CHAPTER XXX One of the pleasantest short walks from Lewis takes one over Mount Cabern to Glind, from Glind to Ringma, and from Ringma over the hills to Lewis again. The path to Mount Cabern winds upward, just beyond the turn of the road to Glind, under the cliff. Cabern is not one of the highest of the Downs, a mere 490 feet, whereas Furl Beacon across the valley is upwards of 700. But it is one of the friendliest of them, for on its very summit is a deep grassy hollow relic of ancient British fortification, where on the windiest day one may rest in that perfect peace that comes only after climbing. Cabern is not unique in this respect, there is, for example, a similar hollow in the hill above Kingly Vale, but Cabern has a deeper cavity than any other that I can recall. On the roughest day, thus cupped, one may here almost see the gale go by overhead, and on such a mild spring day as that when I was last there, towards the end of April, there is no such place in which to lie and listen to the lark. If one were asked to name an employment consistent with perfect idleness, it would be difficult to suggest a better than that of watching a lark melting out of sight into the sky, and then finding it again. This you may do in Cabern's Hollow, as nowhere else. The song of the lark, thus followed by eye and ear, for song and bird become one, passes naturally into the music of the spheres. There exist in the universe only yourself and this cosmic Twitter. The Lewis golfers of both sexes pursue their sport some way towards Cabern, and in the valley below the volunteers fire at their butts. But I doubt if the mountain proper will ever be tamed. Picnics are held on the summit on fine summer days, but for the greater part of the year it belongs to the horseman, the shepherd, and the lark. Mount Cabern gave its title to a poem by William Hay of Glindbourne House in 1730, which ends with these lines in the manner of an epitaph upon their author. Here lived the man who, to these fair retreats, first drew the muses from their ancient seats. Though low his thought, though impotent his strain, yet let me never of his song complain, for this the fruitless labour recommends. He loved his native country and his friends. William Hay, 1695 to 1755, was author also of a curious essay on deformity, which Charles Lamb liked, and of several philosophical works, and was a very diligent member of parliament. Descending Cabern's eastern slope, and passing at the foot the mellowest barn roof in the county, beautifully yellowed by weather and time, we come to Glind, remarkable among Sussex villages, for a formal Grecian church that might have been ravished from a surrey Thameside village, and set down here, so little resemblance has it to the indigenous Sussex House of God. As a matter of fact it was built in 1765 by the Bishop of Durham, the bishop being Richard Trevor, of the family that then owned Glind Place, which is hard by the church, a fine Elizabethan mansion, a little somber, and very much in the manner of the great houses in the late S. E. Waller's pictures, the very place for a clandestine interview or midnight elopement. The present owner, a descendant of the Trevers, and of the famous John Hamden, enemy of the star chamber and ship-money, is Admiral Brand. Glind's most famous inhabitant was John Elman, 1753 to 1832, the breeder of sheep, who farmed here from 1780 to 1829, and was the village's kindly autocrat, and a true father to his men. The last of the patriarchs, as he might be called, Elman lodged all his unmarried labourers under his own roof, giving them, when they married, enough grassland for a pig and a cow, and a little more for cultivation. He built a school for the children of his men, and permitted no licensed house to exist in Glind. Not that he objected to beer, on the contrary, he considered it the true beverage for farm labourers, but he preferred that they should brew it at home. It was John Elman who gave the South Down Sheep its fame, and brought it to perfection. The most interesting account of South Down Sheep is to be found in Arthur Young's general view of the agriculture of the county of Sussex, which is one of those books that, beginning their lives as practical, instructive, and somewhat dry manuals, mellow as the years go by, into human documents. Taken sentence by sentence, Young has no charm, but his book has, in the mass, quite a little of it, particularly if one loves Sussex. He studied the country carefully, with special emphasis upon the domain of the Earl of Egremont, an agricultural reformer of much influence, whom we have met as a collector of pictures and the friend of painters. For the Earl not only brought Turner into Sussex with his brushes and palette, but introduced a plough from Suffolk, and devised a new light wagon. The other hero of Young's book is necessarily John Elman, whose flock at Glind he subjected to close examination. Thomas Elman of Shoreham, John's cousin, he also approved as a breeder of sheep, but it is John that stood niest the Earl of Egremont on Young's ladder of approbation. John Elman's sheep were considered the first of their day, equally for their meat and their wool. I will not quote from Young to any great extent, lest vegetarian readers exclaim, but the following passage from his analysis of the south-down type must be transplanted here, for its pleasant carnal vigor. The shoulders are wide, they are round and straight in the barrel, broad upon the loin and hips, shut well in the twist, which is a projection of flesh in the inner part of the thigh that gives a fullness when viewed behind, and makes a south-down leg of mutton remarkably round and short, more so than in other breeds. John Elman by no means satisfied all his fellow-breeders that he was right. His neighbour at Glind, Mr. Morris, differed from him in the matter of crossing, and his cousin Thomas had other views on many points touching the flock. In the following passage Arthur Young expresses the extent to which individuality in sheep-breeding may run. The south-down farmers breed their sheep with faces and legs of a colour just as suits their fancy. One likes black, another sandy, a third speckled, and one and all exclaim against white.  A second will set the first right, and pronounce that in a lot of weathers those that are soonest and most fat are white-faced, that they prove remarkably good milkers, but that white is an indication of a tender breed. There is of opinion that by breeding the lambs to black the wool is injured, and likewise apt to be tainted with black and spotted, especially about the neck, and not saleable. A fourth breeds with legs and faces as black as it is possible, and he too is convinced that the healthiness is in proportion to blackness, while another says that if the south-down sheep were suffered to run in a wild state they would in a very few years become absolutely black. All these are the opinions of eminent breeders. In order to reconcile them, others breed for speckled faces, and it is the prevailing duller. It is told that when the Duke of Newcastle used to pass through Glyne on his way from Halland House near East Hothley to Bishopstone, the peel of welcome was rung on plowshares since there was but one bell. Ringma, which lies about two miles north of Glind, is not in itself a village of much beauty. Its distinction is to have provided William Penn with a wife, Glyelma Springit, daughter of Sir William Springit, a Puritan, whose bust is in the church and who died at the Siege of Arundel Castle. The great Quaker thus took to wife the daughter of a soldier. When Glyelma Penn died at the age of fifty, her husband wrote of her, she was a public as well as a private loss, for she was not only an excellent wife and mother, but an entire and constant friend of a more than common capacity, and greater modesty and humility, yet most equal and undaunted in danger, religious as well as ingenuous, without affectation, and easy mistress and good neighbour, especially to the poor, neither lavish nor penurious, but an example of industry as well as of other virtues, therefore our great loss, though her own eternal gain. In Ringma Church, I might add, is a monument to Mrs. Geoffrey, Ney Maney, wife of Frances Geoffrey of South Mauling, with another beautiful testimony to the character of a good wife, wise, modest, more than can be marshalled here, her many virtues would a volume fill, for all heaven's gifts in many single set, in Geoffrey's Maney altogether met. Ringma was long famous for its mud and bad roads, Defoe, or another, says in the Tour Through Great Britain, I travelled through the dirtiest, but in many respects the richest and most profitable country in all that part of England. The timber I saw here was prodigious, as well in quantity as in bigness, and seemed in some places to be suffered to grow only because it was so far from any navigation, that it was not worth cutting down and carrying away. In Dry Summers indeed, a great deal is conveyed to Maidstone and other places on the Medway, and sometimes I have seen one tree on a carriage which they call in Sussex a tug, drawn by twenty-two oxen, and even then it is carried so little away and thrown down and left for other tugs to take up and carry on, that sometimes it is two or three years before it gets to Chatham, for if once the rain comes on it stirs no more that year, and sometimes a whole summer is not dry enough to make the road passable. Here I had a sight which, indeed, I never saw in any part of England before, namely that going to a church at a country village not far from Lewis, 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 frolic or humour, but from sheer necessity, the way being so stiff and deep that no horses could go in it. The old lady was not singular in her method of attending service, for another writer records seeing Sir Herbert Springett, father of Sir William, drawn to church by eight oxen, a determination to get to his pew at any cost that led to the composition of the following ballad, which is now printed for the first time. The Ride to Church A True Sun of the Church of England Epitaph on Sir Herbert Springett in Ringma Church Let others sing the wild career of Turpin, Gilpin, Paul Revere, a gentler pace is mine, but here the raindrops fell, Splash, thud, splash, thud, till half the countryside was flood, and Ringma was a waste of mud. The sleepy ooze had grown a sea, where here and there a drowning tree cast up its arms beseechingly, and cattle that in fairer days beside its banks were won't to graze, now viewed the scene in mild amaze, and huddled on an island mound sent forth so dollarous a sound, as made the sadness more profound. And then, at last, one Sunday broke when villagers delighted, woke to find the sun had flung its cloak of leaden-coloured cloud aside. All jubilant they watched him ride, for see the land was glorified! The morning pulsed with youth and mirth, it was as though upon the earth a new and gladder age had birth. The lark exalted in the blue, triumphantly the rooster-crew. The chimneys laughed, the sparks up flew, and rolling westward out of sight, like billows of majestic height, the downs, transfigured in the light, seemed such a garb of joy to wear, so young and radiant an