butter 
 and the fragments of his china, repeating, very mildly, 
 
 " Invenias etiam disjecta membra Poetae." 
 
 This, by the bye, is not unlike the story told by Boswell of 
 another scholar of the day, who, receiving a glass of wine in his 
 face from a discomfited opponent, coolly remarked, "That is a 
 digression ; let us proceed with the argument." 
 
 Collins never married never, indeed, seems to have been 
 deeply in love. In this, and in other respects, in his piety and 
 mental suffering, he bears some resemblance to his fellow-Poet, 
 Cowper, who was one of his fervent admirers. 
 
 There is a peculiar pleasure in finding one great Poet 
 recognising the beauties, and sympathising with the misfortunes, 
 of another, and this pleasure is doubled when, as in the case of 
 Collins, such recognition comes from a Poet of the same locality. 
 Collins refers both to Otway and to Fletcher. In his " Ode to 
 Pity " he asks, after invoking the memory of " Pella's bard," 
 Euripides, 
 
 " But wherefore need I wander wide 
 To old Ilissus' distant side, 
 
 Deserted stream, and mute ? 
 Wild A run too has heard thy strains, 
 And Echo, 'midst my native plains, 
 
 Been soothed by Pity's lute. 
 
 u There first the wren thy myrtles shed 
 On gentlest Otway's infant head, 
 
 To him thy cell was shown ; 
 And while he sang the female heart, 
 With youth's soft notes unspoil'd by art, 
 
 Thy turtles mix'd their own." 
 
 And, in the poetical epistle he addressed to Sir Thomas 
 
 R
 
 242 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 Hanmer, on his edition of Shakspeare's works, he thus places the 
 Sussex-born dramatist, Fletcher, next in order to the "Swan of 
 Avon " : 
 
 " No second growth the western isle could bear, 
 At once exhausted with too rich a year. 
 Too nicely Jonson knew the critic's part ; 
 Nature to him was almost lost in art. 
 Of softer mould, the gentle Fletcher came, 
 The next in order, as the next in fame ; 
 With pleased attention 'midst his scenes we find 
 Each glowing thought that warms the female mind ; 
 Each melting sigh, and every tender tear ; 
 The lover's wishes, and the virgin's fear. 
 His every strain the Smiles and Graces own ; 
 But stronger Shakspeare felt for man alone : 
 Drawn by his pen, our ruder passions stand 
 Th' unrivall'd picture of his early hand." 
 
 A long dreary night in poetry has to be passed (but feebly 
 lighted up by three Sussex luminaries, Hayley, Charlotte Smith, 
 and James Hurdis), before the close of the i8th century, with its 
 French Revolution, and the breaking forth of new hopes, new 
 ideas, new passions, called forth a new race of poets first Cole- 
 ridge, Southey, Wordsworth all Revolutionists, or, as they called 
 themselves, Pantisocratists, in their "salad days" then Byron, 
 Keats, Leigh Hunt, and, last and greatest of all, the Sussex boy- 
 poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley. These later poets took up the 
 opinions of the earlier ones of the i gth century at the point they 
 had cast them off for more sober and orthodox views. Hence 
 the bitter feud between them. But literary quarrels are for a 
 generation poetry is for " all time." Shelley expelled from 
 Oxford, driven from his home and country even deprived of his 
 children for his theological opinions, now takes his place beside 
 Coleridge and Wordsworth, and is looked upon as one of the 
 brightest names and purest natures that adorn the literature of 
 England. He did not live to see the change. The clouds were
 
 SUSSEX POETS. 243 
 
 still over him when he went down into that watery element with 
 which, even in life, his nature seemed to mingle, and which he 
 loved more than the tame land. 
 
 Never, surely, did the storms of life beat more fiercely than 
 on that girl-like and ethereal being ; girl-like in its fragile mould 
 in its intense sympathies; also in its capacity for suffering. It 
 sounds like a contradiction in Nature when we are told that 
 Shelley was the son of a Sussex " Squire " a man of broad acres 
 and narrow opinions one Timothy Shelley living in the heart 
 of that Boeotia of England, the Weald of Sussex, which was only 
 known to the rest of the kingdom 100 years ago by the fatness of 
 its fowls, the whiteness of its wheat, and the clayey adhesiveness 
 of its soil. Of course, Timothy Shelley was a Tory of the Pitt 
 School a hater of Bonaparte in particular and of Frenchmen in 
 general ; a staunch upholder of " Church and State," as that was 
 understood 100 years ago. How came this man to christen his 
 son Percy Bysshe Shelley of which it may as truly be said that 
 "it doth poetically sound," as it has been said of Shakspeare 
 that " it doth heroically sound." How came he to have such a 
 son ? How could such a Pegasus all " fire and air "all tender- 
 ness and love more Greek than English more spiritual than 
 mortal spring from such fox-hunting, change-hating loins ? 
 Expound the mystery, shade of Tristram Shandy ! We can only 
 record the fact. 
 
 The life of Percy Bysshe* Shelley (he was born on the 4th 
 of August, 1792, at Field Place, near Horsham) was a long 
 conflict, martyrdom, it will, perhaps, one day be called, with 
 the Powers of the day, one by one, as he came in contact with 
 them : the power of the Bully at School of the Tyrant at home 
 of the Dogmatiser at the University of the High and Dry 
 spirit of Toryism in Law, Church, and Senate of the " slashing " 
 and slandering Reviewer in Literature. With the organization of 
 a woman, but with the heart of a hero, and the intellect of a being 
 something higher than man, the Sussex boy turned at bay upon 
 
 Bysshe was the name of the poet's grandfather.
 
 244 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 these Powers of the day and did battle with them. Discreetly ? 
 Temperately? Wisely? No. He was but a boy when the 
 struggle began, and they were mature Powers, consolidated 
 by ages of victorious battle, and walled round by towers 
 and battlements of rank, wealth, prejudice, caste, dogmas, 
 with all the experience of antiquity and all the prestige of 
 authority. Of course, in his childish hatred of abuses which 
 he felt rather than understood, he blundered struck wide, and 
 comprehended in his words of hate what in his spirit he loved. 
 And they the Powers of the day took advantage of the error 
 and punished him according to the code of the day. He 
 attacked " constituted authorities " "time-honoured Institutions" 
 dogmas, social, political, and theological, consecrated by 
 centuries of acceptance ; and their champions and defenders did 
 their best, not to convert or convince, but to crush him. 
 
 There is but little left of the abuses with which Shelley did 
 battle at the beginning of this century ; one by one, they have 
 gone down before more skilful, but not braver or purer adver- 
 saries ; and the clouds of calumny in which he passed his life, 
 and which settled down so densely on his tomb, are beginning to 
 clear off and to disclose what was pure and strong and beautiful, 
 as well as what was weak and faulty, in his character. 
 
 Few lives have, indeed, been made the subject of greater 
 misrepresentation and vilification than that of Shelley, and yet 
 few have been more free from the stains and weaknesses of 
 ordinary natures. His morals were pure his tastes simple his 
 habits void of those foibles which often attend youth in the upper 
 circles of life. 
 
 "To all sensual pleasures," writes his widow, "Shelley was a 
 stranger. His usual food was bread, sometimes seasoned with a few 
 raisins ; his beverage was generally water ; if he drank tea or coffee, 
 he would take no sugar with it, because the produce of the cane was 
 then obtained by slave labour ; and the unanimous voice of those who 
 knew him acquits him of any participation in the lax habits of life too 
 common among young men." 
 
 It was by his opinions that he gave offence, and he was a
 
 SUSSEX POETS. 245 
 
 mere boy when the announcement of them, at Oxford, induced 
 the authorities there to drive him from its walls, and, as a con- 
 sequence, to close against him the doors of his father's house. The 
 paper in which Shelley set forth those opinions, often spoken of as a 
 pamphlet, consisted of two pages, and was a mere thesis, a 
 challenge to discuss certain abstract points, after the fashion of 
 those theologians of the Middle Ages who used to pin their 
 propositions to the gates of a Monastery or University. The 
 author of it was 18 years of age, and younger even in experience 
 than in years ; for, though he had spent the usual time at school 
 and at College (Eton), to which latter he went at 13, he had never 
 associated much with his fellow-students, and, opposing himself to 
 the practice of fagging, then in full vigour at that place of educa- 
 tion, he became an object of suspicion to the Masters and of 
 dislike to those boys who did not understand him, though he won 
 the affection and admiration of another and a higher class. What 
 his feelings were at this period he himself has described in the 
 dedication of his poem, " The Revolt of Islam " : 
 
 " Thoughts of great deeds were mine, dear friend, when first 
 The clouds which wrap this world from youth did pass. 
 I do remember well the hour which burst 
 My spirit's sleep : a fresh May dawn it was, 
 When I walk'd forth upon the glittering grass, 
 And wept, I knew not why ; until there rose 
 From the near school-room voices that, alas ! 
 Were but one echo from a world of woes 
 The harsh and grating strife of tyrants and of foes. 
 
 " And then I clasp'd my hands, and look'd around ; 
 But none was near to mock my streaming eyes, 
 Which pour'd their warm drops on the sunny ground ; 
 So, without shame, I spake : ' I will be wise, 
 And just, and free, and mild, if in me lies 
 Such power ; for I grow weary to behold 
 The selfish and the strong still tyrannize 
 Without reproach or check.' I then controll'd 
 My tears ; my heart grew calm ; and I was meek and bold.
 
 246 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 " And from that hour did I, with earnest thought, 
 Heap knowledge from forbidden mines of lore ; 
 Yet nothing that my tyrants knew or taught 
 I cared to learn ; but from that secret store 
 Wrought linked armour for my soul, before 
 It might walk forth, to war among mankind. 
 Thus, power and hope were strengthen'd more and more 
 Within me, till there came upon my mind 
 A sense of loneliness, a thirst with which I pined." 
 
 The expulsion from Oxford, and, as a consequence, from his 
 own home, where he was beloved by mother, sisters, servants all 
 except his father led to another misfortune. His sisters, in 
 sending to him such assistance as they could save from their own 
 school allowance, chose for their agent one of their school-fellows, 
 named Harriet Westbrook, whose parents lived in London. She 
 was a beautiful girl, and the occasions which led her to Shelley's 
 lodgings did not diminish her attractions in his eyes. He became 
 a visitor to her father's house ; an attachment naturally sprang 
 up ; and the result was, that, before he was 20 years of age, 
 Shelley was married, and to a girl of 1 6, whose principal charm 
 seems to have lain in her personal beauty. Previous to this step 
 he had, however, come to an arrangement with his father as to 
 the settlement of the family property, by virtue of which he was 
 to receive an allowance of ^200 a year; and on this the young 
 couple lived for some years, until the growing differences of their 
 character, aggravated by the presence in their little household of 
 an elder sister, led to a separation by mutual consent. Previous 
 to this the young poet (for Shelley had now, after writing several 
 minor poetical pieces, and some prose works of fiction, of 
 little merit and which have perished, composed, at the age 
 of 1 8, his " Queen Mab,") had made the acquaintance of 
 Godwin, the author of " Political Justice " and " Caleb 
 Williams," who was, in fact, to that day what John Stuart 
 Mill was to a later one and this led, after his separation from his 
 wife and her death by suicide (from causes unconnected with her 
 husband), to his marriage with Godwin's only daughter, Mar}-
 
 SUSSEX POETS. 247 
 
 Woolstonecraft. When Shelley first disclosed his feelings to her, 
 Mary Godwin was only 16 years of age, and the scene is thus 
 described in the " Memorials " published by the Shelley family 
 and edited by Lady Shelley (the wife of the poet's son), 
 which are the only trustworthy records of his career, and from 
 which we take our facts : 
 
 "To her Mary Godwin as they met one eventful day in St. 
 Pancras Churchyard, by her mother's grave, Bysshe, in burning words, 
 poured forth the tale of his wild past how he had suffered, how he 
 had been misled, and how, if supported by her love, he hoped in 
 future years to enrol his name with the wise and good who had done 
 battle for their fellow-men, and been true through all adverse storms 
 to the cause of humanity. Unhesitatingly, she placed her hand in 
 his, and linked her fortune with his own ; and most truthfully was the 
 pledge of both redeemed." 
 
 Soon after this the death of his grandfather, Sir Bysshe 
 Shelley, and the succession of his father, Sir Timothy, to the 
 Baronetage, placed the young poet in easier circumstances, by his 
 allowance being increased to ,1,000 a year. At this period, in 
 order to qualify himself for those offices of kindness and charity 
 to the poor for which he destined himself, and some of which he 
 had already discharged when living in Wales, he " walked " one of 
 the London Hospitals, though suffering intensely from the delicacy 
 of his own health. This, in fact, drove him from London, and, 
 after a temporary sojourn on the borders of Windsor Forest, 
 where " Alastor" and other poems were composed, induced him 
 to go abroad. Returning to England in 1816-7, ne formed the 
 acquaintance of Keats, doomedj like himself, to so brilliant and 
 yet to so melancholy a career, and a friendship with Horace 
 Smith, so long an esteemed resident in Brighton, which only ended 
 with his life. It was at this period of Shelley's life that another 
 of those blows fell upon him which seemed intended to crush out his 
 fragile life, but against which his indomitable spirit rose with the 
 strength of a martyr. During the life of his first wife their two 
 children a boy and a girl lived with her. On her death, their
 
 248 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 father claimed them. The claim was opposed by the mother's 
 father, on the ground of Shelley's religious and moral opinions, 
 and, on the case being taken to Chancery, the Lord 
 Chancellor (Eldon) pronounced against the father being 
 custodian of his children, and they Avere committed to the charge 
 of an utter stranger. Against this decision, which, itjs needless 
 to say, in the present day would be scouted, Shelley protested 
 with all the vehemence of his nature, wounded in the tenderest 
 part, but he was impotent against the Law, as it was then adminis- 
 tered, and, in order to put the children of his second wife beyond 
 its arm, he left his native country, and never returned to it. He 
 went to Italy, and there, in a climate which suited his delicate 
 constitution and amidst scenery which excited his imagination, he 
 composed those great poems and dramas, " Prometheus Un- 
 bound," "The Cenci," "Adonais" (the elegy to Keats), "the 
 Witch of Atlas," " the Sensitive Plant," " the Ode to the Skylark," 
 &c., &c., on which his poetic fame rests. " Queen Mab," the 
 crude and premature, though marvellous, fruit of his youth, he 
 never intended to publish. He himself condemns it, in stronger 
 language than, perhaps, many of his critics would apply to it, as 
 " a poem written by me at the age of 1 8 I dare say in a suffi- 
 ciently intemperate spirit but even then it was not intended for 
 publication, and a few copies only were struck off to be dis- 
 tributed amongst my personal friends. I doubt not that it is 
 perfectly worthless in point of literary composition, and that in 
 all that concerns moral and political speculation, as well as in the 
 subtle discriminations of metaphysical and religious doctrine, it is 
 still more crude and immature." 
 
