<h2><SPAN name="CHAPTER_XXIX" id="CHAPTER_XXIX"></SPAN>CHAPTER XXIX</h2>
<h3>SMUGGLING</h3>
<blockquote><p>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 Sussex—Mr. Horace
Hutchinson quoted—Burwash as a smuggler's cradle.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Alfriston's place in history was won by its smugglers. All Sussex
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.</p>
<div class="sidenote">MR. BETTS'S READINESS</div>
<p>Chief of what was known nearly a hundred years ago as the "Alfriston
Gang" was Stanton Collins, who lived at Market Cross House. Collins
employed his men not only in assisting him in smuggling, 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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_274" id="Page_274"></SPAN></span> 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 "God moves in a mysterious way."</p>
<p>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.</p>
<div class="sidenote">THE CHURCH COMPLAISANT</div>
<p>Sussex 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 <i>State Trials</i>, 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 Sussex clergy seemed to have needed
very little encouragement to omit smuggling from the decalogue. It is, I
think, the late Mr. Coker Egerton, of Burwash, who tells of a Sussex
parson feigning illness a whole Sunday on hearing suddenly in the
morning that a cargo, hard pressed by the revenue, had in despair been
lodged among his pews. But the classical passage on this subject comes
from Cornwall, from the pen of R. S. Hawker, the vicar of Morwenstowe
and the author of "The Song of the Western Men." He was not himself a
smuggler, but his parishioners had no scruples, and his heart was with
the braver side of the business:—</p>
<blockquote><p>It was full sea in the evening of an autumn day when a traveller
arrived<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_275" id="Page_275"></SPAN></span> 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 ship and the
shore boats, laden to the gunwale, passed to and fro. Crowds
assembled on the beach to help the cargo ashore. On the one hand a
boisterous group surrounded a keg with the head knocked in, for
simplicity of access to the good cognac, into which they dipped
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?"</p>
<p>"No; thanks be to God," answered a hoarse, gruff voice. "None
within eight miles."</p>
<p>"Well, then," screamed the stranger, "is there no clergyman
hereabout? Does no minister of the parish live among you on this
coast?"</p>
<p>"Aye! to be sure there is," said the same deep voice.</p>
<p>"Well, how far off does he live? Where is he?"</p>
<p>"That's he, sir, yonder, with the lanthorn." And sure enough there
he stood, on a rock, and poured, with pastoral diligence, 'the
light of other days' on a busy congregation.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The clergy, however, did not always know how useful they were. The Rev.
Webster Whistler, of Hastings, records that he was awakened one night to
receive a votive cask of brandy as his share of the spoil which, to his
surprise, his church tower had been harbouring. A commoner method was to
leave the gift—the tithe—silently on the doorstep. Revenue officers
have perhaps been placated in the same way.</p>
<p>Smuggling, in the old use of the word, is no more. The surreptitious
introduction into this country of German cigars, eau de Cologne, and
Tauchnitz novels, does not merit the term. A revised tariff having
removed the necessity for smuggling, the game is over; for that is the
reason of the disappearance of the smuggler rather than any increased
vigilance on the part of the coastguard. The records of smuggling show
that the<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_276" id="Page_276"></SPAN></span> difficulties offered to the profession by the Government were
difficulties that existed merely to be overcome. Perhaps fiscal reform
may restore the old pastime.</p>
<div class="sidenote">THE LAND SMUGGLER</div>
<p>The word smuggler arouses in the mind the figure of a bold and desperate
mariner searching the coast for a signal that all is safe to land his
cargo. But as a matter of fact the men who ran the greatest risks were
not the marine smugglers at all, but the land smugglers who received the
tubs on the shore and conveyed them to a hiding place preparatory to the
journey to London, whither the major part was perilously taken. Such
were the Alfriston smugglers. These were the men who fought the revenue
officers and had the hair's-breadth escapes. These were the men whose
houses were watched, whose every movement was suspected, who needed to
be wily as the serpent and to know the country inch by inch.</p>
<p>Not that the sea smuggler ran no risks. On the contrary, he was
continually in danger from revenue cutters and the coastguards' boats.