air, God might but just have set them there. Sir Hubert Springett, ringma's squire, no better man in all the shire. He, too, was filled with kindling fire, which, working in him, did incite the worthy and capacious night to doubty deeds of appetite. Sir Herbert's lady watched her lord range mightily about the board, which she of her abundance stored. The Lady Barbara, for whom the blossoms of the simple room diffused their friendliest perfume, than who none quickly heard the call of true distress, and left the hall eager to do her gentle all, when village-patience needed aid, and oh, the rich march-pain she made, and oh, the rare quince marmalade. Just as the squire was satisfied, the noise of feet was heard outside. A knock! Come in! Sir Herbert cried. And lo! John Grigg, in Sunday's smock, baked pardon, pulled an oily lock, explained the muds above the hawk. No horse could draw, Eesa, he said. Huh! Quothed the squire, and scratched his head. Then yoke the oxen in instead. A lesser man would gladly turn his chair to fire again, and learn how fancifully logs can burn, grateful for such immunity from parson, not the squire, for see, true son of England's church was he. So as he ordered, was it done, the oxen came forth, one by one, their wide horns glinting in the sun, and to the coach were yoked. Then, dressed as squires should be, in glorious best, with wonderful brocaded vest, out came Sir Herbert, took his seat, moved, Barbara, farewell, my sweet! And off they started, all complete, although they drew so light a load for them, so heavy was the road, John Grigg was busy with his goat. The cottagers in high delight ran out to see the startling sight, and make obeisance to the night. While floated through the liquid air, and o'er the sunlit meadows fair, the throbbing belchries called to prayer. At last, and after many a lurch that shook Sir Herbert in his perch, John Grigg drew up before the church. Moreover not a minute late, the villagers around the gate were filled with wonder at his state, and promptly, though it was sabbath-tide, Three chairs for squire, hooray! they cried, such was Sir Hubert Springitt's ride. Sad is the sequel, sad but true. For while in sermon-time a few deep snores resounded from the pew reserved for squire, by others there the tenth commandment, men declare, was being broken past repair. For thinking how they had to roam through weary wastes of sodden loam ere they could win to fire and home, in spite of Parsons' fervid knocks upon his cushion orthodox, they coveted their neighbour's ox. One are now rarely seen on the Sussex roads, but on the hillsides a few of the farmers still plough with them, and may it be long before the old custom is abandoned. There is no pleasanter or more peaceful sight than looking up that of a wide-horned team of black oxen, smoking a little in the morning air, drawing the plough through the earth, while the ploughman whistles and the ox-herd goad in hand, butters his sacks and grunts of incitement or reproof. The black oxen of the hills are of Welsh stock, the true Sussex ox being red. The cues, as their shoes are called, may still be seen on the walls of a smithy here and there. Shoeing oxen is no joke, since to protect the smith from their horns they have to be thrown down, their necks are held by a pitchfork and their feet are tied together. Sussex roads were terrible until comparatively recent times. An old rhyme credits Sousex, with dirt and mire, and Dr. Burton, the author of the Itir sosexiensis, humorously found in it a reason why Sussex people and beasts had such long legs. Come now, my friend, he wrote in Greek. I will set before you a sort of problem in Aristotle's fashion. Why is it that the oxen, the swine, the women, and all other animals are so long-legged in Sussex? May it be from the difficulty of pulling the feet out of so much mud by the strength of the ankle that the muscles get stretched as it were and the bones lengthened? When in 1703 the king of Spain visited the Duke of Somerset at Petworth, he had the greatest difficulty in getting here. One of his attendants has put on record the perils of the journey. We set out at six o'clock in the morning, at Portsmouth, to go to Petworth, and did not get out of the coaches, save only when we were overturned or stuck fast in the mire, till we arrived at our journey's end. It was hard service for the prince to sit 14 hours in the coach that day without eating anything and passing through the worst ways that I ever saw in my life. We were thrown but once indeed in going, but both our coach which was leading and his highness's body coach would have suffered very often if the nimble boars of Sussex had not frequently poised it or supported it with their shoulders, from Godalming almost to Petworth, and the nearer we approached the Dukes the more inaccessible it seemed to be. The last nine miles of the way cost six hours' time to conquer. To return to Rigma it was there that Gilbert White studied the tortoise. Note, see letter 13 of the natural history of Selborne. End note, the house where he stayed still stands and the rookery still exists. These rooks, wrote the naturalist, retire every morning all the winter from this rookery where they only call by the way as they are going to roost in deep woods. At the dawn of day they always revisit their nest trees and are preceded a few minutes by a flight of doors that act as it were as their harbingers. An intermediate owner of the house where Gilbert White resided which then belonged to his aunt Rebecca Snooke ordered all nightingales to be shot on the ground that they kept him awake. While at Rigma if a glimpse of very rich parkland is needed it would be worthwhile to walk three miles north to Plaschitz which combines a vast tract of wood with a small park notable at once for its trees, its break fern, its lakes, and its waterfowl. But if one would gain it by rail, Isfield is the station. End of chapter 30. Chapter 31 of Highways and Biways in Sussex This Librivox recording is in the public domain, recording by Peter Yersley. Highways and Biways in Sussex by E. V. Lucas. Chapter 31. Uckfield and Buckstead Uckfield on the line from Lewis to Tunbridge Wells is our true starting point for the high sandy and rocky district of Crobra, Rotherfield, and Mayfield. But we must visit on the way Isfield, a very pretty village on the ooze and its iron river tributary. Isfield is remarkable for the remains of Isfield Place, once the home of the Shirley's, readers note, spelled S-H-U-R-L-E-Y-S, end readers note, connected only by marriage with the Shirley's, S-H-I-R-L-E-Y-S, of Wiston. The house can never have been so fine as slow on place, but it is evident that abundance also reigned here as there. Over the main door was the motto, non-minor est vertis quam querere pata tueri, which Worsfield whimsically translates, catch is a good dog, but hold fast is a better. In the Shirley Chapel, one of the sweetest spots in Sussex, are grasses and monuments to the family, notably the canopied altar tomb to Sir John Shirley, who died in 1631. His two wives, Jane Shirley of Wiston and Dorothy Boyer, Nay Goring of Cuckfield, and nine children, who kneel prettily in a row at the foot. Of these children it is said in the inscription that some were called into heaven, and the others into several marriages of good quality. While of Dorothy surely it is, it is prettily recorded, this, as we have seen being a district rich in exemplary wives, that she had a merit beyond most of her time, her pity was the clothing of the poor, and all her minutes were but steps to heaven. Our county has many fine monuments, but I think that this is the most charming of all. At Framfield, two miles east of Uckfield, which we may take here, we again enter the iron country, and for the first time see Sussex hops, which are grown largely to the north and east of this neighbourhood. Framfield has a Tudor church and no particular interest. In 1792, eleven out of fifteen persons in Framfield, whose United Ages amounted to 1,034 years, offered through the county paper to play a cricket match with an equal number of the same age from any part of Sussex, but I do not find any record of the result. Nor can I find that any one at Framfield is proud of the fact that here, in 1834, was born Richard Ralph, the orator and poet, son of Sussex peasants. In England his name is scarcely known, and in America, where his work was done, it is not common knowledge that he was by birth and parentage English. Ralph was the friend of man, Liberty, and John Brown. He fought against slavery in the war, and helped the cause with some noble verses, and he died miserably, by his own hand, in 1878, leaving these lines beside his body. Dermotuous needle-nissy bonem, when, for me, this end has come and I am dead, and the little, voluble, chattering doors of men peck at me curiously, let it then be said, by some one brave enough to speak the truth, here lies a great soul killed by cruel wrong, down all the balmy days of his fresh youth to his bleak desolate noon, with sword and song and speech that rushed up hotly from the heart, he wrought for Liberty, till his own wound he had been stabbed, concealed with painful art through wasting years, mastered him, and he swooned and sank there, where you see him lying now, with the word failure written on his brow. But say that he succeeded, if he missed world's honours and world's plaudits, and the wage of the world's deft lackeys, still his lips were kissed daily by those high angels who assuaged the thirstings of the poets, for he was born unto singing, and a burzen lay mightily on him, and he moaned because he could not rightly utter to the day what God taught in the night. Sometimes, nevertheless, power fell upon him, and bright tongues of flame and blessings reached him from poor souls in stress, and benedictions from black pits of shame, and little children's love and old men's prayers, and a great hand that led him unawares.  Greatly he suffered, greatly too he erred, yet broke his heart in trying to be brave. Nor did he wait till freedom had become the popular shibboleth of courtier's lips.  