 Most certainly, Shelley lived to modify many of the extreme 
 opinions which find expression in " Queen Mab ;" and his later 
 writings prose and poetical indeed, his whole life clear him 
 from that odious charge of atheism which his enemies sought, 
 with a malice worthy of the irreligion they attributed to him, to 
 fix on him. If anything were wanting to rebut such a calumny, 
 it would be supplied in the unfinished " Essay on Christianity " 
 found amongst Shelley's papers after his death, and attached by
 
 SUSSEX POETS. 249 
 
 his daughter-in-law, Lady Shelley, to the " Shelley Memorials " 
 published by her. It breathes the very spirit of Christianity, and 
 vindicates its principles, though drawing a line between the great 
 Master who promulgated them, and those who followed Him and 
 proposed to interpret and embody them. 
 
 Passing from the vexed subject of Shelley's religious opinions, 
 never very fixed, and which most certainly were greatly modified 
 in his later years, let us turn to the closing scenes of the poet's 
 life in Italy. After many trials and sufferings some from those 
 unavoidable attendants on humanity ill-health, death of children, 
 and depression of spirits, to which Shelley was peculiarly 
 subject and some from the persecution and detraction 
 by which he was pursued to the last, Shelley seemed 
 to be floating, after a storm -tost career, into smoother 
 waters. His " Prometheus Unbound " and " Cenci " compelled 
 the world to acknowledge him as a great, though not a popular, 
 poet ; in Leigh Hunt, Horace Smith (the custodian of his mone- 
 tary interests in England), Trelawny, Williams, and many others, 
 he had found a knot of true friends, who stood between him and 
 the outer world ; and in Lord Byron, whom he met in Italy, he 
 had found a congenial spirit in poetry, though in the pure and 
 lofty spirit of Shelley there was a barrier between them which both 
 felt, and which could not be over-passed by either, so as to lead to 
 friendship. In all these circumstances there seemed to be a 
 brighter and calmer future opening upon the young Sussex poet 
 not yet 30 years of age. In his own mind there was brooding the 
 performance of something greater than anything he had yet done 
 though how gigantic is that work, if measured by his years, com- 
 pared to the works of most other men ! when the fatal event took 
 place which closed his labours, and quenched one of the brightest, 
 and, if sometimes erring, yet, surely, one of the purest spirits that 
 ever lit up the later ages of this world. 
 
 The tale has been often told, and will be told and re-told 
 thousands of times yet ; for it is full of a terrible charm. 
 
 Shelley, with his young wife and only surviving child by her, 
 christened Percy Florence, had, in conjunction with his intimate
 
 250 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 friend, Williams, also accompanied by his wife and children, 
 taken a villa in a wild and romantic site, called Lerici, on the 
 shores of the Bay of Spezzia. Here he was visited by Trelawny, 
 who acted as Captain of Lord Byron's yacht, " The Bolivar," and 
 here he was expecting a visit from Leigh Hunt and his wife. These 
 latter were, in fact, already arrived at Byron's Palazza at Pisa, and 
 hither, to meet them, Shelley and Williams, with a young English 
 sailor, named Vivian, set out in their little yacht, which they had 
 had built for them at Genoa, and in which they had been making 
 excursions in the Italian seas. They reached Leghorn in safety, 
 and spent several days with their friends at Pisa ; but Shelley 
 receiving a gloomy letter from his wife, who seems to have had 
 the cloud of an impending calamity hanging over her, hastened 
 his departure from Leghorn ; Williams and he and the sailor-boy 
 Vivian embarking again in their little yacht on the 8th July, (1822) 
 for their home at Lerici. 
 
 The weather was very sultry, and clouds were gathering in 
 the south-west when they set sail from Leghorn ; but a profound 
 stillness overspread the Bay. By and bye a sea-fog came on which 
 concealed Shelley's boat from the watching eyes of his friends, 
 Trelawny and Roberts. At half-past six (they had started at 
 3 p.m.) it was almost dark, and the wind began to rise, in short, 
 panting gusts ; and big drops of rain struck the water. " There 
 was a commotion in the air," says Mr. Trelawny, who records 
 these particulars, " made up of many threatening sounds, coming 
 upon us from the sea." The vessels in the harbour were all in 
 hurried movement, and the tempest soon came crashing and 
 glaring, in the fury of thunder, wind, rain, and lightning, over the 
 port and the open waters. The storm only lasted about twenty 
 minutes, and during its progress Captain Roberts watched 
 Shelley's vessel with his glass from the top of the Leghorn light- 
 house. The yacht had made Via Reggio when the storm began. 
 " When the cloud passed onward," writes Mrs. Shelley, " Roberts 
 looked again, and saw every other vessel sailing on the ocean 
 except the little schooner, which had vanished." Mr. Trelawny 
 thought for some time that his friends would return to port ; but 
 he waited for them in vain.
 
 SUSSEX POETS. 251 
 
 They were never to return alive. After an agonising suspense 
 of some days for wives and friends, the terrible truth was made 
 certain by the casting ashore of the bodies, first of Shelley 
 and then of Mr. Williams. The latter was nearly undressed, 
 having evidently made an attempt to swim. Shelley had probably 
 gone down at once, for he was unable to swim, and had always 
 declared (according to Mr. Trelawny) that, in case of wreck, he 
 would vanish instantly, and not imperil others in the endeavour 
 to save him. His right hand was clasped in his breast, and he 
 appears to have been reading Keats's last volume of poems at the 
 time of the catastrophe ; as the book, doubled back, was found 
 thrust away, seemingly in haste, into a side pocket. In another 
 pocket was a volume of Sophocles. The copy of Keats had been 
 lent to Shelley by Leigh Hunt, who told him to keep it till he 
 could give it to him again with his own hands. As the lender 
 would receive it from no one else, it was burnt with the body. 
 
 A great deal of unnecessary scandal was caused by the 
 burning of the bodies on the sea-shore. It was, in fact, a police 
 necessity. According to the Italian laws of that day, every thing 
 cast by the sea on the shore had to be burned, to prevent the 
 possible introduction of the plague. It was only through the in- 
 fluence of the English Consul at Florence that Mr. Trelawny was 
 permitted to superintend the cremation and to convey the ashes 
 of the deceased to their two widows. He discharged this painful 
 duty with a devotion to which Mrs. Shelley does full justice. He 
 himself collected the ashes in his scorched hands, (Leigh Hunt 
 and Byron looking on from the latter's carriage), and afterwards 
 deposited them, where they now lie, in the Protestant burial- 
 place at Rome, by the side of Shelley's own son, William, and of 
 his brother-poet, Keats. To the two words " COR CORDIUM " and 
 a Latin inscription of the cause of death, &c., are added the 
 lines from Shakspeare's Tempest (one of Shelley's favourite 
 plays) 
 
 " Nothing of him that doth fade 
 But doth suffer a sea change 
 Into something rich and strange."
 
 252 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 Subsequent enquiries left no doubt that the boat had been 
 run down, though there is no reason to believe that it was done 
 designedly. On its being raised up from where it lay, 15 fathoms 
 deep, all was in her books, telescope, ballast lying on each side 
 of the boat, without any appearance of shifting or confusion : the 
 topsails furled, topmast lowered ; the false stern broken to pieces, 
 and a great hole knocked in the stern timbers. When she was 
 brought to Leghorn, every one went to see her, and the same 
 exclamation was uttered by all : " She was run down." 
 
 In the " Shelley Memorials," to which reference has already 
 been made, some extracts are given from Mrs. Shelley's " Private 
 Journal " which were written in the October succeeding the death 
 of her husband. They are most touching, but also of an exalted 
 character, and point to the spiritual belief of both husband and 
 wife. "You will be with me," she exclaims to his spirit, "in all 
 my studies, dearest love. V'our voice will no longer applaud me, 
 but in spirit you will visit and encourage me : I know you will. 
 What were I, if I did not believe that you still exist ? It is not 
 with you as with another. I believe that we all live hereafter ; 
 but you, my only one, were a spirit caged, an elemental being, 
 enshrined in a frail image, now shattered. Do they not all with 
 one voice assert the same ? Trelawny, Hunt, and many others. 
 And so at last you quitted this painful prison, and you are free, 
 my Shelley ; while I, your poor chosen one, am left to live as I 
 may." 
 
 In a subsequent passage she thus bursts forth, in the agony 
 of separation : " Mine own Shelley ! the sun knows of none to 
 be likened to you brave, wise, gentle, noble-hearted, full of 
 learning, tolerance, and love. Love ! what a word for me to 
 write ! Yet, my miserable heart permit, me yet to love to see 
 him in beauty, to feel him in beauty, to be interpenetrated by. the 
 sense of his excellence ; and thus to love, singly, eternally, 
 ardently, and not fruitlessly ; for I am still his still the chosen 
 one of the blessed spirit still vowed to him for ever and ever ! " 
 
 No being ever bore stronger testimony to the worth of 
 another than did Shelley's wife to him ; and the testimony was sealed
 
 SUSSEX POETS. 253 
 
 by a widowhood of 29 years, consecrated to him and his child, 
 during which she was left by his father to bear the full weight of 
 the burthen ; for she indignantly spurned the only condition on 
 which Sir Timothy would continue to the mother and son the 
 allowance made to the husband and father, namely, that she 
 should give up the custody of her only child ! She also declined 
 to take part in the work to which she was invited by some of her 
 friends, the apostleship of the Rights of Women, for which she 
 felt she had no mission ; but she devoted her time and talent to 
 literature, and so, like the worthy daughter of Godwin and wife 
 of Shelley, maintained herself and son until the death of Sir 
 Timothy, in 1842, put Shelley's son, Sir Percy Florence Shelley, 
 in that position as to fortune and title which he still fills.* Mrs 
 Shelley died in 1851, in the 54th year of her age. 
 
 We have referred to the delicate, and almost feminine organi- 
 sation of Shelley. Here is a picture of him by Captain Kennedy, 
 a friend of the Shelley family, who saw him during a stolen visit 
 which he paid to his mother, at her request and his sisters' it was 
 his last visit to Field Place in 1813, whilst his father was away : 
 
 " I fancy I see him now, as he sat by the window, and hear his 
 voice, the tones of which impressed me with his sincerity and 
 simplicity. His resemblance to his sister Elizabeth was as striking as 
 if they had been twins. His eyes were most expressive, his com- 
 plexion beautifully fair, his features exquisitely fine ; his hair was dark, 
 and no peculiar attention to its arrangement was manifest. In person 
 he was slender and gentleman-like, but inclined to stoop ; his gait was 
 decidedly not military. The general appearance indicated great 
 delicacy of constitution. One would at once pronounce of him that 
 he was something different from other men. There was an earnestness 
 in his manner, and such perfect gentleness of breeding, and freedom 
 from everything artificial, as charmed everyone. I never met a man 
 who so immediately won upon me.'' 
 
 " He was," says Captain Kennedy, in closing his description 
 of him, "an amiable, gentle being." Such, indeed, was the tes- 
 
 * Sir Percy Florence Shelley filled the office of High Sheriff of Sussex in 1865.
 
 254 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 timony of all who knew him intimately, and it is a remarkable 
 illustration of the hardness of the age in which he lived an age 
 of iron in many respects that such a spirit so gentle, so loving, 
 so filled with sympathy for his fellow-men and for every breathing 
 creature for, as Captain Kennedy tells us, " he had a horror of 
 taking life and looked upon it as a crime," that such a spirit 
 should have been so cruelly buffeted by the world and almost 
 driven from it to the communion of Nature, in which, indeed, 
 when not assisting in some act of charity or resisting some act of 
 oppression or injustice, it was his greatest delight to live. In one 
 of his letters to his wife, after a more than usually vile attack by 
 some journal upon her as well as him, he thus writes to her : 
 
 " My greatest comfort would be utterly to desert all human 
 society. I would retire with you and our children to a solitary island 
 in the sea ; would build a boat, and shut upon my retreat the flood-gates 
 of the world. I would read no reviews, and find talk with no authors. 
 If I dared trust my imagination, it would tell me that there are one or 
 two chosen companions, besides yourself, whom I should desire. But 
 to this I would not listen. Where two or three are gathered together, 
 the devil is among them ; and good, far more than evil, impulses 
 love, far more than hatred has been to me, except as you have been 
 its object, the source of all sorts of mischief. So, on this plan, I 
 would be alone, and would devote, either to oblivion or to future 
 generations, the overflowings of a mind which, timely withdrawn from 
 the contagion, should be kept fit for no baser object. But this it does 
 not appear that we shall do." 
 
 What such a mind as Shelley's might have produced had 
 his life been prolonged, it is, of course, impossible to say. But, 
 by the admission of all judges of poetical genius, if measured by 
 what he did in the ten short years of his life of authorship, 
 between 20 and 30, he was the greatest poet that England has 
 produced since Milton, whom, in some respects in the purity of 
 his life, in the extreme to which he carried his opinions, in his 
 mastery and love of Greek literature, and also in the feminine 
 beauty of his face, he resembled. He is the greatest of the 
 four great Sussex poets, and, though no trace of any reference to 
 his native County is to be found in his works, we may be sure
 
 SUSSEX POETS. 255 
 
 that the beautiful woods round Horsham, in which he loved to 
 wander, and often lost himself as a boy, had their effect upon him, 
 and that even Horsham, though oblivious, as it was and is, of him 
 in the pursuit of its bucolic pleasures and profits, had yet a place 
 in that " Cor Cordium." 
 