Bloody fights in the Channel were by no means rare. He was also often in
peril from the elements; his endurance was superb; he had to be a sailor
of genius, ready for every kind of emergency. But the land smuggler was
more vulnerable than the sea smuggler, his rewards were smaller, and his
operations were less simple. There is a vast difference between a dark
night at sea and a dark night on land. Once the night fell the sea was
the smuggler's own: he was invisible, inaudible. But the land was not
less the revenue officer's: the land smuggler had to show his signal
light, he had to roll casks over the beach, he had to carry them into
security. His horse's hoofs could not be stilled as oars are muffled,
his wheels bit noisily into the road, he was liable to be stopped at any
turn. And he ran these risks from the coast right into London. I doubt
if the land smuggler has had his due of praise. Sometimes the land
smuggler had to be land smuggler and sea smuggler too, for many of the
ships never troubled to make a landing at<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_277" id="Page_277"></SPAN></span> all. They sailed as near the
shore as might be and then sank the tubs, which were always lashed
together and kept on deck in readiness to be thrown overboard in case of
the approach of a cutter. The position of the mooring having been
conveyed to the confederates on shore, the vessel was at liberty to
return to France for another cargo, leaving the responsibility of
fishing up the tubs, and getting them to shore and away, wholly with the
land smuggler.</p>
<p>An old pamphlet, entitled, <i>The Trials of the Smugglers ... at the
Assizes held at East Grinstead, March 13, 14, 15, and 16, 1748-9</i>, gives
the following information about the duties and pay of the land smugglers
at that day:—"Each Man is allowed Half a Guinea a Time, and his
Expenses for Eating and Drinking, a Horse found him, and the Profits of
a Dollop of Tea, which is about 13 Pounds Weight, being the Half of a
Bag; which Profit, even from the most ordinary of their Teas, comes to
24 or 25 Shillings; and they always make one Journey, sometimes two, in
a Week." But these men would be underlings. There were, I take it, land
smugglers in control of the operations who shared on a more lordly scale
with their brethren in the boat.</p>
<div class="sidenote">HALF-WAY HOUSES</div>
<p>On all the routes employed by the land smugglers were certain cottages
and farm-houses where tubs might be hidden. Houses still abound supplied
with unexpected recesses and vast cellars where cargoes were stored on
their way to London. In many cases, in the old days, these houses were
"haunted," to put forth the legend of a ghost being the simplest way not
only of accounting for such nocturnal noises as might be occasioned by
the arrival or departure of smugglers and tubs, but also of keeping
inquisitive folks at bay. Only a little while ago, during alterations to
an old cottage high on the hills near my home in Kent, corroboration was
given to a legend crediting the place with being a smuggler's "half-way
house," by the builders' discovery of a cavern under the garden
communicating with<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_278" id="Page_278"></SPAN></span> the cellar. For the gaining of such fastnesses the
hollow ways of Sussex were maintained. Parson Darby's smuggling
successor, in Mr. Horace Hutchinson's Sussex romance, <i>A Friend of
Nelson</i>, thus described them to the hero of Withyham:—</p>
<blockquote><p>"The sun strikes hot enough. Would you like to ride in the shade
awhile?"</p>
<p>"Immensely," I replied, "if I saw the shade."</p>
<p>"Keep after me, then," said he; "but the roan will. You need not
trouble!" In a moment, on his great big horse, he was forcing his
way down what had looked to me no more than a rabbit-run through
the roadside bushes. For a while I had noticed the road seemed
flanked by a mass of boskage below it on the right-hand side. Into
this, and downward, the man crammed his horse, squeezing his legs
into the horse's flank. I followed closely, and in a yard or two
found myself in a deep lane or cutting, very thickly overgrown, so
that only occasional gleams of sunshine crept in through the
leafage. We rode, as he had promised, in a most pleasant shade. The
floor of this lane or passage was not of the smoothest, and we went
at a foot's pace only, and in Indian file.</p>
<p>"What is the meaning of it all?" I asked him.</p>
<div class="sidenote">THE HOLLOW WAYS</div>
<p>"Well," said he, "you have heard, I suppose, of the 'hollow ways,'
as they are called, of Sussex. This is one. They were in their
origin lanes, I take it, and perhaps the only means of getting
about the country. The rains, in this sandy soil, washing down,
gradually deepened and deepened them. Folks grew to use the new
roads as they were made, leaving the lanes unheeded, to be
overgrown. Here and there certain base fellows of the lewder sort,
commonly called smugglers, may have deepened them further, and
improved on what Nature had begun so well, with the result that you
can ride many a mile, mole-like, if you know your way, from the sea
coast north'ard, never showing your face above ground at all. That
is what it means," he ended.</p>
</blockquote>
<div class="sidenote">"THE GENTLEMEN"</div>
<p>Smuggling was in the blood of the Sussex people. As the Cornishman said
to Mr. Hawker, "Why should the King tax good liquor?" Why, indeed?
Everyone sided with the smugglers, both on the coast and inland. A
Burwash woman told Mr. Egerton that as a child, after saying her
prayers, she was put early to bed with the strict injunction, "Now,
mind, if the gentlemen come along, don't you look out of the<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_279" id="Page_279"></SPAN></span> window."
The gentlemen were the smugglers, and not to look at them was a form of
negative help, since he that has not seen a gentleman cannot identify
him. Another Burwash character said that his grandfather had fourteen
children, all of whom were "brought up to be smugglers." These would, of
course, be land smugglers—Burwash being on a highway convenient for the
gentlemen between the coast and the capital.</p>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_280" id="Page_280"></SPAN></span></p>
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