He was a weary, but he fought his fight, and stood for simple manhood, and was joyed to see the august broadening of the light, and new earths heaving heavenward from the void. He loved his fellows, and their love was sweet, plant daisies at his head and at his feet. Huckfield's Main Street is divided sharply into two periods, from the station to the road leading to the church all is new, beyond all is old. The town is not interesting in itself, but it commands good country, and has a good inn, the maiden's head. It is also a good specimen of the quieter market town of the past, with a brewery hiding behind a wonderful tree braced with kindly iron bands, a water mill down by the railway, and several solid comfortable houses for the doctor, and the lawyer, and the brewer, and the parson, with ample gardens behind them. Huckfield was once the home of Jeremiah Markland, the great classic, who acted as tutor here to Edward Clark, son of the famous William Clark, rector of Buckstead, and father of Edward Daniel Clark, the traveller. It is agreeable to remember that Fanny Burney passed through the town with Mrs. Thrail in 1779, although she found nothing to interest her. Huckfield is the southern boundary of the Rock District, of which we saw something at West Hosley, and it is famous for the sandstone cliffs in the grounds of high rocks, an estate on the south of the town. The unthinking, untidiness, and active pen knives of the holidaymakers make it recently necessary for the grounds to be closed to strangers. Close by, however, just off the road from Huckfield to Mearsfield, is a rocky tract that is free to all. It consists of about an acre of grey sandy boulders, some rising to a height of twenty feet or so, which remind one a little of the Rocher in the forest of Fontainebleau, although on a smaller scale. All are worn with the feet of adventurous boys, enjoying one of the best natural playgrounds in the county. Here blackberries come to rich perfection, the sun's ripening warmth being thrown back from the hot sand. When I first knew Mearsfield Church many years ago, its aged vicar rolled out, Thou shalt do no murder, with an accusing timbre that seemed to bring the sin home to all of us. He had also so peculiar a way of pronouncing Albert, that his prayer for our rulers seemed to make an invidious distinction, and ask a blessing not for all, but for all but Edward, Prince of Wales. Some of the oddest of the composite, pietistic names that broke out over England during the Puritan revolution are to be found in Sussex registers. In 1632, Master, Perform Thy Vows, Sears of Mearsfield, married Thomasine Edwards. His full name was too much for the village, and four years later is found an entry recording the burial of Vows, Sears, pure and simple. The searcher of parish registers from whose articles in the Sussex Daily News I have already quoted has also found that Heathfield had many Puritan names among them Replenished, which was given to the daughter of Robert Pryor in 1600. There was also a Heathfield damsel known as Moor Fruits. Mr. Lower prints the following names from a Sussex jury list in the 17th century. Redeemed Compton of Battle, Stand Fast on High, Stringer of Crowhurst, Weep Knot, Billing of Lewis, Cald Lower of Warburton, Elected Mitchell of Heathfield, Renewed Wisbury of Halesham, Fly Fornication, Richardson of Waldron, The Peace of God Night of Burwash, Fight the Good Fight of Faith, White of Youhurst, and Kill Sin, Pemble of William. Also a Master, Moor Fruits, Fowler of East Hothley, for it seems that in such names there was no sex. Among the curious Sussex surnames found by the student of the county archives, who is quoted above are the following, Pitchfork, Devil, Lepper, Handshut, Jugglery, Hollowbone, Stillborn, Sweetname, Slybody, Fidge, Beatup, Rougehead, Punch, Page, Lies, Hogsflesh, Backfield, Breathing, Whisky, Wild Goose, Anne. Almost every name here would have pleased Dickens, while some might have been invented by him, notably Fidge and Page. One can almost see Mr. Fidge and Mr. Page drawing it in his pages. From the Mearsfield Rocks, Buxted is easily reached, about a mile due east, but a far prettier approach is through Buxted Park, which is gained by a footpath out of Uckfield's Main Street. The charm of Buxted is its deer. Sussex, as we have seen, is rich in parks containing deer, but I know of none other where one may be so certain of coming close to these beautiful creatures. Nor can I recall any other deer that are so exquisitely dappled, but that may be because the Buxted deer were the first I ever saw thirty years ago, and we like to think the first the best. Certainly they are the friendliest or least timid. The act of going to church is invested at Buxted with an almost unique attraction, since the deer lie hard by the path. Indeed, the last time I went to church at Buxted I never passed through the door at all, but sat on a gravestone throughout the service, and watched the herd in its graceful restlessness. That was twelve years ago. The other day I watched them again, and could see no change. Some of the stags were still as of old, almost bowed beneath their antlers, although one at any rate was free, for a keeper who passed carried a pair of horns in his hand. The old house at the beginning of the footpath to the church, with the hog in Bathra-Leaf on its façade, is known as the Hog House, and is said to have been the residence of Ralph Hogg. Who was Ralph Hogg? Who is Hiram Maxim? Who was Krupp? Who was Nordenfeldt? It was Ralph Hogg, Iron Master, who in the year 1543 made the first English metal cannon. So at any rate, say, tradition and Hollinshead. Buxted is otherwise most pacific of villages, sleepy and undiscovered. In the early years of the last century it boasted the possession of a labourer with a memory of amazing tenacity, one George Watson, who otherwise almost imbecile, was unable to forget anything he had once seen, or any figure repeated to him. On the road between Meersfield and Krobera is Heron's Gill, the residence of Mr Fitz-Allen Hope. It stands to the east of the road in one of those hollow sites that alone won the word eligible from a Tudor builder. Hard by the road is the perfect little early English Roman Catholic church, which Mr Hope built in 1897, a miracle in these hurried, florid days of honest work and simple, modest beauty. The church being Roman Catholic, one may with confidence turn aside to rest a little in its cool seclusion, relieved of the irritating search for the sexton of the national establishment, and freed from his haunting presence and suggestion that the labourer is worthy of more than his hire. While on this subject I might remark that a county vicar describing the antiquities of his neighbourhood in one of the Sussex archaeological society's volumes writes magnanimously, a debt of gratitude is certainly due to our Roman Catholic predecessors whatever error may mix itself with their piety and charity for erecting such noble edifices in a style of strength to endure for a late posterity. It seems to me that a very simple way of discharging a portion of this debt would be to imitate the excellent habit of leaving the church doors wide open as practised by those Roman Catholic predecessors. My own impulse to enter many of the Sussex churches has been principally antiquarian or aesthetic, but to rest amid their grey coolness is a legitimate desire, which should be fostered rather than discouraged, particularly as it is under such conditions that the soul, even of the stranger whose motive is curiosity, is often comforted. The arguments in favour of keeping churches closed are unknown to me. Doubtless they are numerous and ingenious, but doubtless equally a locked church is a confession of failure. While to urge that one has but to ask for the key to be able to enter a church is no true reply, since hospitality, whether to the body or the soul, loses in sweetness and effect as it loses in spontaneity. From Heronsgill to Krobera is a steady climb for three miles, with the heathery wastes of ashtown forest on the left and the hilly district around Mayfield on the right. End of Chapter 31 In the spring of this year, 1903, the walls and fences of Krobera were covered with the placards of a firm of estate agents, describing the neighbourhood in the manner of the great George Robbins as Scotland in Sussex. The simile may be true of the ashtown forest side of the beacon, although involving an unnecessary confusion of terms, but Hampstead in Sussex would be a more accurate description of Krobera proper. Never was a fine remote hill so be villard, the east slope is all scaffold poles and heaps of bricks, new churches and chapels are sprouting, and the many hoardings announced that follies, pieros or conjurers are continually imminent. Krobera itself has shops that would not disgrace Croydon and a hotel where a Lord Mayor might feel at home. Houses in their own grounds are commoner than cottages, and near the summit the pegs of surveyors and the nameboards of avenues yet to be built testify to the charms which our Saxon Caledonia has already exerted. But to say this is not to say all. Krobera may be populous and overbuilt, but it is still a glorious eminence, the healthiest and most bracing inland village in the county, and the key to its best moorland country. Since Krobera's normal visitor either plays golf or is contented with a very modest radius, the more adventurous walker may quickly be in the solitudes. In the little stone house below the forge Richard Jeffries lived for some months at the end of his life. Krobera is crowned by a red hotel which can never pass into the landscape. Rotherfield, its companion hill on the east, on the other side of the Jarvis Brook Valley, is surmounted by a beautiful church with a tall shingled spire that must have belonged to the scene from the first. This spire darts up from the edge of the forest ridge like a pheros for the wield of Kent. The church was dedicated to St Dennis of Paris by a Saxon chieftain who was cured of his ills by pilgrimage to the St's monastery. That was in 792. In the present church, which retains the dedication, is an ancient mural painting representing the martyrdom of St Lawrence. There is also a Byrne-Jones window. Were it not for Rotherfield, both Sussex and Kent would lack some of their waterways, for the Rother and the Ooze rise here, and also the Medway. A local saying credits the women of Rotherfield with two ribs more than the men to account for their superior height. Under a hedge halfway between Rotherfield and Jarvis Brook, grow the largest cow slips in Sussex, as large as cow slips may be without changing their sex. But this is all cow slip country from the field of Rother to the field of Uck, and it is the land of the purple Orchis too, the finest blooms of which are to be found on the road between Rotherfield and Mayfield. But you must scale a fence to get them, because, like all the best wild flowers, they belong to the railway. Between Rotherfield and Mayfield is a little hill, trim and conical, as though Miss Greenaway had designed it, and perfect in deportment, for it has, as all little conical hills should have, a white windmill on its top. Around the mill is a circular track for carts, which runs nearer the sails than any track I remember ever to have dared walk on. Standing by this mill one opens many miles of Kent and Surrey, due north the range of chalk downs on which is the pilgrim's way, between Merchham and Westerham, and in front of that Toys Hill and Eid Hill and their sandy companions on the north edge of the wheel. Mayfield is a city on a hill on the skirts of the Hot Hop district of which Burwash is the Sussex Centre. To walk about it, even in April, is no exhilaration, but in August one thinks of Sahara. I lived in Mayfield one August and could barely keep awake, and we used to look across at the rolling chalk downs in the south between Ditchling and Lewis, and long for their cool windswept heights. They can be hot too, but chalk is never so hot as sand, and a steady climb to a summit over turf odorous of wild time is restful beside the eternal hills and valleys of the Hop district. Mayfield has the best street and the best architecture of any of these Highland villages. Also it has the distinction of having done most for mankind, since without Mayfield there would have been no