 In looking back over the careers of Fletcher, Otway, Collins, 
 and Shelley, the reflection is provoked how little they were con- 
 nected with the places, or even the County, in which they were 
 born ! Collins, indeed, returned to die in Chichester, and alone, 
 of our four great poets, rests in his native soil. Even he passed 
 the greater part of his life away from it ; and as for Fletcher, 
 Otway, and Shelley, they all left Sussex in early youth, 
 never to return to it, and all lie amongst strangers. Nor 
 do their works contain the slightest evidence that their 
 thoughts ever reverted to their native soil. They gave themselves 
 up, heart and soul, to the wider sphere to which they were 
 attracted, and merged their provincialism in the larger atmosphere 
 of literature. 
 
 Not so the lesser Poets of Sussex. They linger about the 
 old familiar ground, as though they drew from it part of their 
 strength and depended upon it for their after fame. Perhaps they 
 lacked the strength of wing to fly far from the parent-nest. Be 
 that as it may, it is a fact that Hurdis, Hayley, Charlotte Smith, 
 and Charles Crocker all linger in Sussex, and take delight in 
 singing of the beauties of Nature and of Art to be found in it 
 beauties for which their greater brethren had no eye or ear. 
 
 The sphere and the themes of James Hurdis were purely 
 local. He was born (in 1763) at Bashopstone; Bishopstone was 
 the living to which he was appointed after a previous curacy at 
 Burwash ; at Bishopstone he passed the greater part of his life ; 
 at Bishopstone he is buried ; and the subject of his chief poem, 
 " Favourite Village," is Bishopstone. Only in one thing does 
 his quiet placid life resemble the turbid ones of his fellow poets. 
 He died young at 37 years. But he lived long enough to be 
 appointed Professor of Poetry at Oxford, and perhaps this fact 
 will suffice to prove that, though an accomplished, amiable man,
 
 256 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 he was not, in the true sense of the word, a poet. Certainly, the 
 axiom of Shelley, in his " Julian and Maddalo," as echoed by him 
 from Byron, that 
 
 " Most wretched men are cradled into poetry by wrong : 
 They learn in suffering what they teach in song," 
 
 did not apply to Hurdis. He had no such cradling, and no such 
 lesson is conveyed in his poems. He was content with singing 
 the external attributes of men and Nature ; he never dived into 
 the depths of the human heart or sought to fathom the higher 
 mysteries of Nature. Mr. M. A. Lower quotes, in his " Sussex 
 Worthies," a passage from the " Village Curate " as one of 
 " startling beauty," " amidst much that is prose-like and unattrac 
 tive." Here it is : 
 
 "It wins my admiration 
 To view the structure of that little work, 
 A bird's nest. Mark it well, within, without ; 
 No tool had he that wrought, no knife to cut, 
 No nail to fix, no bodkin to insert, 
 No glue to join : his little beak was all ; 
 And yet how neatly finished ! What nice hand, 
 With every implement and means of Art, 
 And twenty years' apprenticeship to boot, 
 Could make me such another ? Fondly then 
 We boast of excellence, whose noblest skill 
 Instinctive genius foils." 
 
 With every deference to the talented author of " The 
 Worthies of Sussex," we fail to see the " startling beauty " of this. 
 To us it is the perfection of common place the antipodes of 
 Poetry ! 
 
 There was one poetical incident in the life of Hurdis. 
 He met Cowper at Eartham, the country-seat of Hayley, near 
 Chichester. There, in 1792, says Mr Lower, "the three poets 
 met," of whom one certainly was a poet. " But as for the other 
 two " 
 
 But this meeting was at the close of the i8th century that
 
 SUSSEX POETS. 257 
 
 sterile period in English poetry and Coleridge, Southey, and 
 Wordsworth, like young eagles, were as yet purging, their eyes 
 in the light of that poet-awakening event, the French Revolu- 
 tion. At no other period could such platitudes as are contained 
 in the foregoing lines have been sent forth as poetry. 
 
 Hayley was almost as local in his poetic sphere and themes 
 as Hurdis. He was born at Chichester (in 1745); his two 
 principal places of residence were at Eartham and Felpham, spots 
 within half-a-dozen miles of that City ; and round them and 
 London his life revolved. It took in a wider range than that of 
 Hurdis, and also embraced a longer period of time ; Hayley lived 
 until 1820, and thus witnessed the rise of that young, varied, and 
 vigorous race of poets the fruit of a new age and new thoughts 
 in which such pretensions as he had to poetic fame were to be 
 utterly extinguished. It was a melancholy career opening as it 
 did with so much promise, and closing in such a "starless night ;" 
 for "The Triumphs of Temper," Hayley's principal poem, pro- 
 duced about 1780, was received with a shout of applause, and the 
 fact itself serves to mark the lowest point in the long and glorious 
 line of English poets. It is a fitting commentary on it that the 
 post of Poet Laureate (vacant by the death of Richard Wharton 
 only one degree above the standard of Hayley as a poet) was 
 offered to the Sussex versifier, and refused ! If it be true that 
 Hayley declined the honour and the benefit attached to the post 
 (at that time 20 a-year and a pipe of malmsey), because he 
 wished Cowper to enjoy them, it is honourable to him. It was, 
 indeed, to Hayley's credit that he recognised the genius of Cowper, 
 and paid homage to it as that of the greater poet. Himself a 
 man of the world, moving in excellent society, enjoying an in- 
 dependent fortune, and all the delights of such a country as that 
 round Eartham, and such a coast as that of Felpham, acknow- 
 ledged as the poet of the day, and the friend of such artists as 
 Romney and Flaxman it is to the credit of Hayley that, in the 
 midst of these gifts of fortune, he bowed to the superior genius of 
 the author of " The Task," and throwing aside all idea of rivalry, 
 sought for his acquaintance, visited him in his seclusion, drew him
 
 258 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 from it to become an honoured guest at Eartham, retained his 
 friendship to the close of the unhappy poef s life, and became 
 his biographer. This shows that Hayiey had none of that 
 spirit of jealousy which has so often been the bane of 
 literary men and the disgrace of literature. He was, indeed, 
 an amiable and accomplished man; intended by Nature to be 
 rather a patron and a friend of poets than a poet himself; and it 
 was his misfortune, not his fault, to be born in an age so barren 
 of poetic genius, and so unable to distinguish between good and 
 bad, that it mistook him for a poet. He did all he could to 
 undeceive it ; going so far as to write an " Essay on Old Maids " 
 and " Ballads on Animals," the very acme of bathos. And at 
 last he succeeded ! No man ever more completely outlived his 
 reputation than Hayiey. From having been at the top of the tree 
 of poetry (to adopt Collins's figure) he fell, branch by branch, to 
 the bottom, until there is scarcely a bough so low as to give him 
 a resting-place. If allowed one, it is to mark zero on the poetical 
 thermometer ! 
 
 And yet he could write poetry, the epitaph to Collins proves 
 it, and his prose was elegant, and his plays (he wrote three 
 comedies in rhyme and two tragedies), were acted with success. 
 His knowledge of Art was considerable, and his conversation and 
 manners were pleasing. In fact, he was an accomplished gentle- 
 man, such as are to be met with by thousands in the present day, 
 and was only remarkable in his own age because, during the close 
 of the 1 8th century, the cultivation of literature and of the polite 
 Arts did not enter into the education of the English gentleman 
 as it does now. They were limited almost entirely to a narrow 
 professional clique in London : the smaller descendants of Johnson, 
 Goldsmith, Reynolds, and Gibbon. It needed such a thunderclap 
 as the French Revolution, and the new ideas it excited, to dissipate 
 this artificial atmosphere to let in the fresh air of Nature the 
 passions of humanity and begin a new school of poetry. Hayiey 
 lived to witness this change and to be forgotten in his retirement 
 first at Eartham and then at Felpham, where it was a singular 
 fact, which has something of the irony of Fate in it, that Blake,
 
 SUSSEX POETS. 259 
 
 the Poet and the Painter the child of Nature and Imagination 
 the very antipodes of Hayley in art, in literature, in thinking, and 
 in living this forerunner of a new and greater era came to live 
 side by side with the representative of a by-gone age and effete 
 literature. It was like Nature coming to live on the threshold of 
 Fashion. What they thought of one another we do not know ; 
 but they exchanged civilities ; Blake even illustrated some of 
 Hayley 's pcems, and when Blake got into some trouble by chas- 
 tising the insolence of a disbanded soldier, who invaded his little 
 garden at Felpham, and had to answer a charge of disloyalty 
 before the Chichester Magistrates, Hayley stood his friend, and 
 Blake was not sent to gaol as a sans culotte. 
 
 Hayley died at Felpham (where his house and Blake's 
 humble cottage still stand in their integrity), and was buried at 
 Eartham. The offices that he had so often performed for others 
 were now performed for him ; his epitaph (in Felpham Church) 
 was written by his friend, Mrs. Opie, and his autobiography was 
 published in two quarto volumes by a Reverend < friend. His 
 name lives, and always will live, in the history of English 
 literature, because it fills up a niche of time, like that of a rot 
 faineant in French history ; but his works are entirely forgotten. 
 
 Charlotte Smith (nee Turner) is the only poetess of note 
 Sussex can boast of.* And she was not Sussex born. She first saw 
 the light in London (in 1749). But her family were Sussexian ; the 
 family seat was Bignor Park, near Arundel ; and her grandfather 
 filled the office of High Sheriff of Sussex in 1714. The chief 
 part of her life, too, was passed in Sussex. She went to school at 
 Chichester ; her holidays were spent at Bignor ; and when she 
 married it was at Storrington and at Woolbeding that she chiefly 
 lived and wrote. She was a contemporary and a friend of Hayley, 
 and, like him, she was unhappy in her matrimonial life, separating 
 from her husband, as Hayley had separated from both his wives. 
 It seems, indeed, to be left to the present day to prove that poets 
 
 * We refer to poetesses of the past. Our own days have been richer in this 
 respect. Mrs. William Sawyer (nee Andrews) is only one instance of Sussex 
 ladies, still living, who have wooed the Muses with success.
 
 260 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 and poetesses can enjoy conjugal felicity ! The experience of 
 preceding ages was almost uniformly in the other direction, and 
 our Sussex poets, when they married, and Fletcher, Otway, and 
 Collins never married, were no exception to the rule. 
 
 In the case of Charlotte Smith, however, it was the husband 
 who was to blame. He spent his fortune in extravagance and 
 thoughtless speculations, and when he had to take up his abode in 
 the Queen's Bench his wife accompanied him thither, and it was 
 to her exertions that he chiefly owed his liberation. It was to 
 support herself and her children that she turned to literature. 
 She was a voluminous writer, producing no less than 38 volumes, 
 chiefly in works of fiction (the most popular of which was " The 
 Old Manor House"), but also in other ways in works for the 
 young and in Essays and Elegiac Sonnets. It was in this latter 
 line that she won her place in literature a place which she 
 retains, and is likely to do so, for no collection of English Sonnets 
 could be perfect without some specimens of the Muse of Charlotte 
 Smith. They are, perhaps, a little over-strained in their melan- 
 choly; they border on the sentimental as distinguished from 
 the passionate. But still they are full of tender music, and the 
 love of Nature comes to soften and divide the sorrows that 
 struggle for utterance. 
 
 It was in Sussex that Charlotte Smith chiefly found the 
 subjects of her verse, and the Sonnet addressed by her to the 
 Moon, and another written in Middleton church-yard (long since 
 swept away by the encroaching sea) may be taken as samples of 
 the smoothness, the sweetness, as well as of the sentimentality of 
 her verse : 
 
 TO THE MOON. 
 Queen of the silver bow ! by thy pale beam 
 
 Alone and pensive I delight to stray, 
 And watch thy shadow trembling in the stream, 
 
 Or mark the floating clouds that cross thy way. 
 And, while I gaze, thy mild and placid light 
 
 Sheds a soft calm upon my troubled breast, 
 And oft I think, fair Planet of the Night, 
 
 That in thy orb the wretched may have rest ;
 
 SUSSEX POETS. 261 
 
 The sufferers of the earth perhaps may go, 
 Released by death, to thy benignant sphere, 
 
 And the sad children of despair and woe 
 Forget in thee their cup of sorrow here. 
 
 Oh ! that I soon may reach thy world serene, 
 
 Poor wearied pilgrim in this toiling scene ! 
 
 WRITTEN IN THE CHURCHYARD AT MIDDLETON IN SUSSEX. 
 
 Press'd by the Moon, mute arbitress of tides, 
 While the loud equinox its power combines, 
 The sea no more its swelling surge confines, 
 
 But o'er the shrinking land sublimely rides. 
 
 The wild blast, rising from the Western cave, 
 Drives the huge billows from their heaving bed ; 
 Tears from their grassy tombs the village dead, 
 
 And breaks the silent sabbath of the grave ! 
 
 With shells and sea-weed mingled, on the shore, 
 Lo ! their bones whiten in the frequent wave ; 
 But vain to them the winds and waters rave ; 
 
 They hear the warring elements no more : 
 
 While I am doom'd by life's long storm opprest, 
 
 To gaze with envy on their gloomy rest. 
 
 Other Sonnets of Charlotte Smith are addressed to the South 
 Downs and the river Arun, in which latter she couples Hayley as 
 a fellow-poet with Otway and Collins ! It was in these local 
 effusions that her strength lay ; out of Sussex and the Sonnet her 
 Muse droops. 
 
 We may almost apply the same words to Charles Crocker, 
 who, in our own days, sustained the reputation of Chichester as a 
 birth-place of poets. He was born there in 1797, of humble 
 parents ; received his education at the Grey-coat School ; and was 
 apprenticed before he was 12 years of age to a shoemaker. It 
 was whilst he was earning his living at this handicraft that he 
 made the discovery- first of his taste for poetry, and then of his 
 own power to compose verse at first, " in his head," and, after a 
 time, on paper. Some of his effusions coming to the knowledge
 
 262 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 of his fellow-townsmen, they were printed and published, and 
 established the title of Charles Crocker to the fame, if not 
 of a poet, at all events, of one who could write poetry. One 
 piece, at least, will live in our English Parnassus, viz., the Sonnet 
 to the Oak, which Southey, when including Crocker amongst the 
 poets of the day, declared to be one of the finest ever written. 
 Few Englishmen, we think, will be disposed to dispute the 
 dictum of the then Laureate : 
 
 TO THE OAK. 
 
