HISTORY OF HARTING. 189 



this question Major W. Battine replies from East 

 Harden: "28 Oct., 1745. I don't apprehend a 

 Roman Catholic convict has a right to keep a horse 

 of the value of 5 pounds or upwards, but then I don't 

 conceive that anybody but magistrates, or such as 

 they shall empower, have a right to meddle with such 

 horses." Pope had said upon a similar occasion, when 

 threatened with the loss of a horse because he was a 

 Roman Catholic, " Deus dedit, Diabolus abstulit." 



At the end of the year the panic of the Pretender's 

 invasion reached the south of England. Mr. Page, of 

 Watergate, as a Chichester magistrate, demanded that 

 all the arms at Lady Holt, as the house of a Roman 

 Catholic, should at once be given up ; and adds, in a 

 friendly letter to Caryll, that " Lord Vernon, with two 

 ninety-gun ships, was gone to the Downs." 



Caryll entered in his own handwriting : 



" The arms sent to Watergate, 26 Dec., 1745, are 

 Two bullet guns, one rifled, the other plain ; 

 Two Carabines ; 



Three shot guns, one silver mounted ; 

 One bullet gun the keeper's ; 

 One shot gun his ; 

 Five pair plain livery pistols ; 

 Five pair screw-barrell'd do." 



These arms were seized by order of the Ministry. 

 Lady Holt was not unduly armed, though probably 

 it had its secret means of offence and defence. The 

 local tradition is that there is an underground passage 

 from the site of Lady Holt house to Eckenfields, a 

 quarter-of-a-mile south : the large quarry at the north- 

 east of the park, near Starr copse, would be capable 

 of concealing with great advantage a troop of men ; 

 and at Hucksholt there is an old house with a bacon 

 chamber over the chimney, which doubtless did service 

 in Royalist days as a hiding place. 