water to cure jaded London ladies and gentlemen at Tunbridge Wells. According to Eidmer, who wrote one of the Lives of Dunstan, that saint, when Archbishop of Canterbury, built a wooden church at Mayfield and lived in a cell hard by. Saint Dunstan, who was an expert goldsmith, was one day making a chalice, or, as another version of the legend says, a horseshoe, when the devil appeared before him, instantly recognising his enemy and being aware that, with such a foe, prompt measures alone are useful, Saint Dunstan at once pulled his nose with the tongs, which chanced happily to be red hot. Wrenching himself free, the devil leapt at one bound from Mayfield to Tunbridge Wells, where plunging his nose into the spring at the foot of the pantiles, he imparted to the water its calibate qualities, and thus made the fortune of the town as a health resort. To Saint Dunstan, therefore, indirectly, are all drinkers of these wells indebted. For other drinkers, he introduced or invented the practice of fixing pins in the side of drinking cups, in order that a thirsty man might see how he was progressing, and a bibulous man be checked. When consecrating his little church at Mayfield, Saint Dunstan discovered it to be a little out of the true position, east and west. He therefore applied his shoulder and rectified the error. The remains of Mayfield Palace, the older boat of the Archbishop's of Canterbury, join the church. After it had passed into the hands of the Crown, for Cranmer made a bargain with the king by which Mayfield was exchanged for other property, Sir Thomas Gresham lived here, and Queen Elizabeth has dined under its roof. The palace is to be seen only occasionally, for it is now a convent, Mayfield being another of the county's many Roman Catholic outposts. In the great dining-room are the tongs which Saint Dunstan used. The church, dedicated to Mayfield's heroic saint, has one of the broader shingled spires of Sussex, as distinguished from the slender spires of which Rotherfield is a good example. Standing high, it may be seen from long distances. The tower is the original early English structure. Four more of the old Sussex iron tomb-slabs may be seen at Mayfield. In the churchyard, says Mr. Lauer, was once an inscription, with this uncomplementary first line, O reader, if that thou canst read, it continued, Look down upon this stone, Death is the man, do you what you can, that never spareth none. In Mayfield's street even the new houses have caught comeliness from their venerable neighbours. It undulates from Gable to Gable, and has two good inns. The old timbered house in the middle of the east side is that to which Richard Jeffries refers, without enthusiasm, in the passage which I quote in a later chapter, from his essay on Buckhurst Park. In Louis Jennings' field paths and green lanes, the house comes in for eulogy. Vicar of Mayfield, in 1361 and following years, was John Wickliffe, who has too often been confused with his great contemporary, and namesake, the reformer, and the village claims as a son, Thomas May, 1595 to 1650, playwright, translator of Lucan's Farsalier, secretary to parliament, and friend of Ben Johnson. In the Sussex Archaeological Collections is printed the journal of Walter Gale, schoolmaster at Mayfield in the latter half of the 18th century, from which a few extracts may be given. 1750. I found the greatest part of the school in a flow by reason of the snow and rain coming through the leds. The following extemporary verse I set for a copy, abandon every evil thought, for they to judgment will be brought. In passing the star I met with Mr Eastwood. We went in and spent tuppence apiece. I went to Mr Sawyer's. One of his daughters said that she expected a change in the weather, as she had last night dreamed of a deceased person. The editor remarks that this superstition still lingers, or did, fifty years ago, in the wheel of Sussex. Walter Gale adds, I told them in discourse that on Thursday last the town clock was heard to strike three in the afternoon, twice, once before the chimes went, and a second time, pretty nearly a quarter of an hour after. The strikes at the second striking seemed to sound very dull and mournfully. This, together with the crickets coming to the house at Lawton, just at our coming away, I look upon to be sure presage of my sister's death. A year later my mother, to my great unhappiness, died in the eighty-third year of her age, agreeable to the testimony I had of a death in our family on the tenth of May last. Mr Rogers came to the school and brought with him the four volumes of Pamela, for which I paid him four shillings sixpence, and bespoke duck poems for Mr Kine, and a caution to swearers for myself. Sunday I went to church at Hothley, text from St Matthew, take no thought, saying, What shall we eat, and what shall we drink, or where with all shall we be clothed? And I went to Jones's, where I spent tuppence, and there came Thomas Cornwall, and treated me with a pint of Tuppany. Mr James Kine came, we smoked a pipe together, and we went and took a survey of the fair. We went to a leisure-domain show, which we saw with tolerable approbation. May the twenty-eighth gave attendance at a cricket match, played between the Games-de-Zet Burr-Wash and Mayfield, to the advantage of the latter. A series of quarrels with Old Kent occupy much of the diary. Old Kent, it seems, used to enter the school-house and vilify the master. Not, I imagine, without cause. Thus he again called me Upstart, Runagate, beggarly dog, clenched 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 Scholar, The Greater Rogue. Mr Gale was removed from the school in 1771 for neglecting his duties. End of Chapter 32 Chapter 33 of Highways and Byways in Sussex This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, recording by Peter Yersley. Highways and Byways in Sussex by E. V. Lucas. Chapter 33 Heathfield and the Lies There are two Heathfields, the old village with its pleasant Sussex church and ancient cottages, close to the park gates, and the new brick-and-slate town that has gathered round the station, and the natural gas-works. The park lies between the two, remarkable among Sussex parks for the variety of its trees, and the unusual proportion of them. The spacious lawns which are characteristic of the parks in the south, here, on Heathfield's Sussex undulations, give place to heather, fern, and trees. I never remember to have seen a richer contrast of greens than in early spring looking west from the house, between the masses of dark evergreens that had borne the rigours of the winter, and the young leaves just breaking through. Heathfield's park is, I think, the loveliest in Sussex, lying as it does on a southern slope, with its opulence of foliage, its many rushing burns, the source of the cuckmire, its hidden ravines and deep silent tarns, and its wonderful view of the downs and the sea. The park once belonged to the daikers of Hearst Monso, whom we are about to meet. Traces of the original house dating probably from Henry VII's reign are still to be seen in the basement. Upon this foundation was imposed a new building towards the end of the 17th century. The park was then known as Bailey Park. A century later, George Augustus Elliot, afterwards Lord Heathfield, the hero of Gibraltar and earlier of Cuba, acquired it with his Havana prize money. After Lord Heathfield died in 1790, the park became the property of Francis Newbury, son of the bookseller of St. Paul's Churchyard. The present owner, Mr. Alexander, has added greatly to the house. Gibraltar, on the highest point of the park, was built by Newbury in honour of his predecessor. From its summit a vast prospect is visible, and forty churches, it is said, may be counted. I saw about few of these. In the east similarly elevated is seen the Breitling Needle. Mr. Alexander has gathered together in the tower a number of souvenirs of old English life, which make it a Lewis Castle Museum in little. Here are stocks, horn glasses, drinking vessels, rush light holders, leather bottles, and one of those quaint wooden machines for teaching babies to walk. An old manuscript history of the tower in Mr. Alexander's possession contains at least one passage that is perhaps worth noting, as it may help to clear up any confusion that exists in connection with Lord Heathfield's marriage. The lady to whom his lordship meant to be united, says the historian, and who would certainly have been his wife, had not death stepped in, is the sister of a lady of whom his lordship was extremely fond, but she, dying about ten years ago, he transferred his affections to the other, who is about thirty-five years of age.  He cuts a stone for the tower, but also the modular in clay of some very ingenious and pretty bass relief designs for funeral urns, notably a group known as Charity. The following scene from the second part of Henry VI, although Shakespeare places it in Kent, belongs to a little hamlet known as Cade Street, close to Heathfield. Scene 10, Kent, Iden's Garden, enter Cade.  These five days have I hid me in these woods, and dust not peep out, for all the country is laid for me, but now am I so hungry that if I might have a lease of my life for a thousand years I could stay no longer. Wherefore, on a brick wall have I climbed into this garden, to see if I can eat grass or pick a salad another while, which is not a miss to cool a man's stomach this hot weather. And I think this word, salad, was born to do me good for many a time, but for a salad my brain-pan had been cleft with a brown bill, and many a time when I have been dry and bravely marching, it hath served me instead of a quart pot to drink in, and now the word salad must serve me to feed on. Enter Iden with servants behind. Iden, Lord, who would live tome-oiled in the court, and may enjoy such quiet walks as these? This small inheritance my father left me contenteth me, and worth a monarchy. I seek not to wax great by others waning, or gather wealth I care not with what envy. Suffices that I have maintains my state, and sends the poor well-pleased from my gate. Cade, here's the Lord of the soil come to seize me for a stray, for entering his fee simple without leave. Ah, villain, thou wilt betray me, and get a thousand crowns of the king by carrying my head to him, but I'll make thee eat iron, lug an ostrich, and swallow my sword like a great pin. Ere thou and I part? Iden, why, rude companion, what so ere thou be? I know thee not. Why, then, should I betray thee? Is it not enough to break into my garden, and like a thief to come to rob my grounds, climbing my walls in spite of me, the owner, but thou wiltst brave me with these saucy terms? Cade, brave thee? I, by the best blood that ever was broached, and beard thee too.  