 When, sacred plant, the Druid sage of old, 
 
 With reverential awe, beheld in thee 
 
 The abode or emblem of Divinity, 
 Methinks some vague prophetic vision rolled 
 Before his wondering eyes, and dimly told 
 
 Thy future fame thy glorious destiny. 
 
 Haply, e'en then, deep musing, he might see, 
 Within thy trunk revered, that Spirit bold 
 
 Which sprang from thence in aftertimes, and stood, 
 
 Rejoicing in his might, in Ocean's flood, 
 The guardian genius of Britannia's Isle ; 
 
 At whose dread voice admiring nations bow, 
 
 In duteous homage tyrants are laid low 
 And fierce Oppression's victims learn to smile. 
 
 As might be expected, the themes which inspired Crocker were 
 purely local : Kingley Vale, The Lavant, Kingshame all within 
 a walk of his native city. Chichester was his world. We almost 
 doubt it he ever slept out of it. If ever poetic power was un- 
 accompanied by ambition, it was in the case of Crocker. He was 
 contentedness itself. In his placid look and calm expression it 
 shone out unmistakeably, and it found expression in his unpre- 
 tending address and unadorned language. It was, to his unam- 
 bitious spirit, a great step in advance when he left the shoe- 
 maker's board for the bookseller's counter, being selected for this 
 more congenial post by his friend and patron, the late Mr. 
 William Hayley Mason, a godson of Hayley, and the owner and
 
 SUSSEX POETS. 263 
 
 occupier of the house in which Collins was born (now Mr. Wilms- 
 hurst's) in East-street, so that he was brought, as it were, into a 
 literary atmosphere and kindred associations. Here he remained, 
 quiet and contented, and little troubled by visitations of the 
 Muse, until a bit of ecclesiastical patronage fell to the poet (may 
 we say "from the rich man's table?") in the very unpoetical 
 shape of the office of sexton to Chichester Cathedral, afterwards 
 supplemented by that of Bishop's verger. In this office he 
 reached, to use Massinger's language, " the ne plus ultra of his 
 proudest hopes." He now passed the greater portion of his time 
 in the Cathedral, which he loved with a love that only those who 
 have been born under the shadow of a Cathedral can understand. 
 His latest literary work was a descriptive Hand-book of it, written 
 in as prosaic and matter-of-fact a style as though by the veriest 
 Penny-a-liner. In fact, Crocker's prose style was singularly bald 
 and trite. His fancy seemed to desert him when he ceased to 
 rhyme. He was, indeed, in everything, except his love of 
 Poetry, as marked a contrast to Collins as one poet could be to 
 another : happy, contented, seeking his joys in domestic life, and 
 finding delight in that building amidst which Collins wandered 
 and raved in agony of spirit. 
 
 One great misfortune Crocker was doomed to, arising out of 
 his love and pride for the chief ornament of his native City, and 
 that was in the fall of the Spire and Tower of his much-loved 
 Cathedral. This occurred on February 2ist, 1861, and Crocker's 
 death followed in the same year; hastened, his fellow towns- 
 men believed, by the shock it gave him. He was followed 
 to the grave by Dean Hook, and by many of the clergy, Magis- 
 trates, and principal citizens of his native place ; and never did 
 the grave close over a man with any pretensions to poetic genius 
 and most certainly Charles Crocker had such, his Sonnet to 
 the British Oak attests it, whose life disproved more completely 
 the notion that the gift of poetry is fraught with danger to him or 
 her on whom it is bestowed. 
 
 In Crocker we are brought down to our own times. We 
 knew him well, and, like all who knew him, loved and respected
 
 264 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 him. He represents a class of men by no means uncommon in 
 this country, who, born in humble life and with very unpoetical 
 surroundings, possess a natural taste for literature and pursue it 
 with an ardour that amazes men of higher culture and to whom 
 there are other roads of distinction open. The secret of this 
 devotion lies, perhaps, in the fact that Letters are a Republic, and 
 that the veriest drudge or outcast of society a slave like 
 Epictetus, a tradesman like Defoe, a tinker like Bunyan, can win 
 the highest literary honours and inscribe his name amongst the 
 Immortals. The lists are open to all the weapons are easily 
 caught upit is a mele'e in which king, noble, squire, yeoman, 
 peasant, all fight with little or no advantage of rank or position ; 
 and if the prizes come " tardy off," they are, in the end, most 
 equitably distributed by that ultimate Court of Appeal, the voice 
 of Fame. The names of many Sussex competitors in this " gentle 
 passage of Arms," which, like that of Ashby-de-la-Zouche, has its 
 list of killed and wounded, might be added to the instances we 
 have given, male and female. The columns of the Brighton 
 Herald have for the last 70 years borne weekly testimony to the 
 large amount of poetical talent that floats about the world, and, 
 like other " airy nothings," seeks to give itself " a local habitation 
 and a name." We have already tried to do a little justice to three 
 lesser Sussex poets in Clio Rickman, a native of Lewes ; Charles 
 Verral, of Seaford ; and George Frederick Richardson, of Brighton. 
 With this latter we might associate two other Brightonians, 
 both of whom gave promise of distinction, but passed away and 
 " writ their names in water." The ties of friendship, in the one 
 case, and of near relationship in the other, must be our excuse if 
 we are guilty of partiality in singling out the names of Charles 
 Stanhope Busby and William Henry Fleet as having given token 
 in early life of more than average literary, and especially poetical, 
 ability. The first was the author of the papers which, under the 
 title of " RANDOM THOUGHTS," appeared weekly in the Brighton 
 Herald horn January 12, 1833, to December ayth, 1834, and which 
 included not only Essays, Criticisms, and Sketches of Character, 
 in which extensive reading, good taste, and considerable powers
 
 SUSSEX POETS. 265 
 
 of fancy and invention are displayed, but some poems rising above 
 the average. Such, we think, the reader will admit, was the 
 following one, entitled 
 
 DREAM. 
 
 Airy vision ! thou'rt to me 
 The spirit of tranquillity 
 Whispering to the sleeping-breast 
 Tales of all it loves the best ; 
 Lulling sorrow's pensive note 
 With a soothing antidote ; 
 Bringing hither friends we love, 
 Friends that o'er the wide world rove, 
 Like some lovely falling star, 
 Leaving all its mates afar. 
 Oh ! I woo thee, gentle dream, 
 As a wanderer woos the beam 
 Of moonlight o'er the troubled stream, 
 When all around his trembling bark 
 Is doubtful, desolate, and dark. 
 Would that the spirit could awake, 
 And not thy bright illusion break, 
 But dream through life so sad as this 
 In one fair harmony of bliss ! 
 Dear Spirit ! in thy wide domain, 
 Misery drops her fetter-chain 
 Envy's tumult-voice is still 
 Raging passions cease to thrill 
 Hope is there with laughing eye, 
 Beaming in her extasy ; 
 Every feeling, every sense, 
 Is mingled with benevolence. 
 How should hatred e'er invade 
 The silence of thy spirit-shade ? 
 There, within thy twilight realm, 
 No jarring shouts of strife o'erwhelm ; 
 But thought and action blend and shine 
 Like Nature at the day's decline. 
 I know not if thou always art 
 As soothing to the troubled heart ! 
 Some say that terror's fitful gleams 
 Hover o'er the land of dreams ;
 
 266 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 That fearful phantoms wildly frown 
 
 That sorrow there usurps a crown ! 
 
 That all the woes of life appear 
 
 Doubly deep within thy sphere ! 
 
 Dear Spirit ! can it, can it be ? 
 
 Thou never hast seemed thus to me ! 
 
 If ever, in day's beam of gold, 
 
 Fickle friendship's heart was cold, 
 
 Within the hour of thy reign 
 
 All was warm and bright again ! 
 
 If wandering love forgot her vow, 
 
 Who led her back as soon as thou ? 
 
 But if indeed thou canst assume 
 
 Terror's image, terror's gloom 
 
 E'en then, when rous'd by anger's will, 
 
 Enchantress, I would woo thee still ! 
 
 What are thine airy woes or strife 
 
 To the realities of life ? 
 
 The fickle sons of guile forsaking 
 
 The wanderer when his heart is breaking 
 
 The eye of love, when chill'd by pride, 
 
 Turning its azure glance aside 
 
 The pomp, the pride, the seeming free, 
 
 Pleasure all false, all vanity ! 
 
 ' Mid things that so delusive shine, 
 
 Where, Spirit, can be joys like thine ? 
 
 And who that ever felt thy kiss 
 
 Would grudge the penalty of bliss ? 
 
 I know not if it be my fate 
 
 To meet thy terror, or thy hate 
 
 As yet thou hast but been to me 
 
 A refuge from reality ! 
 
 And surely they who sorrow share, 
 
 Can well surmount thine airy care 
 
 For tho : slumber yield no more 
 
 Her balmy visions, as before, 
 
 Her pictur'd ills are far less deep 
 
 Than daylight's woes. O maid of sleep I 
 
 I love thee now ! Thou art to me f 
 
 The spirit of tranquillity ! 
 
 Mr. C. S. Busby was the son of the talented architect of 
 that name who designed Brunswick Square, Brunswick Terrace,
 
 SUSSEX POETS. 267 
 
 and other of the best parts, architecturally, of Brighton. The 
 son was brought up to the law, and left Brighton to follow that 
 profession, successfully, we are glad to say, in another part of 
 England. If still alive, and if they meet his view, he will 
 doubtless smile as he reads the above verses, and thinks that he 
 too, if Blackstone and Chitty had not come between him and 
 the Muses, might have been a Poet ! 
 
 William Henry Fleet was the eldest son of the then pro- 
 prietor of the same Brighton journal in which the compositions 
 of Mr. Busby appeared, but in the columns of which his 
 name appears only once attached to his productions. His 
 poems were thrown undistinguished into the stream which 
 sweeps the contents of a newspaper into the Pool of Oblivion. 
 Yet there were some pieces that deserved a better fate. From a 
 large number of fugitive poems which appeared in the Brighton 
 Herald, the Merthyr and Cardiff Chronicle, and the Montreal 
 Courier (of which two latter William Henry Fleet was the Editor 
 for some years before entering upon a legal career in Canada, which 
 was closed by a too early death), we take, almost at hazard, two 
 samples of his work : the one of a serious, the other of a humorous 
 character, for he excelled in both : 
 
 THE WANDERER'S RETURN. 
 
 Years had flown his hair was grey, 
 
 Who sought again the much-lov'd spot, 
 Where youth's first hours had passed away 
 
 'Mid friends who ne'er might be forgot. 
 The path he trod he knew it well, 
 
 The ancient oak its shade still shed ; 
 But those he sought no one could tell, 
 
 But, wondering, answered " They are dead." 
 
 ' *". He sought the cot of one he'd left 
 
 A laughing, merry-hearted thing ; 
 Who near his youthful heart had crept, 
 
 As tendril round a flower of Spring ; 
 Where is she now ? the laughing voice, 
 
 The happy, tripping, blithesome tread,
 
 268 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 No longer bid his heart rejoice, 
 But echo whispers " She is dead ! " 
 
 His sisters, say, ah, where are they, 
 
 Companions of his youthful hours ? 
 He sought them where they used to play, 
 
 But sad and cheerless were the bowers. 
 The trees they'd planted side by side, 
 
 Now proudly waved above his head ; 
 He asked, " Where are they ? " They replied, 
 
 " Thy sisters, Wanderer they are dead ! " 
 
 He turned away his brother dear, 
 
 The bud his mother doated on ; 
 How is it that he is not here, 
 
 To welcome back the wandering one ? 
 He called him by his well-known name, 
 
 But echo answered in his stead 
 Again the chilling response came, 
 
 " Thy brother, \Vanderer he is dead ! " 
 
 His sire was full of manhood's pride 
 
 When he had left, a boy, his home ; 
 His mother's cheek had time defied, 
 
 He fondly thought, for years to come. 
 He sought them both, but there, alas, 
 
 Within the churchyard's narrow bed, 
 A tombstone told him as he passed, 
 
 " Thy parents, Wanderer they are dead ! " 
 
 He sought again the ancient hall, 
 
 Where desolation held her sway, 
 And heard the owls' dull croaking call 
 
 And bats against the casement play. 
 His footsteps on the marble floor 
 
 Aroused th' intruders, and they fled ; 
 Shrieking, " Thy friends, they are no more ; 
 
 Maid, brother, sisters all are dead ! " 
 
 The following lines were a merejeu d' esprit; but they showed 
 an ability, which is rare, to deal airily with a bubble : 
 
 THE CHINESE LOVERS. 
 
 I'll tell you a tale of a young Chinese 
 Who wore her petticoats up to her knees,
 
 SUSSEX POETS. 269 
 
 And put her feet, so pretty and small, 
 Into a walnut-shell, heels and all, 
 There never had been such a prize to win 
 Before in the town of old Pekin ! 
 
 There lived a youth in the very same town, 
 Whose tail to the heels of his shoes came down, 
 And he met the maid as she walked one day, 
 With a servant to fan the flies away ; 
 And, stopping a moment near to sneeze, 
 Walked off with the heart of the young Chinese ! 
 
 That very same night, as in bed she lay, 
 
 There came a note from her Pa to say 
 
 As how as what a person had been 
 
 To ask her hand for a Mandarin, 
 
 A very great merchant who dealt in teas, 
 
 And who was coming next day for the young Chinese. 
 
 Then many a tear the maiden shed, 
 
 As she put on her clothes and jumped out of bed ; 
 
 The moon shone cold on the river's stream 
 
 As the maid plunged in one feeble scream 
 
 Is borne along on the passing breeze 
 
 Tis the dying moan of the young Chinese ! 
 
