INDUSTRIES 



port, foreign export being prohibited. From 

 Chichester six casks H of ' English iron ' were sent 

 to Jersey, from Lewes ten casks to Dartmouth 

 and fifteen to Southampton, nine casks from 

 Hastings to Sandwich, and twenty-eight from 

 Rye to London ; but the largest shipments were 

 from Pevensey, forty casks of ' rough iron ' being 

 sent to Colchester, six of ' English iron ' to 

 Chichester and elsewhere, while fifteen were dis- 

 patched to London and eighteen to Southampton 

 by Edward Woodman, a relation no doubt of 

 Richard Woodman, the great iron-founder of 

 Warbleton, who suffered for his faith during the 

 Marian persecutions, his fate being commemo- 

 rated on a fireback which shows a man and 

 woman chained to a post in the midst of flames. 66 

 Pevensey continued to be the port of an iron- 

 working district, of which the centre might be 

 taken as being at Brightling, where the Socknersh 

 furnace was working at least as early as 1 5 5 o, 67 

 and where the Pelhams had two forges at the 

 end of the seventeenth century. 58 Adjacent to 

 the haven of Pevensey was ' the liberty of the 

 sluice,' in the parish of Bexhill but part of the 

 liberty of Hastings, where a certain amount of 

 iron was shipped from time to time. 89 The 

 chief ports, however, while the iron industry was 

 at its height, were Lewes or Newhaven and 

 Rye. 



During the reign of Elizabeth the iron indus- 

 try continued to expand, to the great enrichment 

 of the county ; many families through its aid 

 rose from the yeomanry to the ranks of the 

 gentry, as the Fowles, the Fullers, and the 

 Frenches, while many of the great landowners, 

 the Carrylls, Pelhams, Nevilles, and others added 

 to their wealth. Moreover, employment was 

 given to large numbers of the labouring class ; 

 in 1549 the iron mills at Sheffield in Fletching 60 

 employed twenty-three men, ' whereof, hammer- 

 man and servaunts ij ; fyners, ii ; servaunts, ij ; 

 a founder, j ; and a fyller, j ; coleyars, ij ; sar- 

 vants, vj ; myners, ij ; servaunts, iiij,' besides an 

 overseer and two ' wyenmen ' or carters ; the 

 works at Worth at the same time employed 

 thirty-three men, 61 including gun-founders. In 

 1557 Richard Woodman declared, 'I have set 

 aworke a hundreth persons, ere this, all the 

 yeare together,' though allowance must be 

 made in this instance for the rhetorical attrac- 

 tion of the round number. The names of 

 forty-nine of Edward Carryll's miners in the 

 forest of St. Leonard's are mentioned in 



55 The iron bars appear to have been usually packed 

 in casks. 



64 Suss. Arch. Coll. xlvi, plate 8#. 

 57 Suss. Rec. Sue. iii, 3 1 . 



68 Add. MSS. 33155, 33156. 



69 Suss. Arch. Coll. xix, 34. 



60 Ibid, xiii, 128. 



61 Ibid. 129. 



* Exch. Dep. by Com. 30 Eliz. Easter, No. 8. 



while in 1631 the justices of Pevensey Rape 

 said 



As for worcke for the poore, our parte of the contrey 

 affordeth great plenty of its owne nature ... by 

 reason of our iron workes which yeelde imployments 

 for the stronger bodies. 63 



In 1664 the number of workmen employed 

 in the county was estimated at the impossibly 

 high figure of SO,OOO. M But while the mineral 

 wealth of Sussex was thus coming to the 

 fore, there was a danger that its valuable 

 stores of timber should be lost, or at least 

 seriously diminished. Acts were passed in 1558, 

 1581, and 1585 regulating the cutting of wood 

 for use, as charcoal, in the furnaces, and pro- 

 hibiting the use of timber trees for that purpose. 

 Nor were these acts passed without reason, for 

 at the beginning of the seventeenth century 

 Norden 65 said : 



I have heard there are or lately were in Sussex neere 

 140 hammers and furnaces for iron . . . (which) 

 spend each of them in every twenty-four houres two, 

 three, or foure loades of charcoale, which in a yeare 

 amounteth to an infinit quantitie. 



The Worth accounts for 1547-9 show an 

 expenditure of 5,872 cords of wood (the cord 

 being 125 cub. ft.) to make 2,418 loads of char- 

 coal for the furnace, and of 2,753^ cords of 

 wood for the forge, 66 and about 1640 some 

 1,300 cords of wood were being used yearly at 

 the Brightling works. 67 The woods at Kirdford, 

 Petworth Park, Balcombe, Dallington, and the 

 Dicker 68 were only a few of the greatest sufferers. 



Jove's oak, the warlike ash, vein'd elm, the softer beech, 

 Short hazel, maple plain, light asp, the bending wych, 

 Tough holly, and smooth birch, must altogether burn, 

 What should the builder serve, supplies the forger's 

 turn. 69 



While the country's loss in timber might be 

 held to be balanced by its gain in mineral wealth, 

 there was another danger incident to the iron 

 trade in which the gains were those of individuals 

 and the loss national. This was the export of 

 ordnance to foreign nations, and especially to 

 Spain, with whom our relations were always 

 strained almost to breaking. The impolicy of 

 thus supplying possible enemies with high-class 

 weapons to be used against ourselves was clear, 

 and the more open question of the export of the 

 raw material appeared to Elizabethan statesmen 

 equally impolitic. Forfeiture, fines, and patriotic 

 sentiment, however, were alike powerless against 



63 Suss. Arch. Coll. xvi, 31. u Ibid, xxxii, 25. 



65 Surveyor's Dialogue (1607), Suss. Arch. Coll. ii, 

 192. 



66 Exch. K.R. Accts. 501, No. 3. 



67 Add. MS. 33155,/JwJOT. 



68 Suss. Arch. Coll. ii, 193. 



69 Drayton, Polyolbion (1612), quoted in Suss. Arch. 

 Coll. ii, 197. 



247 