Iden, nay, it shall near be said, while England stands that Alexander Iden, an esquire of Kent, took odds to combat a poor famished man. Oppose thy steadfast gazing eyes to mine, see if thou canst out face me with thy looks, set limb to limb, and thou art farther lesser, thy hand is but a finger to my fist, thy leg a stick compared with this truncheon. My foot shall fight with all the strength thou hast, and if mine arm be heaved in the air, thy grave is digged already in the earth. As for words, whose greatness answers words, let this my sword report what speech for bears. Cade, by my valour, the most complete champion that ever I heard, steal, if thou turn the edge, or cut not out the burly-boned clown in chines of beef, ere thou sleep in thy sheath, I beseech jove on my knees, thou mayest be turned to hobnails. They fight, Cade falls. Oh, I am slain, famine, and no other hath slain me. Let ten thousand devils come against me, and give me but the ten meals I have lost, and I defy them all. Wither, garden, and be henceforth a burying place, to all that do dwell in this house, because the unconquered soul of Cade is fled. I don't know. Is it Cade that I have slain, that monstrous traitor? Sword, I will hallow thee for this, I deed, and hang thee on my tomb when I am dead. Near shall this blood be wiped from my point, but thou shalt wear it as a herald's coat, to emplace the honour that thy master got. Cade, I'dn't farewell, and be proud of thy victory, tell Kent from me she hath lost her best man, and exhort all the worlds to be cowards, for I that never feared any am vanquished by famine, not by valour, dies. That was on July the 12th, 1450. Cade did not die at once, but on the way to London, wither he was conveyed in a cart. On the 16th his body was drawn and quartered, and dragged through London on a hurdle. One quarter was then sent to Black Heath, the other three to Norwich, Gloucester, and Salisbury. Cade's head was set up on London Bridge. I'dn't was knighted. A pillar was erected at Cade Street by Newbury on the piece of land that he possessed, nearest to the probable scene of the event. Near this spot was slain the notorious rebel, Jack Cade, by Alexander I'dn't, Esquire, is the inscription. Slaughter Common near Heathfield is said to be the scene of a more wholesale carnage. Heathfield people claiming that there, Kaidwalla, in 635, fought the Saxons, and killed Iadwyne, king of Northumbria. Sylvan Harmer in his manuscript history of Heathfield is determined that Heathfield shall have the credit of the fray, but as a matter of fact, if slaughter Common really took its name from a battle, it was a very different one, for Kaidwalla and Iadwyne met, not at Heathfield, but Hatfield Chase, near Doncaster. It is that Heffel Cuckoo Fair on April the 14th, Heffel being Sussex for Heathfield. That tradition states the old woman lets the cuckoo out of her basket, and starts him on his course through the summer months. A local story tells of a Heathfield man who had a quarrel with his wife, and left for Ditchling. After some days he returned, remarking, I've had enough of foreign parts, nothing like old England yet. If anyone walking from Heathfield towards Burrwash is astonished to find a railway in, let him spend no time in seeking a station, for there is none within some miles. This in was once the labour in vain, with a signboard representing two men hard at work, scrubbing a nigger till the white should gleam through, then came a scheme to run a line to Eastbourne, midway between the present Heathfield line and the Burrwash line, and Enterprise dictated the changing of the sign to one, more in keeping with the times. The railway project was abandoned, but the inn retains its new style. Warbilton, a village in the Iron Country, two miles south of Heathfield, is famous for its association with Richard Woodman, the Sussex martyr, who is mentioned in an earlier chapter. His house and foundry were hard by the churchyard. The wonderful door in the church tower, a miracle of intricate bolts and massive strength, has been attributed to Woodman's mechanical skill, and the theory has been put forward that he made this door for his own strongroom, and it was afterwards moved to the church. Another story says that he was imprisoned in the church tower before being taken for trial. Warbilton has the following terse and confident epitaph upon Anne North, wife of the vicar, who died in 1780. Through deaths, rough waves, her bark serenely trod, her pilots Jesus and her harbour, God. From Horeham Road Station, next Heathfield on the way to Halesham, we can walk across the country to East Hosley, and thence to Chiddingley and Hellingley, where we come to the railway again. Note, East Hosley, Chiddingley and Hellingley, says a local witticism, three lies, and all true. End note. East Hosley stands high in not very interesting country, nor is it now a very interesting village, but it is remarkable for an admirably conducted inn, and a church unique, in my experience of old churches, in its interior for a prettiness that is little short of aggressive. Whatever paint and mosaic can do to remove plain white surfaces has been done here, and the windows are gay with new glass. Were the building a new one, say at Serbiton, the effort would be harmonious, but in an old village in Sussex it seems a mistake. Colonel Thomas Lunsford of Wiley, now no more, near East Hosley, a cavalier and friend of Charles I, was notoriously a consumer of the flesh of babes. How he won such a reputation is not known, but it never left him. Houlibras mentions his tastes. In one ballad of the time he figures as Lunsford that Ethith of Children, and in another, recording his supposed death, he is found with a child's arm in his pocket. After a stormy but courageous career, he died in 1691, innocent of cannibalism. It was this Lunsford who fired at his relative Sir Nicholas Pelham of Halland, as he was one day entering East Hosley Church. The huge bullet, the outcome of a long feud, missed Nicholas and lodged in the church door, where it remained for many years. It cost Lunsford eight thousand pounds, and out lorry. Halland, one of the seats of the Pelhams, about a mile from the village, was just above Terrible Down, a tract of wild land on which, according to local tradition, a battle was once fought so fiercely that the soldiers were up to their knees in blood. In the neighbourhood it is, of course, called Terrible Down. Local tradition also states of a certain piece of woodland attached to the glib of this parish, called Breaches Wood, that it owes its name to the circumstance that an East Hosley lady, noticing the vicar's breaches to be in need of mending, presented to him and his successors the wood in question as an endowment to ensure the perpetual repair of those garments. Halland House no longer exists, but in the days of the great Duke of Newcastle, who died in 1768, it was famous for its hospitality and splendour. We meet with traces of its influence in the frequent inebriation after visits there of Mr. Thomas Turner, a Mercer and General Dealer of East Hosley, who kept a diary from 1764, recording some of his lapses and other experiences. A few passages from the extracts quoted in the Sussex Archaeological Collections may be given. My wife read to me that moving scene of the funeral of Miss Clarissa Harlow. Oh, may the Supreme Being give me grace to lead my life in such a manner as my exit may in some measure be like that divine creatures. This morning my wife and I had words about her going to Lewis tomorrow. Oh, what happiness must there be in the married state when there is a sincere regard on both sides, and each party truly satisfied with each other's merits, but it is impossible for tongue or pen to express the uneasiness that attends the contrary. Sunday, August the 28th, 1756, Thomas Davey at our house in the evening, to whom I read five of Tillets and Sermons. October the 28th, Thomas Davey came in the evening, to whom I read six of Tillets and Sermons. This day went to Mrs. Porter's to inform them the livery-lace was not come, when, I think Mrs. Porter treated me with as much imperious and scornful usage as if she had been, what I think she is, more of a Turk and infidel than a Christian, and I an abject slave. I went down to Mrs. Porter's and acquainted her that I would not get her gown before Monday, who received me with all the affability, courtesy and good humour imaginable. Oh, what a pleasure would it be to serve them, was they always in such a temper. It would even induce me, almost, to forget to take a just profit. We supped at Mr. Fuller's, and spent the evening with a great deal of mirth till between one and two. Thomas Fuller brought my wife home upon his back. I cannot say I came home sober, though I was far from being bad company. The curate of Lawton came to the shop in the forenoon, and he, having brought some things of me, and I could wish he had paid for them, dined with me, and also stayed in the afternoon till he got in liquor, and, being so complacent as to keep him company, I was quite drunk. How do I detest myself for being so foolish? In the evening read the twelfth and last book of Milton's Paradise Lost, which I have now read twice through. Mr. Bannister, having lately taken from the smugglers a freight of brandy, entertained Mr. Carmen, Mr. Fuller, and myself in the evening with a bowl of punch. Although the Pelhams owned Halland, their principal seat was at Lawton, two or three miles to the south. Of that splendid Tudor mansion little now remains, but one brick tower, in the vault of the church which has been much restored, no fewer than forty Pelhams repose. Chittingly Church presents the completest contrast to East Hoseley's over-decorated, yet accessible, feign that could be imagined. Its door is not only kept shut, but a special form of locked bar seems to have been invented for it, and on the day that I was last there the churchyard gate was padlocked too. The spire of Whitestone, visible for many miles, a change from the customary oak shingling of Sussex, has been bound with iron chains that suggests the possibility of imminent dissolution, while within the building is gloomy and time-stained. If at East Hoseley the church gives the impression of a too complacent prosperity, here we have precisely the reverse. The state of the Geoffrey monument behind a row of rude railings is in keeping. In the Geoffrey monument, by the way, the statues at either side stand on two circular tablets, which are not unlike the yellow cheeses of Alkmar. It was possible this circumstance that led to the myth that the Geoffrey's too proud to walk on the ground had on Sundays a series of cheeses arranged between their house and the church, on which to step. Their house was chittingly placed built by Sir John Geoffrey, who died in 1577. Remains of this great mansion are still to be seen. It was during Sir John's time that chittingly had a vicar, William Tiddleton, sufficiently flexible to retain the living under Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary and Elizabeth. Here in the eighteenth century lived one William Elfic, a devotee of bell-ringing, who computed that altogether he had rung chittingly's triple bell for 8,766 hours, which is six hours more than a year, and who travelled upwards of 10,000 miles to ring the bells of other churches. Mark Anthony Lower, most interesting of the Sussex archaeologists, to whom these pages have been much indebted, was born at chittingly in 1813. Mr. Egerton, in his Sussex folk and Sussex ways, tells a story of a couple down chittingly way, who agreed upon a very satisfactory system of danger signals, when things were not quite well with either of them. Whenever the husband came home a