 And ever since that time, they say, 
 Those who by the spot do stray 
 See the form of a skeleton maid 
 Dancing along 'neath a willow's shade ; 
 And they know it to be the young Chinese, 
 For it wears its petticoats up to its knees ! 
 
 By a singular coincidence, two other Sussex names, with 
 claims to be called poets, passed over in early manhood to the 
 other side of the Atlantic, after issuing volumes in which decided 
 proofs of their talent were given, viz., Edmund Parsons, a member 
 of a well-known and highly respected Brighton family; and 
 Richard Realf, the son of an Uckfield peasant, and 
 whose remarkable career will doubtless some day be 
 writ down. He was once " Secretary of State " to " Old 
 John Brown," the Champion of Freedom in the South, and whose
 
 f. 
 
 270 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 spirit still " marches on." He was taken prisoner at the abortive 
 rising against Slavery at Harper's Ferry, and nearly shot by the 
 Southerners, but escaped, to fight through the War of Freedom, 
 and to rise to the rank of Colonel in the Northern Army also to 
 write such stirring verses as have won for him a high name in the 
 States, which he still enjoys. 
 
 These three young men of whom Colonel Realf alone 
 survives carried their poetical talents with them to the New 
 World and thus it is that England flings her intellectual " super- 
 flux to the poor." Of those Sussexians who still " confess the 
 soft impeachment " and sacrifice to the Muses we will say nothing, 
 but leave some future scribe, when they and ourselves and all who 
 belong to the breathing Present shall come under the venerable 
 denomination of " Ancestors," to glean such " Glimpses " of them 
 and their poetical productions as may have floated down the 
 stream of time.
 
 2 7 I 
 
 SOCIAL CHANGES IN SUSSEX. 
 
 SERVANTS AND THEIR WAGES. 
 
 *"PHERE are few things in existence at the present day in which 
 the revolution has been so great, even within living memory, or 
 which has been brought home so completely to us, as the relations 
 of servants to masters. We mean more especially domestic 
 servants the servants of in-door life, whose office it is to wait on 
 the person or minister to the daily wants of their masters or 
 mistresses : such as the cook, the housemaid, the footman, &c. 
 To listen to the lamentations of a modern mater-familias. we 
 might infer that the age of domestic service in England had come 
 to an end, or was about to do so. There is no such thing as a 
 decent cook or well-conducted housemaid to be got for love or 
 money, or, if got, they cannot be kept. " Love," indeed, as a 
 means of retaining domestic servants, has passed away altogether. 
 That once-powerful tie between master and man, maid and 
 mistress, personal attachment, has ceased to be felt at all. Money 
 is the sole consideration, and in a market where the demand 
 seems to be continually increasing and the supply to be falling off, 
 this money-value rises so fast that it threatens to limit the luxury 
 of domestic servants to the higher classes altogether that is, to 
 those who can alone afford to give very high salaries. 
 
 Perhaps, after all, this disappearance of domestic servants in 
 our households would only be a return to the normal state of 
 things, as regards the larger part of society. It can only have 
 been since the rise of the middle classes in England into wealth 
 and the introduction of a luxurious style of living that domestic 
 service, as we know it, came into existence at all Three or four 
 hundred years ago perhaps less than that the wives and 
 daughters of our farmers and traders did their own domestic work, 
 with the help, perhaps, of a poorer neighbour, if in the country,
 
 27 2 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 or of an apprentice in towns. As to hiring men and women at 
 large fixed salaries, for domestic services, as cooks, housemaids, 
 butlers, footmen, coachmen, &c., &c., that must have been un- 
 known to the middle classes of England in the days of the Plan- 
 tagenets. It was confined altogether to the establishments of the 
 great nobles. In these, indeed, domestic service was of a severer, 
 more stately, and more ponderous character than anything that is 
 known in the present day, even in the abodes of Royalty. The 
 "Book of Orders and Rules," drawn up by Anthony, Lord 
 Montague, who lived at Cowdray, Midhurst, in the reign of 
 Elizabeth, for the government of his household, gives us a lively 
 idea of this. Hundreds of servants of all kinds and degrees, 
 from the " Principal Officers " and " Gentlemen Ushers " who 
 waited on the person of the great man, down to "the groomes of 
 the Great Chamber " and " the Scullery men," helped to fill the 
 house and empty the purse of the great Noble in the Tudors' day,, 
 and to give occupation to the sons and daughters (for, of course, 
 My Lady the Countess had her gentlewomen, chambermaids,. 
 " lavenderers," &c.) of the inferior classes. 
 
 The enormous expenses, not to say inconveniences, attendant 
 upon such a style of living doomed it to extinction, in an age 
 when the price of labour was rising, and when the vast estates of 
 the old families were being broken up by civil war, the attacks of 
 the Crown, and other causes. Amidst these troubles to the higher 
 ranks, the middle classes grew up in the days of the Tudors and 
 the Stewarts; and the Great Revolution of the i;th century put 
 its seal on their victory. They were now the masters of the 
 political situation, and we may be sure that there was an accom- 
 panying development in the social situation. The merchant's wife 
 and the scrivener's wife, nay, the draper's wife, the clerk's wife, 
 and the yeoman's wife, " looked up " in the world, and called in 
 that help and aid for their increasing family wants and comforts 
 which their more homely mothers had not needed, or managed to 
 do without. Their " good men " wanted their dinners to be more 
 varied and better cooked than they were wont to be, and the 
 fittings-up of the hall and refectory and withdrawing-room required
 
 SOCIAL CHANGES IN SUSSEX. 273 
 
 to be looked after with more care and by more skilful hands. So 
 cooks and housemaids, and, as things went on, footmen and coach- 
 men became part and parcel of the more well-to-do middle-class 
 establishments, whilst, at last, scarcely a household above the 
 mechanic or labourer's rank could do without a " general servant." 
 
 And for a time all went on well. The supply was equal to 
 the demand. The drain of war had ceased to be felt by the 
 labouring classes ; food was cheap, or, in a time of scarcity, there 
 were the Poor-law and out-door relief to fall back upon ; no 
 Malthusian doctrines were yet promulgated to check the force of 
 the divine command to " increase and multiply," and so there was 
 a class of labourers increasing in number, and decreasing in means, 
 on which domestic service could draw almost without limit for its 
 supply. It was the golden age of Masters and Mistresses, to 
 which the present generation looks back with regretful eyes. 
 These were the days of long and faithful servitude, when the 
 relations of man and master, maid and mistress, extending as they 
 did over long periods of time, were of that kind that Shakspeare 
 speaks of, " when service sweats for duty, not for meed " when 
 there was something like a personal friendship between the served 
 and the server, and when the discovery had not been made that 
 " service was not inheritance," for the servant scarcely thought of 
 closing the service except by death or marriage. 
 
 Of these days which, perhaps, the laudator temporis acti is 
 apt to over-colour does the late Rev. Edward Turner speak in 
 his paper on " The Mode of Life of a Sussex Gentleman " in the 
 last century, when he says, " My grandfather's principal man- 
 servant lived nearly half a century with him ; and it was his boast 
 to the day of his death, that he had waited at dinner upon twelve 
 squires at once without being anyways da'nted. And in later days 
 I have often visited at a house in the western division of the 
 County where the cook of the family was nearly 90, and had never 
 lived as a servant in any other house. My estimable friend was 
 her second master, she having lived with his uncle previously ; and 
 after he had passed his seventieth year she generally spoke of him 
 as her young master." 
 
 T
 
 274 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 Referring, too, to the servants of the Stapleys, of Hickstead, 
 he observes that " the men-servants were not like the pampered 
 menials of the present day, but men who, though they could wait 
 upon their masters and their mistresses, their families and their 
 friends, at their usual meals, could also, when not so employed, 
 turn their hands to anything that might be required of them, 
 either indoors or out, and who became so attached to the families 
 in which they lived that the thought of ' bettering themselves ' 
 rarely entered their heads." 
 
 As we have said, those were the golden days of masters and 
 mistresses, when they had " the pick " of the girls and boys of the 
 labouring class, and there was neither the recruiting-sergeant, nor 
 the manufacturer, nor the milliner, nor National or State Elemen- 
 tary Schools to interfere with them. It was, in many cases, a 
 choice between service out, or hard work, and sometimes starva- 
 tion, at home. 
 
 We propose to take a peep at these early days of domestic 
 service in Sussex. The earliest record that we find of it in the 
 Archaeological collections of Sussex is in the journal of the Rev. 
 Giles Moore, Rector of Horsted Keynes, who settled there in the 
 days of the Commonwealth and lived to see the Restoration of 
 Charles II. He had a wife and a daughter, and he was, it is 
 evident, a man of some property independently of the revenue 
 he derived from his living, and seems to have lived in a comfort- 
 able, if not liberal, style. One of his earliest entries (in 1656) is 
 as follows : " I entertained for my yearly servant John Dawes at 
 Old Lady-day, promising to make his wages as good as they were 
 under Mr. Pell [his predecessor in the Rectory]. I payed him his 
 half-yeares wages on the 2nd of Oct., 2 IDS. Rose Colman came 
 to me on the 7th Sept. / bargained to give her 3 per annum" 
 
 We need hardly say that money was worth more in 1656 
 than it is now ; but even double or treble $ a-year for a man- 
 servant, or ^3 a-year for a female, and what house-wife would 
 not rejoice ? 
 
 Sometimes, too, lower wages than the above were taken. 
 Thus, in 1666-7 (writes Mr. Moore), "Anne Sayers, of Lindfield,
 
 SOCIAL CHANGES IN SUSSEX. 275 
 
 came to live with me as mayd servant, with whom I bargained 
 not, for under 4.05. a-year sJie said she would not serve. I gave 
 her 6d." 
 
 What an unreasonable personage Anne Sayers, of Lindfield, 
 must have been ! We wonder if there are any " of that ilk " still 
 in the parish ! Not to come for a mayd servant under 2 
 a-year ! Domestic wages must have been rising to justify such 
 ideas ! 
 
 A little further on we read as follows : " Mary Ward packed 
 up and went her way, having lived with me i quarter and a 
 weeke, for which I payd her 125. iSth Feb., being ShroVe 
 Tuesday, Anne Grove, from Mr. Wyatt's [a neighbouring farm- 
 stead, we presume] came to live with mee, for whom I bargained 
 at the rate of 455. per an." So Mary Ward got an advance of 55. 
 a year on Anne Sayers ! 
 
 It seems curious to us that Mr. Moore, and not Mrs. Moore, 
 " bargained with " female as well as male servants. But so it was. 
 And the Rev. Gentleman does not seem to have been particularly 
 lucky in his choice. Ex. gr. : " Thos. Dumbrell came to mee 
 as servant to dwell with mee, with whom I agreed to give 
 after the rate of $ a yeare. On the 22nd Dec. I payed him 
 up to that time i 8s. : that same night I found him sleeping 
 with my mayd Mary, and I packed them off." 
 
 So that Masters and Mistresses had their domestic troubles 
 even in the days of the Commonwealth ! It speaks to the kind- 
 heartedness of the Rev. Giles Moore that, immediately after the 
 above, he records, " I marryed Thos. Dumbrell and Mary his 
 wyfe, gratis ; and I gave him on his wedding 8 stone of beefe 
 (i6s. 8d.), a hind qr. of mutton (35. 4d.), and a lambe, (75. 6d.), 
 besides butter, wheatt, and fewell." So that Thos. Dumbrell and 
 " my mayd Mary " had made their peace. There were, doubtless, 
 " extenuating circumstances." 
 
 As the Rector of Horsted Keynes married one of his men, 
 so did he bury another. " I payd John Dawes his halfe yeare's 
 wages, 2 i os. On the 7th of March he dyed, and I buryed 
 him on the loth in the ground on the south side next to the 
 yew tree."
 
 276 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 The above, we presume, were in-door sen-ants. Out-door 
 labour was better paid. Ecce signum : " I payd John Warde for 4 
 days work about the garden in setting it to rights, 6s. 8d., and for 
 5 dayes worke in clearing out 5 trees growing about the Glebe, 
 95." This rate of payment, taking into account the higher value 
 of money at the time, was as high as that of the present day, and 
 much higher than that to which it fell in the succeeding century. 
 
 There is one kind of labour which the Rector of Horsted 
 Keynes had to pay from which we are free in the present day at 
 least, in the form in which he was mulct. Ex. gr. : " I payed 
 John Ward in ready money at the Parsonage, ios., hee having gone 
 out in my arms for 4. days. For the harm he received in my service 
 at the muster 1 gave him 55." 
 
 The latter part of the foregoing entry explains the earlier. 
 John Ward was not carried out for an airing by the Rev. Giles 
 Moore, as the phraseology might imply, but took his place in the 
 yearly muster of the Militia. Thus even the clergyman, in those 
 days, was obliged to attend drill, or find a substitute. This entry 
 occurs periodically in the Journal. Nor were humbler people 
 exempt, as we see by the following: "8th May, 1677, John 
 Divall came to live with me. I bargained with him for ^5 wages 
 per an., besydes my kindnesses, I being to give him 6 weekes 
 warning and hee mee also as much. I must remember out of my 
 man John's wages to deduct 123., fayed to his brother for supplying 
 his absence while he souldiered." 
 
 Here we will take leave of the Rev. Giles Moore and his 
 servant-bargainings and troubles, and pass on to Mr. Timothy 
 Burrell Councillor Burrell, as his neighbours called him of 
 Ockenden, Cuckfield. His Journal touches closely in point of 
 time on that of the Rector of Horsted Keynes, the first entry 
 in it bearing date April, 1686, the reign of James the Second. 
 Wages had not risen in the meanwhile, for, writes Mr. Burrell in 
 1689, "Thos. Godsmark came to me as footman, at the wages of 
 305. per annum, with coat, breeches, and hat ; " and, in the 
 following year, "John Piccomb came as footman, at 303. per an., 
 and a livery. Anne Baker came as cook, at 555." 
 
