A HISTORY OF SUSSEX 



1 744, a gang of smugglers wounded a dragoon and shot three horses belong- 

 ing to soldiers and customs officers, 262 and in 1721 John Burnett, a lieutenant 

 in the regiment of the Honourable Brigadier-General Grove, part of which 

 had been quartered at Battle, memorialized the Treasury Board that he had 

 apprehended one Jacob Walter, the chief and most notorious of a gang of 

 smugglers, and brought him to London under guard of twenty men for fear 

 of attempted rescue. He prayed consideration of the fact that he had 

 incurred great expense by having the smuggler and all the men quartered in 

 one room every night between Battle and London. 263 



The moment, however, that military aid was withdrawn the insolence 

 of the gangs increased to an extraordinary extent. In June, 1722, it was 

 said that since the withdrawal of His Majesty's forces from the neighbour- 

 hood of Battle the runners, ' headed by three persons whose names have been 

 published in the gazette and a reward promised for their apprehending . . . 

 now threaten our officers with death,' 264 and again ten years later it was said 

 that the bands were so ' numerous and audacious as to carry off goods at all 

 times of the day, beat the excise officers and threaten them with death.' 26i 

 In 1721 a party of grenadiers met a party of ' owlers ' near Burwash and 

 pursued them to Nutley, where they surrounded and took them ; 266 and on 

 other occasions they penetrated as far as Horsham and even Groombridge, 

 whither ' chaps from London come down . . . allmost every day ' to 

 buy tea. 267 



It was perhaps hardly remarkable that the traffic in contraband was so 

 hard to suppress, for the smugglers were for the most part popular with the 

 tradesmen and farmers. In one instance indeed Henry Groombridge of 

 Horsham received a reward for ' subsisting custom officers and soldiers in 

 pursuit of smugglers in I72i,' 268 but they seem to have been for the most 

 part a jovial company at war with no one but the representatives of the 

 law, 269 and it is said that in the neighbourhood of Eastbourne the farmers 

 would leave the gates of their fields open at night, in return for which good 

 office the smugglers would leave a half-anker of schiedam in some hayrick 

 or outhouse, which was duly broached without scruple. 270 



Horace Walpole tells an amusing anecdote which well illustrates the 

 kind of confederacy with which the customs officers had to contend. 

 Travelling through Sussex with Mr. Chute in 1749 he arrived at 'the 

 wretched village of Rotherbidge ' and would have stayed the night. But 

 there was only one bed to be had, all the rest being occupied by smugglers, 

 'whom the people of the house called "mountebanks," with one of whom the 

 lady of the den told Mr. Chute he might lie.' Mr. Chute, however, 

 declined the offer, and the travellers went on to Battle, where they arrived 

 at two o'clock in the morning at a still worse inn, full of excise officers, one 

 of whom had just shot a smuggler. 271 



A smuggling affray is said to have occurred at Eastbourne as late as 

 1833, when the smugglers killed the chief boatman and formed two lines 



** Treas. Out Letters (Gen. Ser.), vol. 25, fol. 142. *" Cal. e/S.P. Treas. 1720-8, p. 92. 



164 Treas. Papers, 1722, vol. 241, No. 7 (2). ** Cal. ofS.P. Treas. 1731-4, p. 215, cf. ibid. 244. 



166 Suss. Arch. Coll. xxiv, 141. 



*' Cal. ofS.P. Treas. 1720-8, p. 112 ; 1735-8, p. 301. *" Ibid. 1735-8, p. 18. 



168 See J. C. Wright, Bygone Eastbourne, 298 and 301, for stories illustrative of this point. " Ibid. 



m Letters of Horace Walpole (ed. Cunningham), ii, 299. 



2OO 