little contrary, he wore his hat on the back of his head, and then she never said a word, and if she came in a little cross and crooked, she threw her shawl over her left shoulder, and then he never said a word. A little to the east of Hellingly is Amberstone, the scene in 1814 of a pretty occurrence. Alexander, the czar of all the rushers, travelling from Brighton to Dover with his sister, the Duchess of Oldenborough, saw Nathaniel and Mary Rickman of Amberstone, standing by their gate. From their dress he knew them to be Quakers, a sect in which he was much interested. The carriage was therefore stopped, and the czar and his sister ended the house. They were taken all over it, praised its neatness, ate some lunch, and parted with the kindest expressions of goodwill, the czar shaking hands with the Quaker, and the Duchess kissing the Quakeress. A few minutes on the rail bring us to Halesham, an old market-town whose church, standing on the ridge which borders Pevensey level, on the west, is capped with pinnacles like that of East Grinstead. Walking a few yards beyond the church, one comes to the edge of the high ground, with nothing before one but miles and miles of the meadowland, of this Dutch region, green and moist and dotted with cattle. Halesham's principal value to the traveller is that it is the station for Hearst Monso, with her, however, we are to journey by another route. Otherwise the town exists principally, in order that bullocks and sheep may change hands once a week. Halesham's cattle market covers three acres, and on market days the wayfarers in the streets need the agility of a picador. We ought, however, to see Mitchell and Priory while we are here. It lies two miles to the west of Halesham in the Cuckmere Valley, now a beautifully placed farmhouse, but once a house of Augustinian cannons, founded in the reign of Henry III. Here one may see the old monkish fish stews, so useful on Fridays, in perfection. The moat, where fish were probably also caught, is still as it was, and the fine old three-storied gateway and the mill, belonging to the monks, stand to this day. The Priory, although much in ruins, is very interesting, and well worth seeing and exploring with a reconstructive eye. A little further west is the Dicker, or rather the two Dickers, upper Dicker and lower Dicker, large commons between Arlington in the south and Chiddingly in the north. Here are some of the many pottery works for which Sussex is famous. End of Chapter 33 Chapter 34 of Highways and Biways in Sussex. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, recording by Peter Yersley. Highways and Biways in Sussex by E. V. Lucas. Chapter 34 Eastbourne. Eastbourne is the most select, or least democratic, of the Sussex watering places. Fashion does not resort thither as to Brighton in the season, but the crowds of excursionists that pour into Brighton and Hastings are comparatively unknown at Eastbourne, which is in a sense a private settlement under the patronage of the Duke of Devonshire. Hastings is of the people. Brighton has a character almost continental. Eastbourne is select. Lawn tennis and golf are its staple products. One played on the very beautiful links behind the town, hard by Compton Place. The residents of the Duke, the other in Devonshire Park. It is also an admirable town for horsemanship. Eastbourne has had small share in public affairs, but in 1741 John Hamilton Mortimer, the painter, sometimes called the Salvatore Rosa of England, was born there. From a memoir of him, which horse-field prints, I take passages. Read on the sea coast, and amid a daring and rugged race of hereditary smugglers, it had pleased his young imagination to walk on the shore when the sea was agitated by storms, to seek out the most sequestered places among the woods and rocks, and frequently, and not without danger, to witness the intrepidity of the contraband adventurers who, in spite of storms and armed excisemen, pursued their precarious trade at all hazards. In this way he had from boyhood become familiar with what amateurs of art call Salvatore Rosa-looking scenes. He loved to depict the sea chafing and foaming, and fit to swallow navigation up, ships in peril and pinnaces sinking, bandit-y plundering, or opposing in caverns, and all such situations as are familiar to pirates on water and outlaws on land. Of his eccentricities, while laboring under the delusion that he could not well be a genius without being unsober and wild, one specimen may suffice. He was employed by Lord Melbourne to paint a ceiling at his seat of Brocket Hall Hearts, and taking advantage of permission to angle in the fish-pond, he rose from a carousel at midnight, and, seeking a net and calling on an assistant painter for help, dragged the preserve, and left the whole fish gasping on the bank in rows. Nor was this the worst. When reproved mildly and with smiles by Lady Melbourne, he had the audacity to declare that her beauty had so bewitched him that he knew not what he was about. To plunder the fish-pond and be impertinent to the lady was not the way to obtain patronage. The impudent painter collected his pencils together and returned to London to enjoy his inelegant pleasures and ignoble company. Horsfield states that a custom far more honoured by the breach than the observance heretofore existed in the manner of Eastbourne, in compliance with which, after any lady or respectable farmer or tradesman's wife was delivered of a child, certain quantities of food and of beer were placed in a room adjacent to the sacred edifice. When, after the second lesson was concluded, the whole agricultural portion of the worshippers marched out of church and devoured what was prepared for them, this was called sopps and ale. John Taylor, the water poet whom we saw at Goring, the prey of fleas and the law, made another journey into the county between August the 9th and September the 3rd, 1653, and, as was usual with him, wrote about it in doggerel verse. At Eastbourne he found a brew called Eastbourne Rug. No cold can ever pierce his flesh or skin of him who is well lined with rug within. Rug is a lord beyond the rules of law. It conquers hunger in a greedy moor, and, in a word of all drinks potable, Rug is most puissant, potent, notable. Rug was the capital commander there, and his lieutenant general was strong beer. Possibly it was in order to contest the supremacy of Rug, which one may ask for in Eastbourne today, in vain, that new Haven tipper sprang into being. The Martello Towers, which Pitt built during the Napoleonic scare at the beginning of last century, begin at Eastbourne, where the cliffs cease, and continue along the coast into Kent. They were erected probably quite as much to assist in allaying public fear by a tangible and visible symbol of defence, as from any idea that they would be a real service in the event of invasion, many of them have now disappeared. Eastbourne s glory is Beachy Head, the last of the Downs, which stopped dead at the town, and never reappeared in Sussex again. The range takes a sudden turn to the south at Falkington, whence it rolls straight for the sea, Beachy Head being the ultimate eminence. Note, the name Beachy has, by the way, nothing to do with the beach. It is derived probably from the Norman s description, Bo Chef. About Beachy Head, one has the south Downs in perfection, the best turf, the best prospect, the best loneliness, and the best air. Richard Jefferies in his fine essay The Breeze on Beachy Head has a rapturous word to say of this air. Poor Jefferies, destined to do so much for the health of others, and so little for his own. But the glory of these glorious Downs is the breeze. The air in the valleys immediately beneath them is pure and pleasant, but the least climb, even a hundred feet, puts you on a plane with the atmosphere itself, uninterrupted by so much as the treetops. It is air without admixture. If it comes from the south, the waves refine it. If inland, the wheat, and flowers, and grass distill it. The great headland and the whole rib of the promontory is windswept and washed with air. The billows of the atmosphere roll over it. The sun searches out every crevice amongst the grass, nor is there the smallest fragment of surface, which is not sweetened by air and light. Underneath, the chalk itself is pure, and the turf thus washed by wind and rain, sun-dried and dew-scented, is a couch prepared with time to rest on. Discover some excuse to be up there always. To search for stray mushrooms, they will be stray for the crop is gathered extremely early in the morning, or to make a list of flowers and grasses, to do anything, and if not, go always without any pretext. Lands of gold have been found, and lands of spices and precious merchandise, but this is the land of health. Seated near the edge of the cliff, one realises, as it is possible, nowhere else to realise, except, perhaps at Dover, the truth of Edgar's description of the headland in King Lear. It seems difficult to think of Shakespeare exploring these or any downs, and yet the scene must have been in his own experience. Nothing but actual sight could have given him the line about the crows and chuffs. Come on, sir, here's the place. Stand still. How fearful and dizzy it is to cast one's eyes so low. The crows and chuffs that wing the midway air show scarce, so gross as beetles. Halfway down hangs one that gathers samphire, dreadful trade. He thinks he seems no bigger than his head.  The murmuring surge that on the unnumbered idle pebbles, chafes, cannot be heard so high.  Chuffs are rare at Beachy-head, but jack-doors and gulls are in great and noisy profusion, and this reminds me that it was on Beachy-head in September 1886 that the inspiration of one of the most beautiful bird poems in our language came to its author, the ode to a sea-mew of Mr Swinburne. I quote five of its haunting stanzas. We sons and sires of seamen whose home is all the sea, what place man may we claim it, but thine whose thought may name it. Free birds live higher than free men, and gladlier ye than we, we sons and sires of seamen whose home is all the sea. For you the storm sounds only more notes of more delight than earth's in sunniest weather, when heaven and sea together join strength against the lonely lost bark born down by night. For you the storm sounds only more notes of more delight. The lark knows no such rapture, such joy no nightingale, as sways the songless measure wherein thy wings take pleasure. Thy love may no man capture, thy pride may no man quail. The lark knows no such rapture, such joy no nightingale. And we, whom dreams embolden, we can but creep and sing, and watch through heaven's waste hollow the flight no sight may follow to the utter born beholden of none that lack thy wing. And we, whose dreams embolden, we can but creep and sing. Ah, well were I for ever, wouldst thou change lives with me, and take my song's wild honey, and give me back thy sunny wide eyes that weary never, and wings that search the sea. Ah, well were I for ever, wouldst thou change lives with me. The old lighthouse on Beechey Head, the bell too, which first flung its beams abroad in 1831, has just been superseded by the new lighthouse, built on the shore under the cliff. Near the new lighthouse