 Thomas Godsmark, therefore, did not stay very long at
 
 SOCIAL CHANGES IN SUSSEX. 277 
 
 Ockenden. His successor seems to have done better, for, in 1691, 
 we find this further reference to him : " I payd Jack Piccomb in 
 full of his quarter's wages 75. 6d. To mend his coat and 
 breeches,^is., and to buy stockings, is. 6d." Just previously, 
 " Two hats for my fellows liveries, IDS." 
 
 As he speaks of his " fellows " in the plural, perhaps Mr. 
 Burrell had two footmen. He was, we must bear in mind, a 
 gentleman of family and property as well as a barrister-at-law. 
 And yet he did not disdain to pay his servants in kind ; ex. gr. : 
 " I paid John Coachman (John the coachman) part of his wages 
 in money and i4lbs. of wool, 105." A modern gentleman, or, 
 for the matter of that, a modern coachman, would think it rather 
 strange to pay or be paid in wool ! 
 
 Mr. Timothy Burrell had a wife, indeed, he had three, for he 
 was thrice married, and yet he, like Mr. Giles Moore, seems to 
 have done the " bargainings " with his servants, male and female. 
 Nor did he, any more than the Rector of Horsted Keynes, 
 escape the troubles consequent thereon. Here, under date March 
 26th, 1693, is an illustration: ''I paid Frances Smith all her 
 wages due to this day, 2, and discharged her, s/ie being a 
 notorious thief" 
 
 These, and other corresponding entries, may console modern 
 housekeepers for their little domestic troubles, which, as we see, 
 may occur in the " best regulated families," under Cromwell and 
 William of Orange, as well as under the Stewarts or Guelphs. 
 Nor, it is evident, by Mr. Timothy Burrell's entries, had those 
 golden days of servants yet been reached of which Mr. Turner 
 speaks so enthusiastically, when boys and girls grew into old men 
 and women in the service of their masters and mistresses. For 
 we have only to pass on to April, 1694, to come to a new footman 
 to Mr. Burrell : " Marian Hall (it is a singular Christian name 
 for a man), footman, came at the wages of 308. per an. and a 
 livery once in two years. I laid out for him, in part of his wages, 
 linen sleeves, shoes, hat, and frock, 1 73. 8d." 
 
 The Ockenden coachman, however, kept his place better : 
 " 1700, May. Paid John the coachman, in full of his year's
 
 278 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 wages, j4 33. I payd him 25. 6d. for Thos. Gates for a goos, but 
 he kept it for ale, and to widow Goldsmith, for mending his 
 stockings, is. 6d." 
 
 Wages, it is evident, had not risen much at Cuckfield. 308. 
 a-year and his livery for a footman and 4 33. for a coachman 
 are not very high rates of payment. What would the present 
 generation of footmen and coachmen say to them ? 
 
 Yet we have a proof, in the following entry, that the men who 
 took, or rejected, these wages might " go further and fare 
 worse :" " i4th Sept. Goldsmith departed my service, by 
 consent, this day. On the 2Qth October he repented, and 
 returned, half-starved." 
 
 And here we arrive at one of those facts which would have 
 made the late Mr. Turner's heart rejoice, and at which modern 
 masters will shake their heads in melancholy guise; "1704. 
 Will. Gates came to me as footman at 503. per annum ; he is to 
 have a hat, coat, and breeches once in two years. If I turn him 
 away the -first year, I am to give him 53. more and take his livery. 
 He died in 1713." 
 
 That is, after a service, and doubtless a faithful one, of nine 
 years. If we mistake not, it is the master or mistress who, now- 
 a-days, holds out the bait of higher wages to servants if they 
 remain in their places. In Timothy Burrell's time it was the 
 servant who sought to guard against the chances of dismissal. 
 
 Yet masters still had their troubles, and in 1706, as in 1877, 
 it is the drinking that is the fans et origo malorum. Ex. gr.: 
 "Aug. For a periwigg for John, 143. So he has had in all 
 6 23. 5d. in full of his year's wages, and 23. 5d. over ; and I 
 gave him notice that I would not allow him any longer for the 
 livery being worn two years, since 'twas to be all spent in 
 drunkenness" 
 
 The next entry gives us a glimpse of female servants' 
 wages : " Paid Nanny West her wages in full, due 25th, 2 and 
 more is. lod. Paid Sarah Wade two years' wages, 5" 
 
 Thus 2 and 2 IDS. were still the salaries of female 
 servants in a gentleman's family 170 years ago.
 
 SOCIAL CHANGES IN SUSSEX. 279 
 
 Later on, in 1710, he pays W. Gates ^3 IDS. as his year's 
 wages ; to Mary Chaloner (how low had the Chaloners, once the 
 first people in the County, sunk ! ) ^5 for two years' wages ; and 
 to Mary, the cook (in 1715), for her year's wages, 2 155." 
 
 This is the last entry of Mr. Timothy Burrell as to payments 
 to servants, and it shows that during his life the wages of 
 domestics had not risen much ; for in 1686, above 30 years 
 previously, he paid his cook 2 IDS. a-year. A rise of 53. in 
 31 years ! As much in as many days would be expected now-a- 
 days ! 
 
 The Stapley Diaries, extending from 1682 to 1743, come 
 next in order of succession to those of the Rev. Giles Moore and 
 Timothy Burrell, Esq., as documents throwing light on the wages 
 of domestic servants in Sussex in past days. The social position 
 of the Hickstead Stapleys was something between that of Squire 
 and yeoman. They farmed their own land, and did a good deal 
 in what may be called the retail business of farming, such as 
 selling of wood and of meat as well as of stock. The first of 
 the diarists, however, Anthony Stapley, was, like Timothy Burrell, 
 a Councillor or barrister-at-law, and he was also a Justice of the 
 Peace. 
 
 The Hickstead Stapleys (they were settled in other parts of 
 Sussex) kept a good establishment, and their house or kitchen 
 staff consisted of three maid servants and three men servants. 
 Let us see how they paid them. "The wages of domestic 
 servants," Mr. Turner remarks, d propos of the Hickstead establish- 
 ment, " both male and female, were then marvellously low " ; and 
 the figures that he proceeds to quote from Anthony Stapley's 
 account-book leave no doubt upon this point. The earliest of 
 these entries refer to a period anterior to the Rev. Giles Moore's 
 that is, to the earlier part of the reign of Charles the First, 
 before the troubles of the Civil War. Thus, in 1636, " To William 
 Dennett, for half-year's wages, ^i xos. To my own man, Robert, 
 for one year, ^3 los. To William Matthew, for ditto, ^3 23. 6d. 
 To Elizabeth, for half-year's wages, i. To Rachel, for ditto, 
 i. To Mary, for ditto, 8s, To the Nurse, for a quarter's 
 wages, i."
 
 280 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 These entries, it is clear, embrace all classes of in-door's 
 servants ; and they are all equally low. ^3 a-yearfor men-servants, 
 2 a-year to women, and i6s. a-year to girls, these were the 
 wages of domestic servants in a country gentleman's house in the 
 time of Charles the First. It was a prosperous time for the 
 country, though, politically, a very troublous one, as the Stapleys, 
 who took sides both with King and Parliament, well knew. Food 
 was abundant, and, of course, cheap. Wheat (in 1662)^7 ics. 
 a load ; cows and steers, ^3 to ^4 each ; oxen, ^5 or 6 each ; 
 30 ewes selling for 20 os. 6. ; lambs, 75. 6d. each ; and 30 ewe 
 lambs for ^5 53. ! So that it was not expensive to feed servants. 
 
 In the next 20 years to 1656 there was a slight rise in 
 wages. " My man," writes Mr. Anthony Stapley, " came with me 
 to dwell, and is to have 4 55. per annum wages. Martha Earle 
 came to me April roth, and Elizabeth Lancaster May 5th. The 
 former is to have ^2, and the latter ^2 IDS. per annum." And 
 again, in 1657, " My man George came June ist, and I am to 
 give him ^3 153. a-yeare, and he is to brew besides his other 
 work. George Virgoe came to me as helper in the garden, and is 
 to have 4 per annum and to live in the house." 
 
 Anthony Stapley, Justice of the Peace, was gathered to his 
 fathers and was succeeded by his son, also an Anthony, who 
 continued the diary. But for the next 50 or 60 years there is 
 little or no change in the rate of domestic wages at Hickstead. 
 Passing on to 1/30, we learn that " Mary White began her year 
 May, 1731. Hannah Morley came, and is to have 2 if she stay 
 to Lady Day next. Paid Edward Harland and George Virgoe 
 half-a-year's wages each, 3 55. James Hazlegrove came to live 
 with me at ^6 55. per annum." 
 
 From these entries it may be inferred that, whilst women's 
 wages had remained stationary, or had even fallen, men's had 
 risen a little. But then we must bear in mind the lower value of 
 money. Perhaps 6 55. in 1730 would not command much 
 more of the necessaries of life than ^3 in 1630. But even the 
 former sum sounds very small compared with a man-servant's 
 yearly wages in 1877.
 
 SOCIAL CHANGES IN SUSSEX. 281 
 
 There is no reference in the Stapley Diaries to such domestic 
 troubles as disturbed the peace of mind of the Rev. Giles Moore 
 and Mr. Timothy Burrell. Servants came and went, of course ; 
 but no moral delinquencies are recorded. One motive for their 
 leaving was, that they might not gain a settlement in the Parish 
 by a twelvemonths' service ; and so they left their service just 
 before the year was completed and returned in a few days' time. 
 Ex. gr. : " 1743, March 25th, Richard Mitchell left my service, 
 and I paid him $ zos. He came to me again on the 2Qth" This 
 was the consequence of one of those provisions of the Old Poor 
 Laws which have been swept away in the present century with so 
 many other fetters on the labour-market. It was a matter of 
 policy not to allow a man to get a settlement, that is, a right to 
 be relieved out of the Poor-rates in a parish, and so he was dis- 
 charged previous to the completion of a twelve months' service, 
 and then taken back again. 
 
 To all appearances, things went smoothly at Hickstead Place 
 in respect to indoor service. There was no want of good servants, 
 and these seem to have known when they had good masters and 
 mistresses. The latter part of the Stapley Diaries reaches to the 
 limes of which Mr. Turner had experience the golden age of 
 Masters and Mistresses, and the fabulous one of servants, or, shall 
 we say, the age of fabulous servants ? 
 
 Pan' passu with the later Stapley Diaries runs the Diary of 
 Richard Marchant, of Little Park, Hurst, beginning in 1714 and 
 ending in 1728. But Mr. Marchant's references to servants and 
 wages are few and far between. One point of interest, however, 
 is touched upon, under date March 28th, 1716: "Bargained 
 with Edward Morley at 355, until Michaelmas, and if his voiles be 
 not 53., I have promised to make them so." 
 
 This matter of " vailes," as douceurs to servants were called, 
 was one of no small importance in the last century, both to those 
 who received and to those who paid them. These latter were the 
 visitors and guests of the Master. They were expected to " tip " 
 handsomely to the servants, and at length the practice grew into 
 a system of extortion which made hospitality a grievous tax to
 
 282 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 the recipient of it and a disgrace to the host. The "vailes" 
 which Edward Morley expected to receive at Little Park were, it 
 is obvious, not very formidable ; but at the houses of the great, 
 and especially in London, nothing less than gold was taken by 
 the "pampered menials," and sums of ^5 and 10 were 
 expected at some noble houses ! Pope often refused invitations 
 because the price of the dinner, in the shape of "vailes" to 
 servants, was too high a price for the honour or the enjoyment. 
 To whom the world (and especially the dining-out world) is- 
 indebted for putting down this system of vailes, we do not know- 
 Doubtless the abuse of it brought its own cure, as the same 
 extortionate system, transplanted from private houses to hotels, 
 has led in our days to a remedy in the shape of a fixed charge for 
 attendance. How grievously must the thought of " vailes " have 
 interfered in the i8th century with that "good digestion" which 
 ought to " wait on appetite " ! 
 
 After all, Edward Morley did not come to Little Park. On 
 Easter Monday Richard Marchant wiote, " Edward Morley's 
 mother was here, and made some scruples about her son's service. 
 So away they both went together." 
 
 Perhaps the " vailes " of Little Park were not tempting 
 enough ! 
 
 Except that on Christmas Day " the workmen [that is, the farm 
 labourers] dined in the house as usual," there is no further reference 
 to servants in the Marchant Diary. Servants, it is evident, were 
 more easily procured in those days than now, and not so difficult 
 to be kept. Very regular hours were observed in most families, 
 especially in the country. Dinner at i or 2 ; tea at 5 or 6 ; a 
 little card-playing or smoking and drinking, and then to bed at 9 
 or 10 to be up again "with the lark." The servants were not 
 worn out by late hours, or spoilt by over-dainty, ignorant 
 mistresses ; they were kept to their house-work, and, when that 
 was done, were put to needle-work, or, in earlier days, to the 
 spinning-wheel, the drone of which was the music of the old farm- 
 house. Then, as we have already pointed out, there was little 
 competition for female labour. There were not two mistresses
 
 SOCIAL CHANGES IN SUSSEX. 283 
 
 running after one maid, or columns of advertisements in news- 
 papers tempting young women from their places by higher wages. 
 In thousands of households even the " servant of all work " was 
 not yet known, the wife did the housework with the help of her 
 daughters or a poor relative or dependent, and the domestic 
 labour-market was rather over than under supplied. It was a 
 good thing then for a young woman from the country to get into 
 a good family even as a servant 
 
 In illustration of this period, when there was little to separate 
 the middle classes of society from that class immediately beneath 
 them, which was the nursery of domestic servants that is, the 
 agricultural labourers we may turn to the journal of Thomas 
 Turner, general dealer, of East Hothly. It takes in the middle of 
 the iSth century, from 1754 to 1765 ; and it is evident that at this 
 time not only did all classes below the highest aristocracy mix 
 and mingle much more easily than they do now, but that the 
 trading classes in country-places, at least and the serving class 
 approached very closely to each other so closely, indeed, as to 
 touch and mingle. Such was the case in the household of Thomas 
 Turner himself. He was a man of education and a prosperous 
 tradesman, associating on equal terms with the Parson and the 
 Doctor of the Parish, and yet he and his maid and shop-boys all 
 took their meals together and went to church together, and he tells 
 us of all this as of an ordinary matter-of-course thing. Videlicet : 
 " I and the maid staid the Communion : " a kind of association 
 which we do not think is common in the present day ! There 
 was, it is obvious, no great social gap between Mr. and Mrs. 
 Thomas Turner and their housemaid or shop-boys. They all 
 dined together in the kitchen, and, doubtless, passed the evening 
 in the same apartment The trading classes had not yet taken, 
 at least, not in country places, that bound upwards which has 
 carried them to the very top of the tree, and the labouring classes 
 had not begun that downward march which did not cease until 
 the great mass of them had become paupers. Thomas Turner 
 himself, though with good blood in his veins and a coat of arms 
 in the family, does not seem to have been conscious of any great
 
 284 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 disparity between him and the serving class. When he lost his 
 first wife, and was looking about for another help-mate, he 
 advisedly selected Molly Hicks, servant to Luke Spence, Esq., of 
 South Mailing, and he so describes her in his Diary. " She comes," 
 he further tells us, " of respectable parents, and may, perhaps, one 
 time or ether, have some fortune." 
 
