210 AN ENGLISH SHIRE. 



pont, which also dates from William's own time. The 

 sole important part of the county was still the strip 

 along the coast between the Weald and the sea. 



During the Plantagenet period, England became a 

 wool-exporting country, like Australia at the present 

 day ; and therefore the wool-growing parts of the island 

 rose quickly into great importance. Sussex, with its 

 large expanse of chalk downs, naturally formed one of 

 the best wool-producing tracts ; and in the reign of 

 Edward III., Chichester was made one of the ' staples ' 

 to which the wool trade was confined by statute. Sussex 

 Proper and the Lewes valley were now among the most 

 thickly populated regions of England. 



The Weald, too, was beginning to have its turn. 

 English iron was getting to be in request for the cannon, 

 armour, and arms required in the French wars ; and no- 

 where was iron more easily procured, side by side with 

 the fuel for smelting it, than in the Sussex Weald. From 

 the days of the Edwards to the early part of the eighteenth 

 century, the woods of the Weald were cut down in 

 quantities for the iron works. During this time, several 

 small towns began to spring up in the old forest region, 

 of which the chief are Midhurst, Petworth, Billinghurst, 

 Horsham, Cuckfield, and East Grinstead. Many of the 

 deserted smelting-places may still be seen, with their in- 

 variable accompaniment of a pond or dam. The wood 

 supply began to fail as early as Elizabeth's reign, but 

 iron was still smelted in 1760. From that time onward, 

 the competition of Sheffield and Birmingham where 

 iron was prepared by the ' new method ' with coal 

 blew out the Sussex furnaces, and the W T eald relapsed 