is Parson Darby's Hole, a cavern in the cliff, said to have been hewed out by the reverent Jonathan Darby of East Dean, as a refuge from the tongue of Mrs. Darby. Another account credits the parson with the wish to provide a sanctuary for shipwrecked sailors, whom he guided thither on stormy nights by torches. In a recent Sussex story by Mr. Horace Hutchinson, called A Friend of Nelson, we find the cave in the hands of a powerful smuggler, mysterious, and accomplished as Levengro, some years after Darby's death. A pleasant walk from Eastbourne is to Burling Gap, a great smuggling centre in the old days, where the downs dip for a moment to the level of the sea. Here at low tide one may walk under the cliffs. Richard Jeffries in the essay from which I have already quoted, has a beautiful passage of reflections beneath the great bluff. The sea seems higher than the spot where I stand, its surface on a higher level, raised like a green mound, as if it could burst in and occupy the space up to the foot of the cliff in a moment. It will not do so, I know, but there is an infinite possibility about the sea. It may do what it is not recorded to have done. It is not to be ordered. It may overleap the bounds human observation has fixed for it. It has a potency unfathomable. There is still something in it not quite grasped and understood, something still to be discovered, a mystery. So the white spray rushes along the low broken wall of rocks. The sun gleams on the flying fragments of the wave. Again it sinks as the rhythmic motion holds the mind, as an invisible force holds back the tide. A faith of expectancy, a sense that something may drift up from the unknown, a large belief in the unseen resources of the endless space out yonder, soothes the mind with dreamy hope. The little rules and little experiences, all the petty ways of narrow life, are shut off behind by the ponderous and impassable cliff, as if we had dwelt in the dim light of a cave, but coming out at last to look at the sun, a great stone had fallen and closed the entrance, so that there was no return to the shadow. The impassable precipice shuts off our former selves of yesterday, forcing us to look out over the sea only, or up to the deeper heaven. These breadths draw out the soul. We feel that we have wider thoughts than we knew. The soul has been living as it were in a nutshell, all unaware of its own power, and now suddenly finds freedom in the sun and the sky. Straight as if sawn down from turf to beach, the cliff shuts off the human world, for the sea knows no time and no era. You cannot tell what century it is from the face of the sea. A Roman trireme, suddenly rounding the white edge line of chalk, born on wind and ore from the Isle of Wight towards the grey castle at Pevensey, already old in olden days, would not seem strange. What wonder could surprise us, coming from the wonderful sea. The road from Burling Gap runs up the valley to East Deen and Friston, two villages among the downs. Pass and Derby's church at East Deen is small and not particularly interesting, but it gave Horsfield, the county historian, the opportunity to make one of his infrequent jokes. There are three bells, he write, and if discord's harmony not understood, truly harmonious ones. Horsfield does not note that one of these three bells bore a Latin motto, which being translated signifies, surely no bell beneath the sky can send forth better sounds than an eye. The East Deen register contains a curious entry, which is quoted in Gross's Olio, edition 1796. Agnes Paine, the daughter of Edward Paine, was buried on the first day of February. Joan Paine, the daughter of Edward Paine, was buried on the first day of February. In the death of these two sisters, last mentioned, is one thing worth recording and diligently to be noted. The elder sister called Agnes, being very sick and to death, speechless, and, as was thought, past hope of speaking, after she had lyon twenty-four hours without speech, had last, upon a sudden, cried out to her sister to make herself ready and to come with her. Her sister, Joan, being abroad about other business, was called for, who, being come to her sick sister, demanding how she did, she very loud or earnestly bade her sister make ready. She stayed for her and could not go without her. Within half an hour after, Joan was taken very sick, which, increasing all the night upon her, her other sister still calling her to come away. In the morning they both departed this wretched world together. Oh, the unsearchable wisdom of God, how deep are his judgments and his ways past finding out! Testified by diverse old and honest persons yet living, which I myself have heard their father when he was alive, report! Arthur Polland, Vicar, Henry Homewood, John Pup, Church Wardens Friston Church is interesting, for it contains one of the most beautiful monuments in Sussex, worthy to be remembered with that to the Shirley's at Isfield. The family commemorated is the Selwins, and the monument has a very charming dado of six kneeling daughters and three babies laid neatly on a tasseled cushion under the reading desk, a quaint conceit impossible to be carried out successfully in these days, but pretty and fitting enough then. Of the last of the Selwins, Ultimus Selwinorum, who died aged 20 in 1704, it is said with that exquisite simplicity of exaggeration of which the secret also has been lost, that, for him, the very marble might weep. Friston Place, the home of the Selwins, has some noble timbers and a curious old donkey well in the garden. West Dean, which is three miles to the west, by a bleak and lonely road amid hills and valleys, is just a farmyard, with the remains of very ancient architecture among the barns and ricks. The village, however, is more easily reached from Alfriston than Eastbourne. End of Chapter 34 Chapter 35 of Highways and Byways in Sussex. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Peter Yersley. Highways and Byways in Sussex by E. V. Lucas. Chapter 35 Pevensey and Hearst Monso Pevensey Castle behaves as a castle should. It rises from the plain, the only considerable eminence for miles. It has noble grey walls of the true romantic hue and thickness. It can be seen from the sea, over which it once kept guard. It has a history rich in assailants and defenders. There is, indeed, nothing in its disfavour, except the proximity of the railway, which has been allowed to pass nearer the ruin than dramatic fitness would dictate. Let it, however, be remembered that the railway through the St. Pancras Priory at Lewis led to the discovery of the coffins of William de Waren and Gundrada, and also that in Mr. Kipling's phrase, romance, so far from being at enmity with the iron horse, brought up the 915. Pevensey, which is now divided from the channel by marshy fields, with nothing to break the flatness but martello towers, 13 may be counted from the walls, was, like Brambo Castle in the West, now also an inland stronghold once washed and surrounded by the sea. The sea probably covered all the ground as far inland as Halesham. Pevensey, Horsy, Rikney, and the other eyes on the level, being then islands, as their termination suggests. There is now no doubt but that Pevensey was the Anderida of the Romans, a city on the borders of the great forest of Anderida that covered the Weald of Sussex, Andias Weald, as it was called by the Saxons. But before the Romans a British stronghold existed here. This, after the Romans left, was attacked by the Saxons, who slew every Britain that they found therein. The Saxons, in their turn, being discomforted, the Normans built a new castle within the old walls, with Robert de Moriton, half-brother of the conqueror for its lord. Thus the castle, as it now stands, is in its outer walls Roman, in its inner Norman. Unlike certain other Sussex fortresses, Pevensey has seen work. Of its Roman career we know nothing, except that the inhabitants seem to have dropped a large number of coins, many of which have been dug up. The Saxons, as we have seen, massacred the Britons at Anderida very thoroughly. Later, in 1042, Swain, son of Earl Godwin, swooped on Pevensey's port in the Danish manner, and carried off a number of ships. In 1049 Earl Godwin and another son, Harold, made a second foray, carried off more ships, and fired the town. On September the 28th, 1066, Pevensey saw a more momentous landing, destined to be fatal to this marauding Harold, for on that day William Duke of Normandy, soon to become William the Conqueror, alighted from his vessel, accompanied by several hundred Frenchmen, in black chain armour. His representation of the landing is one of the designs in the Bayeur tapestry. The embroiderers take no count of William's fall, as he stepped ashore, on ground now grazed upon by cattle. An accident deemed unlucky, until his ready wit explained as he rose with sanded fingers. See, I have seized the land with my hands. Pevensey's later history included sieges by William Rufus in 1088, when Odo Bishop of Bayeur, supporter of Robert, was the defender. By Stephen, in 1144, the fortress being held by Maud, who gave in eventually to famine, by Simon de Montfort, and the barons in 1265, and by the supporters of Richard of York in 1399, when Lady Pelham defended it for the Rose of Lancaster. A little later Edmund, Duke of York, was imprisoned in it, and was so satisfied with his jailer that he bequeathed him twenty pounds. Queen Joan of Navarre, wife of Henry IV, was also a prisoner here for nine years. In the year before the Armada, Pevensey Castle was ordered to be either rebuilt as a fortress, or raised to the ground, but fortunately neither instruction was carried out. The present owner of Pevensey Castle is the Duke of Devonshire, who by virtue of the possession is entitled to call himself Dominus Aquile, or Lord of the Eagle. Pevensey has another and gentler claim to notice. Many essayists have said pleasant and ingenious things about the art of letter writing, but none of them mentions the part played by Pevensey in the English development of that agreeable accomplishment. Yet the earliest specimen of English letter writing that exists was penned in Pevensey Castle. The writer was Joan Crownall, Lady Pelham, wife of Sir John Pelham, who, as I have said, defended the castle in her Lord's absence against the Orchists. And this is the letter penned, I had write in 1903, five hundred and four years ago. It has no post script. My dear Lord, I recommend me to your High Lordship with heart and body and all my poor might, and with all this I thank you as my dear Lord, dearest and best beloved of all earthly Lords. I say for me and thank you, my dear Lord, with all this that I said before of your comfortable letter that you sent me from Pontifract, that came to me on Mary Magdalene's day. For by my truth I was never so glad as when I heard by your letter that you were strong enough with the grace of God for to keep you from the malice of your enemies. And, dear Lord, if it like to your High Lordship, that as soon as you might, that I might hear of your gracious speed which God Almighty continue and increase. And, my dear Lord, if it like you to know my fear, I am here laid by, in manner of a siege, with the county of Sussex, Surrey, and a great parcel