 In fact, a little further on, he tells us that " her fortune seems 
 to be rather a flowing stream." " As to her education, I own," he 
 adds, " it is not liberal ; but she has good sense, and a desire to 
 improve her mind, and has always behaved to me with the strictest 
 honour and good manners." Molly Hicks was, in fact, as the 
 editor of Thos. Turner's Diary (Mr. Blencowe) informs us, the 
 daughter of a substantial yeoman at Chiddingly ; and it was 
 frequently from this class that servants were drawn in the last 
 century, and no shame thought of it. Their position was that of 
 one of the family not mere menials and, as we see, they often 
 became the wives of men in the middle ranks, and made good 
 wives too. This only lasted for a time. The middle class rose 
 rapidly ; the labouring class as rapidly sank ; the drawing and 
 dining room received the one ; the kitchen was left solely to the 
 other : and a very wide gap grew up, or rather down, between 
 them, which there seems to be no modern Curtius capable of 
 filling up. 
 
 It was about this time the rising period of the tradesman, 
 the declining one of the agricultural labourer that the general 
 servant, " or maid of all work," came into existence. Like most 
 other classes, she was created by circumstances adverse to her 
 own peculiar class, that of the farm labourer ; flourished 'for a 
 time during the struggle upward of the middle classes and then 
 disappeared with their initiation into wealth and luxury, and the 
 increasing demand for servants of all kinds. For we ask such of 
 our readers as can look back a few years, has not the " servant-of- 
 all-work " passed out of existence as one behind the times ? Only 
 such as have arrived at a certain age can recall that patient, hard- 
 working, uncomplaining what shall we call her slave? no, 
 she was too active and willing for that but certainly a
 
 SOCIAL CHANGES IN SUSSEX. 285 
 
 domestic serf, a drudge a hewer of wood and a drawer of 
 water who used, in the times of our grandmothers, to last 
 a mistress a whole life-time, and whose whole being seemed 
 to be summed up in one word housework. Patient, hardy, 
 cheeiful, loving too with a very high feeling of respect for their 
 "masters'' and "missises," and with a strong feeling of affection 
 for their children was this race of " servants-of all-work." Of 
 course, their cooking abilities were limited confined chiefly to 
 roast and boiled suet puddings and apple turnovers. But it was 
 careful and cleanly cooking, and they " cleared as they went." 
 They were up early always on their feet got their dinner when 
 they could, but managed to " tidy up " by tea-time, and then did 
 a bit of work for themselves or their mistresses, and could even 
 sometimes find time for a romp with the children before they put 
 them to bed. Cannot you, reader, remember such a household 
 creature as this a very part of the house and family scarcely 
 ever quitting it from year's end to year's end only to go to 
 Church on Sunday evenings or do a " little shopping " once or 
 twice in the year and not leaving " for good " except to marry, 
 and then in a shower of tears ? Cannot you remember some such 
 faithful, simple, active-handed creature as this, who knew nothing 
 and did everything? They are gone "clean gone." They did 
 their work, or rather the work of their mistresses, in their genera- 
 tion, and went and left no successors. It was quite right, perhaps, 
 that they should pass away, for they marked a very low point in 
 the fortunes of the working classes, and many of them came from 
 starving homes, and some even from the Workhouses in which 
 their parents had died. They could, as a rule, neither read nor 
 write, and do nothing but the simplest household work. But they 
 did it with a will, and carried into the homely families which they 
 entered a strength of affection as well as of body which may in 
 vain be looked for now-a-days in a better-instructed class. 
 Cooks we have now, and housemaids, and parlour-maids, 
 and scullery-maids, and we don't know how many classes of 
 domestic-servants, who make or mar each other's work. But 
 the general servant, or " maid-of-all-work " is extinct, and some
 
 286 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 lachrymose housekeepers go so far as to say that in a few 
 years there will be no servants at all in England only " lady- 
 helps " ! But we hold to the adage that " what has been will be," 
 and looking back and seeing that service is of very long standing 
 in the country, and that it has never been without its troubles 
 each age, perhaps, thinking its troubles the greatest, we incline 
 to believe that, until the advent of the Millennium, there will be 
 servants in the land, and roasters and mistresses to complain of 
 them !
 
 287 
 
 SUSSEX ROADS. 
 
 T~)R. BURTON, of Cambridge (from whose journal we have 
 already quoted) had some experience of Sussex roads in the 
 middle of last century ; and his evidence is not of a favourable 
 character. He entered the County from the Surrey side, by way 
 of Stone Street, a relic of the ancient Romans and their road- 
 making (whence the name of the village), which called up all his 
 classic enthusiasm. "As to the Romans," he exclaims, " I praise 
 them for many of their high-souled and magnificent ideas, but not 
 least for their public establishments and works ; and on this very 
 day most especially do I praise them, while travelling on this stone 
 causeway; for, from the moment I left it, I fell immediately upon 
 all that was most bad upon a land desolate and muddy, whether 
 inhabited by men or beasts a stranger could not easily distinguish, 
 and upon roads which were to explain concisely what is most 
 abominabl e Sussexian. ' ' 
 
 He had previously described Sussex as " a muddy, fertile, 
 and pastoral country, smooth and flat, indeed, when seen from 
 afar, but not easy to ride or drive through ; so that, having there- 
 by earned a bad name, it has passed into a by -word, and any 
 difficulty hard to get through or struggle against, may, by a 
 simile, be called " the Sussex bit of the road." 
 
 This is hard, indeed, upon Sussex ; but " worse remains 
 behind." Going into details (which in this case, we take it, 
 meant rucks and quagmires and " fondering roads)," the learned 
 Doctor declares that " No one would imagine them to be intended 
 for the people and the public, but rather the by-ways of indi- 
 viduals, or more truly the tracks of cattle-drivers ; for everywhere 
 the usual footmarks of oxen appeared, and we, too, who were on 
 horseback, going on zigzag almost like oxen at plough, advanced 
 as if we were turning back, while we followed out all the twists of 
 the roads. Not even now, though in summer time, is the wintry
 
 288 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 state of the roads got rid of; for the wet, retained even till now 
 in this mud, is sometimes splashed upwards all of a sudden to the 
 annoyance of travellers. Our horses could not keep on their legs 
 on account of these slippery and rough parts of the roads, but 
 sliding and tumbling on their way, and almost on their haunches, 
 with all their haste got on but slowly." 
 
 At the time this was written Horsham was the metropolis 
 of the Weald, and is descried as " ancient and populous ; " the 
 Assizes being held there, and salesmen from London resorting 
 thither " to buy with ready money so many thousand of the 
 chicken race." 
 
 Travelling thence through the forest of St. Leonard's, " we 
 fell again," says the Doctor, " upon the especially impassable 
 Sussex roads." " The surface of the earth deceived and impeded 
 us in our advance, for, although apparently dry, and looking firm, 
 yet it entrapped us, so we went on, into tumbles and much 
 muddiness, so that the day was already fading away, when we 
 arrived at the long-desired dwelling" (the Rectory house, 
 Shermanbury). 
 
 We cannot omit Dr. Burton's description of the natives of 
 Sussex at this period (1751), for it is obvious that he looked upon 
 their manners as smacking of their soil. " The men there, as not 
 being accustomed to quit their homes for the sake of traffic, or 
 any other purpose, generally live by themselves, and, being born 
 on the soil, continue unrefined. Nor does it seem at all strange, 
 if mixed up with so much mud, some sordidness should also stain 
 in some degree the frame of their minds. Their manners, there- 
 fore, are not the most gentlemanlike or agreeable, but neither are 
 they quite barbarous. In their persons not corpulent, but rather 
 spare and thin-shanked ; in their diet generally frugal ; and in 
 their cookery, being neither dainty nor expensive, they care most 
 for pork, which, indeed, they prepare skilfully, by steeping in 
 brine." 
 
 To the Sussex ladies he was a little more lenient ; but upon 
 that head we have already quoted him. And now we come to the 
 fons et origo of that often-repeated witticism which assigns to the
 
 SOCIAL CHANGES IN SUSSEX. 289 
 
 stiffness of Sussex clay the length of Sussex legs : " Come now, 
 my friends," exclaims Dr. Burton, " I will set before you a sort of 
 problem in Aristotle's fashion : Why is it that the oxen, the 
 swine, the women, and all other animals, are so long-legged in 
 Sussex ? May it be from the difficulty of pulling the feet out of 
 so much mud by the strength of the ankle, that the muscles get 
 stretched, as it were, and the bones lengthened ? " 
 
 The association of the fair sej^pvith men and swine, " and 
 all other animals," somewhat detracts from the merit of the learned 
 traveller's preceding eulogy on Sussex women. But we must 
 allow something for the manners and language of the times, 
 and for a learned and unreclaimed bachelor ! And then he 
 does not spare himself; for, after compassionating the status 
 of his step-father, the Rector of Shermanbury, " a man in slender 
 circumstances, stuck and buried in that irresistible Sussex mud, in 
 a poor spot," he exclaims, " How disgusted I immediately felt with 
 myself when looking on him ! how, in comparison of him, I 
 despised myself, sleek and fat, with a well-fed body, like a pig 
 from the reverend herd." 
 
 Verily, the clerical estimate of the Doctor was not a very 
 high one ! 
 
 So much for the Sussex roads in 1750. 
 
 At a still earlier date, in 1731, an Itinerary of the roads in 
 England and Wales was edited by John Owen, gent., of the Inner 
 Temple, and in the Sussex map, which he gives, there are only 
 three high roads laid down from London to the sea-coast, and of 
 two of these Shoreham was the terminus ! The other one passed 
 along the coast to Brighthelmstone and Newhaven, and from 
 thence through Lewes to London. It was traversed by one stage- 
 coach, which started at a very early hour on the Monday morning, 
 and arrived late in London on Tuesday evening ; returning in the 
 same way on Friday and Saturday. 
 
 The work thus edited by Mr. Owen, " Britannia depicta," was 
 undertaken in the preceding century by a Mr. Ogilby by the 
 express command and at the expense of Charles II. ; and, of the 
 73 roads there described, only five are assigned to Sussex; i, from 
 
 u
 
 2QO GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 London to Arundel; 2, from London to Newhaven, with a con- 
 tinuation to Shoreham ; 3, from London to Rye ; 4, from London 
 to Chichester ; 5, from Oxford to Chichester. Ogilby anticipates 
 the complaints of Dr. Burton as to the character of the Sussex 
 roads, and more than once advises the traveller to break off the 
 road either to the right hand or to the left, to avoid the imid. 
 These are samples of his warnings to travellers : " Backward 
 turnings to be avoided : at Jjpe end of Maudlin, the left to Pet- 
 worth ; in Amberley, the left," &c. He also takes note of " the 
 gallows " being a frequent direction post to the traveller ! as they 
 were doubtless intended to be a warning to ill-doers not to persist 
 in the path leading to them. 
 
 De Foe, who published his Tour through Great Britain in 
 1724, says he has seen a tree drawn on a " tug "by 22 oxen, and 
 even then it was sometimes two or three years before it got to 
 Chatham ! Not far from Lewes he had seen a sight " I never 
 saw in any part of England before, namely, going to a Church at 
 a country village I saw an ancient lady, and a lady of very good 
 quality, I assure you, drawn to Church in her coach by six oxen ; 
 nor was it done in frolick or humour, but from sheer necessity) 
 the way being so stiff and deep that no horses could go in it." 
 
 Judith, the widow of Sir Richard Shirley, of Preston, was a 
 wise and provident woman ; and also, no doubt, a loving one. 
 She desired, when she died, to be laid by the side of her first 
 husband, at Preston ; but she knew what Sussex roads were, and 
 that the possibility of her being so buried the home of her second 
 husband being in Kent depended upon the season of the year 
 at which that event took place. So, in her will, dated the ioth of 
 January, 1728, she directed that her body should be buried at 
 Preston, if she should die at such a time of the year as that the roads 
 thereto were passable; else, where Jier Executors shorild think fit. 
 Dying in June, her wishes were complied with. 
 
 The earliest legislative action with respect to Sussex roads 
 appears to have taken place in the reign of Henry VIII. (quoted 
 by Mr. Dodson in a paper to the Sussex Archaeological Society), but 
 its object was simply for the diversion of roads, not their improve-
 
 SOCIAL CHANGES IN SUSSEX. 29 1 
 
 ment. The extension of the iron-works in the Sussex Weald made 
 some steps towards this latter object necessary by reason of the 
 heavy traffic to and from the mills, and an Act was accordingly 
 passed with this view in the 27th year of Elizabeth's reign, 
 entitled " An Act for the preservation of Tymber in the Wildes 
 of the Counties of Sussex, Surrey, and Kent, and for the 
 amendment of High Waies decaied by carriage to and fro Yron 
 Mylles there." The "occupiers of. all manner of yron workes 
 whatsoever as Owners or Farmours of the same which shall at any 
 time hereafter cariee, or caused to be caried, any coales, mine, or 
 yron to or for anie their yron workes," &c., are, for every six loads 
 of coal or one tun of iron, to lay down one cart-load of " sinder, 
 gravel, stone, sande, or chalke " for the repairing and amending of 
 the said highways. 
 
