AN ENGLISH SHIRE. 207 



Weald, which would be treated as a sort of neutral zone. 

 But when the Woodland itself began to be occupied, a 

 demarcation would naturally be made between the 

 neighbouring provinces. The boundary follows the most 

 obvious course. It starts on the east from the old 

 mouth of the Bother (now diverted to Eye New Har- 

 bour), known as the Kent Ditch, in what was then the 

 central and most impassible part of the marshland. It 

 runs along the Bother to its bifurcation, and then makes 

 for the heaven-water-parting or dividing back of the 

 Forest Bidge, beside two or three lesser streams. Then 

 it passes along the crest of the ridge from Tunbridge 

 Wells, past East Grinstead and Crawley, till it strikes 

 the Hampshire border. There it follows the line between 

 the two watersheds to the sea, which it reaches at 

 Emsworth. There is, however, one long insulated spur 

 of Hampshire running down from Haslemere to Graff- 

 ham (in apparent defiance of geographical features), 

 whose origin and meaning I do not understand. 



With the Norman Conquest, the history of Sussex, and 

 of England generally, for the most part ceases abruptly ; 

 ah 1 the rest is mere personal gossip about Prince Edward 

 and the battle of Lewes, or about George IV. and the 

 Brighton Pavilion. Not, of course, that there is not 

 real national history here as elsewhere ; but it is hard to 

 disentangle from the puerile personalities of historians 

 generally. Nevertheless, some brief attempt to recon- 

 struct the main facts in the subsequent history of Sussex 

 must still be undertaken. The part which Sussex bore 

 passively in the actual Conquest is itself typical of the 

 new relations. England was getting drawn into the 