of Kent, so that I may not go out nor know Vittles get me, but with much hard. Wherefore, my dear, if it like you by the advice of your wide council, for to set remedy of the salvation of your castle, and withstand the malice of the shires aforesaid, and also that you be fully informed of the great malice workers in these shires which have so despitefully wrought to you, and to your castle, to your men, and to your tenants, for this country have they wasted for a great while. Farewell, my dear Lord, the holy trinity keep you from your enemies, and soon send me good tidings of you, written at Pevensey in the castle, on St. Jacob's Day last past, by your own poor Jay Pelham, to my true Lord. In the town of Pevensey once lived Andrew Bord, who entered this world at Cuckfield, a thorn in the side of municipal dignity. The dog-berryish dictum, I am still but a man, although Mayor of Pevensey, remains a local joke, and tradition has kept alive the prowess of the Pevensey jury, which brought a verdict of manslaughter against one who was charged with stealing britches, both jokes of Andrew's. Bord's house, wither, it is said, Edward the Sixth, once came on a visit to the jester, still stands. The oak room in which Andrew welcomed the youthful king is shown at a cost of throughput's behead, and you may buy pictorial postcards and German wooden toys in the wits front parlour. Before leaving Pevensey I must say a word of Westham, the village which adjoins it. Westham and Pevensey are practically one, the castle intervening. Westham has a vicar whose interest in his office might well be imitated by some of the other vickers of the county. His noble church, one of the finest in Sussex, with a tower of superb strength and dignity, is kept open, and just within is a table on which are a number of copies of a little penny history of Westham, which he has prepared, and for the payment of which he is so eccentric as to trust to the stranger's honesty. The tower, which the vicar tells us is six hundred years old, he asks us to admire for its utter carelessness and scorn of smoothness and finish, or any of the tricks of modern buildings. Westham Church was one of the first that the conqueror built, and remains of the original Norman structure are still serviceable. The vicar suggests that it may very possibly have stood a siege. In the jam of the south door of the Norman wall is a sundial, without which, one might say, no church is completely perfect. In the tower dwell unmolested a colony of owls, six of whom once attended a reading-in service, and seated side by side on a beam, listened with unwavering attention to the thirty-nine articles. They were absent on my visit, but a small starling, swift and elusive as a spirit, flitted hither and thither quite happily. In the church-hard is the grave of one Ailes Cressel, oddest of names, and among the epitaphs is this upon a Mr. Henty. Learn from this mystic sage to live or die. Well did he love, at evening's social hour, the sacred volume's treasure, to apply. The remembrance of his excellent character alone reconciles his afflicted widow to her irreparable loss. The church contains a memorial to a young gentleman named Fag, who, having lived to adorn human nature by his exemplary manners, was untimely snatched away, aged twenty-four. In the neighbourhood of Westham is a large rambling building known as Priest House, which, once a monastery is now a farm, many curious relics of its earlier state have lately been unearthed. In Pevensey Church, which has none of the interest of Westham, a little collection of curiosities relating to Pevensey, a Constable's staff, old title-deeds, seals, and so forth, is kept in a glass case. If Pevensey is all that a castle ought to be, in shape, colour, position, and past, Hurst Monceau is the reverse. For it lies low, it has no swelling contours, it is of red brick instead of grey stone, and never a fight has it seen. But any disappointment we may feel is the fault not of Hurst Monceau, but of those who named it Castle. Were it called Hurst Monceau House, or Place, or Manor, or Grange, all would be well. It is this use of the word Castle, which in Sussex has a connotation excluding red brick, that has done Hurst Monceau an injustice, for it is a very imposing and satisfactory ruin, quite as interesting architecturally as Pevensey, or indeed any of the ruins that we have seen. Hurst Monceau Castle stands on the very edge of Pevensey level, the only considerable structure between Pevensey and the mainland proper. In the intervening miles there are fields and fields, through which the old haven runs, plaintive plovers above them, bemoaning their lot, and brown cows tugging at the rich grass. On the first hillock to the right of the castle, as one fronts the south, rising like an island from this sea of pastureage is Hurst Monceau Church, whose shingled spire shoots into the sky, a beacon to travellers in the level. It is a pretty church with an exterior of severe simplicity, between the chancel and the chantry is the large tomb covering the remains of Thomas Fiennes, second Lord Daker of Hurst Monceau, who died in 1534, and Sir Thomas Daker his son, surmounted by life-size stone figures, each in full armour, with hands proudly raised, and each resting his feet against the Fiennes wolf-dog. In the churchyard is the grave of Julius Hare, once vicar of Hurst Monceau, and the author with his brother Augustus of Guesses at Truth. Carl Isle's John Sterling was Julius Hare's first curate here. Hurst Monceau Castle was once the largest and handsomest of all the commoners' houses in the county. Sir Roger Defines, a descendant of the John Defines who married Maude, lasted the de Monceau in the reign of Edward II, built it in 1440. Though the manor house of the de Monceau on the site of the present castle lacked the imposing qualities of Roger Defines' stronghold, it was hospitable, spacious, and luxurious. Edward I spent a night there in 1302. One of the de Monceau was on the side of de Montfort in the Battle of Lewis, and the first of them to settle in England married Edith, daughter of William de Warren and Gundrada of Lewis Castle. How thorough and conscientious were the workmen employed by Roger Defines, and how sound were their bricks and mortar may be learned by the study of Hurst Monceau Castle today. In many parts the walls are absolutely uninjured except by tourists. The floors, however, have long since returned to nature, who has put forth her energies without stint to close the old apartments with greenery. Ivy of astonishing vigour grows here, populous with jackdaws, and trees and shrubs spring from the least likely spots. The castle in its old completeness was practically a little town. From east to west its walls measured 206 and a half feet, from north to south 214 and a quarter. Within them on the ground floor were larders, laundries, a brew house, a bakehouse, cellars, a dairy, offices, a guard room, pantries, a distillery, a confectionery room, a chapel, and beneath a dungeon. Between these were four open courts. Upstairs round three sides of the green court were the bird gallery, the armour gallery, and the green gallery, and lord's apartments and ladies' apartments, capable of quartering an army to quote a writer on the subject. On each side of the entrance, gained by a drawbridge, was a tower, the watch tower, and the signal tower. In the reign of Elizabeth a survey of Hearst Monso was taken, which tells us that in the park were two hundred deer, four fair ponds stocked with carp and tench, a fair warren of conies, a heronry of a hundred and fifty nests, and much game. The Defines, or Dakers as they became, had also a private fishery in Pevensey Bay, seen from the watch tower as a strip of blue ribbon. In addition, Hearst Monso had a ghost who inhabited the drummer's hall, a room between the towers over the porter's lodge, and sent forth a mysterious tattoo. Sometimes he left his hall, this devilish musician, and strode along the battlements, drumming and drumming, a terrible figure nine feet high. Most people were frightened, but there were those who said that the drummer was nothing more nor less than a gardener in league with the Pevensey smugglers, whose notes rattled out on the parchment, rolled over the marsh, and gave them the needful signal. Hearst Monso once had a very real tragedy. The third Lord Daker, one of the young noblemen who took part in the welcoming of Anne of Cleves, when she landed in England, preparatory to her becoming the wife of Henry VIII, was so foolish one night in 1541 as to accompany some of his roistering companions to the adjacent park of Sir Nicholas Pelham near Hellingley, intent on a dear stealing jest. There three gamekeepers rose up and a bloody battle ensued, in which one John Busbrig bit the dust. Pelham was furious and demanded justice, and Lord Daker, though he had taken no part in the fray, was held responsible. Three of his friends were hanged at Tyburn, and in spite of all the influence that was brought to bear, he also was executed. The next Daker of importance married the Lady Anne Fitzroy, a natural daughter of Charles II, and was made Earl of Sussex. Financial losses compelling him to sell Hearst Monso, a lawyer named George Naylor bought it in 1708, leaving it on his death to the right Reverend Francis Hare, Bishop of Chichester. It remained in the family as a residence until, in 1777, an architect pronounced it unsafe, and the interior was converted into materials for the new Hearst Monso place in the park to the northwest. Since then, nature has had her way with it. Horace Walpole's visit, as described in one of his letters, gives us a little idea of Hearst Monso in the middle of the 18th century, a little before it became derelict. The chapel is small and mean. The virgin and seven long and lean saints, ill-done, remain in the windows. There have been four more, but they seem to have been removed for light, and we actually found St. Catherine and another gentlewoman with a church in her hand, exiled into the buttery. There remain two odd cavities with very small wooden screens on each side of the altar, which seem to have been confessionals. The outside is a mixture of grey brick and stone that has a very venerable appearance. The drawbridges are romantic to a degree, and there is a dungeon that gives one a delightful idea of living in the days of socketage and under such goodly tenures. They showed us a dismal chamber which they called Drummers Hall, and supposed that Mr. Addison's comedy is descended from it. In the windows of the gallery over the cloisters, which leads all round to the apartments, is the device of the Fines's, a wolf holding a baton with a scroll, L'Roy Leveur, an unlucky motto, as I shall tell you presently, to the last pier of that line. The estate is two thousand a year and so compact as to have but seventeen houses upon it. We walked up a brave old avenue to the church, with ships sailing on our left hand the whole way. Hurst Monso is famous not only for its castle, but for its trugs, the wooden baskets that gardeners carry, which are associated with Hurst Monso, as crooks once were with pico, and the shepherd's vast green umbrellas on cane frames with Lewis. End of chapter thirty-five