 This payment in kind not succeeding in its purpose, in the 
 39th year of the same reign a money-payment was substituted of 
 35. for every three cart-loads of coal or mineral and every ton of 
 iron conveyed a mile along any roads within the County. This 
 statute was not repealed until the Act of i George 3, c. 42, which 
 consolidated and amended the then existing Highway Acts, and 
 by which time the iron-works of Sussex were nearly extinct 
 
 It was, however, the introduction of turnpike-gates, by which 
 tolls could be levied under private Acts of Parliament, that those 
 roads so much needed in Sussex were supplied. These were 
 chiefly passed between 1756 and 1780, and in a list of them given 
 by Mr. G. Slade Butler in Topographica Sussexiana (Vol. 15 of 
 S.A.C.) we find an Act for repairing and widening the road from 
 Lewes to Brighthelmstone, and another from Brighthelmstone to 
 the County Oak on Lovell Heath. 
 
 Whilst, to people out of Sussex, the roads of that County were 
 a reproach and an abomination, " Souseks full of dyrt and myre " 
 was the description of it in a rhyme of the 8th Harry's time, by 
 people in it they were regarded as a safeguard and protection both 
 from the rogues and cut-throats of the metropolis and the attacks 
 of an invading enemy. There were, however, two sides to this 
 question. If bad roads were obstacles to criminals and invaders,
 
 292 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 they also stood in the way of the opponents of these gentry, who, 
 if they once got a footing in the country, were more difficult 
 to be got rid of. Highwaymen and smugglers, less than 100 
 years ago, set the local authorities at defiance and it was necessary 
 to call out the militia to apprehend one of the former, and to 
 besiege towns and to fill them with troops in order to check the 
 latter. Speedy lines of inter-communication are now looked upon, 
 and with good reason, as one of the best safeguards of a country, 
 both from internal and external foes, and it is the ill-doer 
 who has most cause to curse the well-kept highway which 
 ensures a rapid pursuit and the electric telegraph which cuts 
 off escape. These may at times facilitate crime or aggression ; 
 but, if put to their right use, they are instruments in the hands 
 of order and safety, and the better the roads of a country, 
 the easier it is to protect and defend it. In this respect, 
 both as to highways and to railways, Sussex now stands as well as 
 any other County of England ; its country roads are also, as a 
 rule, a credit to it, especially in the Western Division, and where 
 formerly there was nothing but a horse track, or a "fondering" 
 road, good hard, though narrow, roadways now connect village 
 with village, homestead with homestead, facilitating traffic, 
 economising labour, and giving denizens of towns easy access to 
 the pleasant places of the country. So Sussex is no longer open 
 to the reproach of being " full of dyrt and myre ; " or, at all events, 
 its dirt is to be found in the right place, in its fields, not in its 
 roads, and the proverb of Dr. Burton, in the way of " the Sussex 
 bit of the road," signifying an especially disagreeable bit, may be 
 erased, as having lost its meaning.
 
 293 
 
 MUSIC IN SUSSEX. 
 
 A Hundred years hence, whoever looks back upon our age as we 
 are looking back upon the century that preceded us, will have 
 no reason to note the absence of evidence of the love and practice 
 of music amongst the people of Sussex, not only in towns but in 
 the smallest country villages. In this respect the iQth century 
 will contrast most remarkably and most favourably with the i8th 
 and the i?th ; indeed, with all the centuries, for aught we know, 
 that preceded it. For if there be one thing more conspicuous 
 than another by its absence in the archaeological records of Sussex, 
 it is all reference to Music. As a Science it certainly had no 
 existence out of the Cathedral at Chich ester, in which, as in all 
 Cathedrals, the practice and the traditions of an ecclesiastical 
 school of music, dating from the Tudors, were kept up with more 
 or less ability, according as the Cathedral dignitaries were more or 
 less inclined to music, or their organist was more or less a 
 musician. 
 
 But, setting aside this ecclesiastical -class of music, as an 
 exceptional and esoteric growth, scarcely touching the people, 
 music had no existence in Sussex, as a Science, and scarcely 
 as an Art, 100 years ago. There were, of course, both in towns and 
 villages, musical instruments, and people who played upon them, 
 and here and there, of course, there was a man of genuine musical 
 taste and knowledge, who, in happier days for music, might have 
 acquired fame as a musician. But they were rara aves, and their 
 musical taste and talent obtained little fame for them, and not 
 much profit. Still, there was a certain demand for music, and, in 
 this as in other cases, the demand brought a supply. There were 
 then, as now, festive occasions on which music was required, if 
 only for dancing, or processions, or " waits " at Christmas. In 
 almost every village, at the commencement of this century, what 
 was called " a case of viols " was to be found, consisting of the
 
 294 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 treble viol (or violin), the tenor (or alto), and the bass viol; the 
 latter a title by which the violoncello is still known in country 
 places. And there were certain persons who could play on these 
 instruments after a certain fashion, singly or in concert. The 
 " fiddle " has always served for the votaries of Terpsichore, and a 
 fiddler was seldom wanting in country places. It may be 
 questioned, indeed, whether greater difficulty would not be found in 
 getting one, that is, a local fiddler, " to the manner born," now 
 than there was 50 or 100 years ago. And for this reason : the 
 pianoforte has superseded the fiddle, and there are few houses 
 now above the cottage class in which a pianoforte is not to be 
 found, and also some one (of the feminine gender, as a rule) able 
 to sit down and play a quadrille or a waltz. The pianoforte is to 
 the woman of the present generation what the violin was to the 
 man of the last. In our grandfathers' .days, there was really no 
 instrument for a woman to play upon. A Queen, like Elizabeth, 
 might play on the virginal, and, after the virginal, the spinet might 
 be found in a few "great houses," and, at a later date, the 
 harpsichord became more common. But these were the rare 
 luxuries of the rich a nd great. The middle classes, and even the 
 classes above them, the gentry and clergy, knew little or nothing 
 of them, and, though Fielding might make Sophia Western play 
 her father to sleep upon one, and Scott depict Flora Macdonald 
 as fascinating Waverley with her harp-playing, yet to play on any 
 instrument 150 years ago was a rare accomplishment for an 
 English woman of the middle classes, because musical instruments 
 for women were almost unknown. The only music heard in the 
 cottage, the farm-house, and even the manor-house, was that of 
 the spinning-wheel. 
 
 So, in the diaries of the Gales, and the Stapleys, and the 
 Marchants, we find no mention of music ; it did not enter as it 
 now does into domestic life, or form a common source of public 
 entertainment. Even in Churches it was of a very rude kind. 
 Organs are of modern date in Sussex country churches, and there 
 was either no instrumental music at all, only a pitch-pipe to give 
 the key-note to the choir or congregation, or it was a rude kind of
 
 SOCIAL CHANGES IN SUSSEX. 295 
 
 orchestra, made up of the beforementioned treble, tenor, and bass- 
 viol, with, perhaps, a hautbois or flute. This served our fore- 
 fathers well up to the end of the last century, and, indeed, to a 
 much more recent period in many places. We ourselves have 
 listened to the dulcet tones of a village band in a West Sussex 
 Church within the last thirty years. We believe they are all now 
 extinct. One of the last to hold its ground was in Sidlesham, 
 near Chichester, where the village band and choir (with their 
 " Anthem," as it was called) flourished up to about thirty years 
 ago ; and when the then Vicar, the late Rev. E. Goddard, proposed 
 the introduction of simple psalmody, the whole of the performers, 
 with their instruments and books, rose and indignantly left the 
 Church ! 
 
 The only reference we have found to the vocal performances 
 of our Sussex forefathers in the Archaeological records of the last 
 century, is in the Journal of Dr. Burton (1750), who, a propos of 
 the church-psalmody at Shermanbury, writes : " The more shrill- 
 toned they (the Sussex people) may be, the more valued they are, 
 and in Church they sing psalms, by preference, not set to the old 
 and simple tune, but as if in a tragic chorus, changing about with 
 strophe and antistrophe, and stanzas, with good measure ; but yet 
 there is something offensive to my ear when they bellow to excess, 
 and bleat out some goatish noise with all their might " (!) 
 
 One might suppose the learned Doctor was talking of a 
 set of savages in some newly-discovered land, and not of his 
 fellow-subjects in an almost adjoining County, But, in fact, to the 
 polished clergyman of Oxford these Sussex boors were savages. 
 
 A few words of explanation are needed as to the " chorus " 
 (" anthems " they called it) sung by the choir of Shermanbury 
 instead of " the old and simple tunes." The old and simple 
 tunes, introduced chiefly from Germany in the days of the 
 Reformation, and of which " the Old Hundredth " (that was its 
 numerical place in the Psalm-book) is almost the sole remnant, 
 were superseded in the Stuarts' days by a more florid and 
 pretentious kind of hymn, " with," as Dr. Burton says, " strophe 
 and antistrophe and stanzas," and these were often " bleated out,"
 
 296 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 to use his language, with more vigour than taste or discretion. 
 They have, in their turn, been superseded by a simpler and 
 higher class of hymn in our own days. 
 
 In few things, indeed, affecting social life and manners, has 
 there been such a change in England, and for the better, as 
 in instrumental music. Vocal music, in some form, must always 
 have held its ground, and we know that in Elizabeth's and the 
 ist James's days it was widely cultivated, and hence the rich 
 inheritance of madrigals, glees, rounds, catches, and other part- 
 songs that we boast of, and which used to be sung, and still 
 occasionally are sung, without accompaniment. But in instrumental 
 music there was almost a blank up to the invention of the piano. 
 Even Handel's scores were only written for violin, alto, bass, and 
 hautbois, with an occasional flute accompaniment, that was, the 
 English flute, and now and then a bit for the French horn. The 
 more recent introduction of the German flute gave an impetus to 
 the study of music by men, and, 50 years ago, there was scarcely 
 a house of the middle classes without a German flute. But it 
 was the improvement of the harpsichord into the pianoforte that, 
 by giving an instrument suited for women, caused music to be 
 introduced into the homes of the English people, and has done 
 more to soften, refine, and polish their manners than, perhaps, 
 anything else. If it has not made us a musical people, like the 
 Germans, the Bohemians, the Hungarians, and other Sclavonic 
 races, and only Nature could have done that, it has made us 
 fond of music, which is next door to it. The rest may come in 
 good time ! Poets, and great poets too, we have had in Sussex, 
 but there has been no Sussex composer yet,* nor is there that we 
 are aware of such a thing as a genuine Sussex air. 
 
 * This reproach might have been removed from Sussex forty years ago but 
 for the premature death of a young musician (Alfred Bennett, the eldest son of 
 the then Organist of Chichester Cathedral), who promised fair to keep up the 
 succession of great composers of Church music. At 24 he was chosen (in public 
 competition) Organist of New College, Oxford, and had composed Services and 
 Anthems which are still played in our Cathedrals, besides other compositions. 
 But his career was cut short by a fatal coach accident whilst proceeding from 
 Oxford to the Worcester Musical Festival. So the advent of a great Sussex 
 composer was deferred, may we predict, till our own days ?
 
 SOCIAL CHANGES IN SUSSEX. 297 
 
 There can be little doubt that, at one period of our history, 
 music in Sussex, as known and practised by the people, had all 
 but died away ; and it is still a belief with some that Sussex 
 people lack both ear and voice for music. Certainly the singing 
 at sheep-shearing feasts and other rural meetings gives little token 
 of either ; it is a dreary monotonous sing-song of two or three 
 notes, repeated through interminable verses of equally dreary 
 rhyme. Some specimens of these rude rhymes are given in the 
 paper on " The Sussex Sheep-shearer," and Mr. M. A. Lower, in his 
 " Old Speech and Manners in Sussex," after stating that there are 
 still in existence " two or three rhythmical compositions once 
 familiar to Sussex men," quotes, as one of these, a Sussex whistling 
 song, " which," he says, " was formerly popular and is not yet 
 entirely forgotten." Here it is : 
 
 A SUSSEX WHISTLING SONG. 
 
 There was an old Farmer in Sussex did dwell, 
 
 [Chorus of Whistlers. 
 
 There was an old Farmer in Sussex did dwell, 
 And he had a bad wife, as many knew well 
 
 [Chorus of Whistlers. 
 
 Then Satan came to the old man at the plough 
 " One of your family I must have now." 
 
 " It is not your eldest son that I do crave, 
 But 'tis your old wife ; and she I will have." 
 
 " O ! welcome, good Satan, with all my heart ; 
 I hope you and she will never more part ! " 
 
 Now Satan he got the old wife on his back, 
 And he lugged her along like a pedlar's pack. 
 
 He trudged away till he came to his gate, 
 
 Says he" Here take an old Sussex man's mate." 
 
 O ! then she did kick all the young imps about ; 
 Says one to the other, " Let's try turn her out ! " 
 
 She spied seven devils, all dancing in chains ; 
 
 She up with her pattens and knocked out their brains.
 
 298 GLIMPSES OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 She knocked old Satan against the wall : 
 
 " Let's try turn her out, or she'll murder us all." 
 
 Now he's bundled her up on his back amain, 
 And to her old husband he's took her again. 
 
 " I've been a tormentor the whole of my life ; 
 But I ne'er was tormented till I took your wife ! " 
 
 Certainly, when the musical knowledge of the people was 
 reduced to whistling, it could not descend much lower ; but still 
 it sufficed to prove that the taste for music was not quite extinct, 
 and, in course of time, that musical knowledge which has grown 
 so rapidly within the last half -century in the middle classes of 
 England will doubtless extend to the lower, especially through 
 the instruction of the children at school and England nay, even 
 Sussex may wake up some fine morning and find that it is 
 musical !
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY, LOS ANGELES 
 
 COLLEGE LIBRARY 
 
 This book is due on the last date stamped below. 
 
 Book Slip-35w-9,'62 (D2218s4)4280
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILIT 
 
 A 001 010067 5 
 
 UCLA-College Library 
 
 DA 670 S98F62 
 
 L 005 689 036 1 
 
 DA 
 
 6?0 
 
 S98F62