Part 30 (1/2)
To return to Alfriston, there are two brief excursions (possible in the vehicles that are glanced at in the foregoing verses) which ought to be described here: to Alciston and to Wilmington. Alciston is a little hamlet under the east slope of Firle Beacon, practically no more than a farm house, a church, and dependant cottages. It is on a road that leads only to itself and ”to the Hill” (as the sign-boards say hereabout); it is perhaps as nearly forgotten as any village in the county; and yet I know of no village with more un.o.btrusive charm. The church, which has no vicar of its own, being served from Selmeston, a mile away, stands high amid its graves, the whole churchyard having been heaped up and ramparted much as a castle is. In the hollow to the west of the church is part of the farmyard: a pond, a vast barn with one of the n.o.blest red roofs in these parts, and the ruins of a stone pigeon house of great age and solidity, b.u.t.tressed and built as if for a siege, in curious contrast to the gentle, pretty purpose for which it was intended.
Between the church and the hill, and almost adjoining it, is the farmhouse, where the church keys are kept--a relic of Alciston Grange (once the property of Battle Abbey)--with odds and ends of its past life still visible, and a flouris.h.i.+ng fig-tree at the back, heavy with fruit when I saw it under a September sun. The front of the house looks due east, across a valley of corn, to Berwick church, on a corresponding mound, and beyond Berwick to the Downs above Wilmington. And at the foot of the garden, on the top of the grey wall above the moat, is a long, narrow terrace of turf, commanding this eastern view--a terrace meet for Bened.i.c.k and Beatrice to pace, exchanging raillery.
In Berwick church, by the way, is a memorial to George Hall, a former rector, of whom it is said that his name ”speaks all learning humane and divine,” and that his memory is ”precious both to the Muses and the Graces.” The Reverend George Hall's works seem, however, to have vanished.
[Sidenote: THE LONG MAN]
Wilmington, north-east of Alfriston, occupies a corresponding position to that of Alciston in the north-west; but having a ”lion” in the shape of the Long Man it has lost its virginal bloom. Wilmington is providing tea and ginger beer while Alciston nurses its unsullied inaccessibility.
The Long Man is a rude figure cut in the turf by the monks of the Benedictine priory that once flourished here, the ruins of which are now incorporated (like Alciston Grange) in a farm house on the east of the village. At least, it is thought by some antiquaries that the effigy is the work of the monks; others p.r.o.nounce it druidical. The most alluring of several theories, indeed, would have the figure to represent Pol or Balder, the Sun G.o.d, pus.h.i.+ng aside the doors of darkness--Polegate (or Bolsgate) near by being brought in as evidence.
CHAPTER XXIX
SMUGGLING
The Cuckmere Valley--Alfriston smuggling foreordained--Desperado and benefactor--A witty minister--Hawker of Morwenstowe--The church and run spirits--The two smugglers, the sea smuggler and the land smuggler--The half-way house--The hollow ways of Suss.e.x--Mr. Horace Hutchinson quoted--Burwash as a smuggler's cradle.
Alfriston's place in history was won by its smugglers. All Suss.e.x smuggled more or less; but smuggling may be said to have been Alfriston's industry. Cuckmere Haven, close by, offered unique advantages: it was retired, the coast was unpopulated, the roadway inland started immediately from the beach, the valley was in friendly hands, the paths and contours of the hills were not easily learned by revenue men. Nature from the first clearly intended that Alfriston men should be too much for the excise; smuggling was predestined. Farmers, shepherds, ostlers, what you will that is respectable, these Alfriston men might be by day and when the moon was bright; but when the ”darks”
came round they were smugglers every one.
[Sidenote: MR. BETTS'S READINESS]
Chief of what was known nearly a hundred years ago as the ”Alfriston Gang” was Stanton Collins, who lived at Market Cross House. Collins employed his men not only in a.s.sisting him in smuggling, but for other purposes removed from that calling by a wide gulf. Thus when Mr. Betts, the minister of the Lady Huntingdon chapel at Alfriston, was high-handedly suspended by the chief trustee of the chapel, on account of his opposition to that gentleman's proposed union with his deceased wife's sister, it was Collins's gang who invaded the chapel, ejected the new minister, replaced Mr. Betts in the pulpit, and mounted guard round it while he continued the service. Mr. Betts was equal to the occasion: he gave out the hymn ”G.o.d moves in a mysterious way.”
Collins terrorised the country-side for some years (except upon the score of personal bravery and humorous audacity, I doubt if his place is quite on the golden roll of smugglers) and was at length brought within the power of the law for sheep-stealing, and sentenced to seven years.
The last of his gang, Bob Hall, died in the workhouse at Eastbourne in 1895, aged ninety-four.
[Sidenote: THE CHURCH COMPLAISANT]
Suss.e.x may always be proud of her best smugglers. There were brutal scoundrels among them, such as the men that murdered Chater and were executed at Chichester in 1748 (the report may be read in Mr. H. L.
Stephen's _State Trials_, vol. iv.); but the ordinary smuggler was often a fine rebellious fellow, courageous, resourceful, and gifted with a certain grim humour that led him, as we have seen, to hide his tubs as often in the belfry or the churchyard as anywhere else, and enough knowledge of character to tell him when he might secure the silence of the vicar with an oblatory keg. The Suss.e.x clergy seemed to have needed very little encouragement to omit smuggling from the decalogue. It is, I think, the late Mr. c.o.ker Egerton, of Burwash, who tells of a Suss.e.x parson feigning illness a whole Sunday on hearing suddenly in the morning that a cargo, hard pressed by the revenue, had in despair been lodged among his pews. But the cla.s.sical pa.s.sage on this subject comes from Cornwall, from the pen of R. S. Hawker, the vicar of Morwenstowe and the author of ”The Song of the Western Men.” He was not himself a smuggler, but his paris.h.i.+oners had no scruples, and his heart was with the braver side of the business:--
It was full sea in the evening of an autumn day when a traveller arrived where the road ran along by a sandy beach just above high-water mark. The stranger, who was a native of some inland town, and utterly unacquainted with Cornwall and its ways, had reached the brink of the tide just as a ”landing” was coming off.
It was a scene not only to instruct a townsman, but also to dazzle and surprise. At sea, just beyond the billows, lay the vessel, well moored with anchors at stem and stern. Between the s.h.i.+p and the sh.o.r.e boats, laden to the gunwale, pa.s.sed to and fro. Crowds a.s.sembled on the beach to help the cargo ash.o.r.e. On the one hand a boisterous group surrounded a keg with the head knocked in, for simplicity of access to the good cognac, into which they dipped whatsoever vessel came first to hand; one man had filled his shoe.
On the other side they fought and wrestled, cursed and swore.
Horrified at what he saw, the stranger lost all self-command, and, oblivious of personal danger, he began to shout, ”What a horrible sight! Have you no shame? Is there no magistrate at hand? Cannot any justice of the peace be found in this fearful country?”
”No; thanks be to G.o.d,” answered a hoa.r.s.e, gruff voice. ”None within eight miles.”
”Well, then,” screamed the stranger, ”is there no clergyman hereabout? Does no minister of the parish live among you on this coast?”
”Aye! to be sure there is,” said the same deep voice.
”Well, how far off does he live? Where is he?”