208 THE BRIGHTON ROAD 



hand a medallion partly supported by a Cupid, 

 displaying a portrait of the lamented Sergison, who, 

 we learn from a sub-acid inscription, was 

 " Commissioner of the Navy forty-eight years, till 

 1719, to the entire satisfaction of the King and his 

 Ministers." " The civil government of the Navy then 

 being put into military hands, he was esteemed by 

 them not a fit person to serve any longer." He was, 

 in short, like those " rulers of the Queen's (or King's) 

 Navee ' satirised by Sir W. S. Gilbert in modern 

 times, and " never went to sea." At the period of his 

 compulsory retirement it seems to have rather belatedly 

 occurred to the authorities that such an one could not 

 be well acquainted with the needs of the Navy ; so 

 the " Capacity, Penetration, exact Judgment " of this 

 " true patriot " were shelved ; but, at any rate, he had 

 had his whack, and it was surely high time for the 

 exact judgment, true patriotism, capacity and 

 penetration of others to have a chance of making 

 something out of the nation. 



A few monuments are hidden behind the organ, 

 among them one to Guy Carleton, " son of George, 

 Lord Bishop of Chichester." He, it seems, " died of 

 a consumption, cbbcxxiv," which appears to be the 

 highly esoteric way of writing 1624. " Mors vita' 

 initium " he tells us, and illustrates it with the pleasing 

 fancy of a skull mounted on an hour-glass, with ears 

 of wheat sprouting from the eyeless sockets. Other 

 equally pleasant devices, encircled with fragments of 

 Greek, are plentiful, the whole concluding with the 

 announcement that " The end of all things is at hand." 

 Holding that opinion, it would seem to have been 

 hardly worth while to erect the monument, but in the 

 result it survives to show what a very gross mistake 

 he made. 



Two illustrations of the quiet annals of Cuckfield, 

 widely different in point of time, are the old clock and 

 the wall-plate memorial to one Frank Bleach of the 

 Royal Sussex Volunteer Company, who died at 

 Bloemfontein in 1901. The ancient hand- wrought 



