The most formidable gang, however, that had hitherto existed, and that which luckily furnished the climax to these scenes of crime, was known throughout our own county and Kent as the “Hawkhurst Gang.” In the year 1747[71] the smugglers in those parts were grown so numerous and so formidable by their daring and repeated attacks on the persons and properties of the inhabitants, and the cruelties exercised on some who had opposed their extravagancies, that the people of Goudhurst found themselves under the necessity either of deserting their houses, and leaving their property wholly at the mercy of these marauders, or of uniting to oppose by force their lawless inroads. The latter alternative was at length embraced; a paper, expressive of their abhorrence of the conduct of the smugglers, and their determination to oppose them, was drawn up and subscribed to by a considerable number of persons, who assumed the appellation of “The Goudhurst Band of Militia,” at the head of whom was a young man of the name of Sturt, a native of Goudhurst, who had recently received his discharge from a regiment of foot, under the command of General Harrison, and by whose persuasions they had been principally induced to this resolution. Intelligence of this confederacy soon reached the ears of the smugglers, who contrived to waylay one of the militia, and, by means of torture and confinement, extorted from him a full disclosure of the plans and intentions of his colleagues. After swearing this man not to take up arms against them, they let him go, desiring him to inform the confederates that they (the smugglers) would, on a certain day named, attack the town, murder every one therein, and burn it to the ground. Sturt, on receiving this information, convened his little band, and, having pointed out the danger of their situation without exertion and unanimity, engaged them in immediate preparation for the day of battle. While some were sent in quest of firearms, others were employed in casting balls, making cartridges, and taking every means for resistance and defence which time and opportunity afforded. At the time appointed, the smugglers, headed by Thomas Kingsmill, made their appearance before the entrenchments of the militia,[72] and after some horrid threats and imprecations by their leader, a general discharge of firearms was given by the smugglers, and returned immediately by the militia, by which one of the smugglers fell; but it was not till two more had lost their lives, and many had been wounded, that they quitted the field of battle; they were pursued by the militia and some of them taken and executed.[73]
Thomas Kingsmill escaped for a time, and became the leader of the desperate attack made in October, 1747, by thirty smugglers on the custom-house at Poole. This man was a native of Goudhurst, and had been a husbandman; but, having joined the smugglers, he was distinguished and daring enough to become captain of the gang—an honour of which he was so proud that he sought every opportunity of exhibiting specimens of his courage, and putting himself foremost in every service of danger.
Perrin, another of the gang, was a native of Chichester, where he had served his time as a carpenter, and had successfully practised his trade, as a master, for some years, till a stroke of the palsy had deprived him of the use of his right hand; he then became connected with the smugglers, and used to sail to France as purchaser of goods for them. In this capacity he, in September, 1747, bought a large quantity of brandy, tea and rum,[74] which was loaded on board a cutter (“The Three Brothers”), with the view of running it on the coast of Sussex; but intelligence reached the revenue officers, and Captain Johnson, of the revenue cutter at Poole, on September 22, caught sight of the loaded cutter, took her, and carried her and her cargo into Poole—Perrin and the crew escaping in the boat.
On Sunday, Oct. 4, the whole body of smugglers assembled in the Charlton Forest to consult on the possibility of recovering the goods, when Perrin proposed that they should go in a body, armed, and break open the Poole Custom-house; this was agreed to, and a bond was signed to support each other. The next day they met at Rowland’s Castle, armed with swords and firearms; at the Forest of Bere, adjoining Horndean, Kingsmill and the Hawkhurst gang met them; they concealed themselves in the wood till the evening of the following day, and then proceeded to Poole, which they reached at eleven at night. A report from two who were sent to reconnoitre, stating that a sloop of war lay opposite the quay, so that her guns could be pointed against the door of the custom-house, led some of the gang to falter; but Kingsmill and Fairall (a native of Horsendown Green, Kent, of no business, inured to smuggling from infancy, and remarkable for his brutal courage[75]) addressed them, saying: “If you will not do it, we will do it ourselves.” Then a fresh report was made, that, owing to the ebb-tide, the sloop could not bring her guns to bear. Animated with this intelligence, they all rode to the sea coast; Perrin and another of the gang took care of the horses, whilst the main body went down to the custom-house, taking with them a boy they chanced to meet, to prevent his alarming the inhabitants. The door was forced open with hatchets and other instruments, the smuggled tea was carried off on the horses to Fordingbridge; the band, after having travelled all night, there stopped for a time, but continued their journey to Brook, where the tea booty was divided in the proportion of five bags of twenty-seven pounds each per man.
A reward was offered for their apprehension, but it was months before any were taken. A man named Diamond was captured, and lodged in Chichester gaol, when a portion of the gang committed murders in West Sussex to prevent evidence being given against their fellows. The victims were William Galley the elder, a custom-house officer at Southampton; and Daniel Chater, a shoemaker of Fordingbridge. The murderers were Benjamin Tapner, a native of Aldrington,[76] who had worked as a bricklayer; John Cobby, an illiterate son of a Sussex labourer; John Hammond, a labouring man, born at South Berstead; William Jackson and William Carter, natives of Hampshire; Richard Mills the elder, a native of Trotton, where he had been a horse-dealer, but, failing in business, had commenced smuggling, and become one of the most hardened of the gang; and Richard Mills the younger, who lived at Stedham, and had been with his father in business. It seems that, on February 14, 1748, Galley and Chater were on their road to Major Battine’s, at Stanstead, to have Chater’s evidence taken, when they were induced to stop at the White Hart, at Rowland’s Castle, the landlady of which, being afraid that they were going to hurt the smugglers, sent for Jackson and Carter, and communicated her suspicions to them; others of the gang came in, and Carter soon got from Chater the real business. The men were then made nearly drunk, and put to bed; from which they were awoken to be tied to one horse, with their legs under the belly, and to be whipped till they fell twice, with their heads under. They were then taken to a well in Lady Holt Park, where Galley was taken from the horse and threatened to be thrown into the well; this, however, the smugglers did not do, but, putting him again upon the horse, whipped him to death on the Downs, and then dug a hole and buried him. Chater was then chained in a turf-house, from which, after being maimed in his nose and eyes by a knife, he was taken in the dead of the night to Harris’s Well, and Tapner, having fastened a noose round Chater’s neck, bid him get over the pales of the well; they tied one end of the rope to the pales, and pushed him into the well; the rope, however, was short, and he, being some time without becoming strangled, they then untied him and threw him head foremost into the well; and, to stop his groans, threw upon him the rails and gate-posts round the well, and large stones. Galley’s body was found by Mr. Stone whilst hunting; and six miles off, in the well, the body of Chater. The murderers were tried at a special assize for smugglers, holden at Chichester, before three judges—Sir Michael Forster, Knight, Sir Thomas Birch, Knight, and Mr. Baron Edward Clive—January 16, 1749. The sermon, which has been printed,[77] being preached by Sir William Ashburnham, then Dean, but afterwards Bishop of Chichester, from Job xxix., 14–16. The first three were convicted as principals, and the others as accessories before the fact to the murder of Chater; and Jackson and Carter for the murder of Galley. Jackson died in prison the night he was condemned. The others were hung on January 18—the two Mills’s not in chains; but Carter was hung in chains, near Rackley; Tapner, on Rook’s Hill, near Chichester; and Cobby and Hammond, on Selsey Isle, on the heath where they sometimes landed their smuggled goods, and where they could be seen a great distance east and west.
John Mills, another son of Richard Mills and one of the gang, who, with some of his associates saw the judges travelling over Hind Heath, on their way to the special assize at Chichester, and proposed to rob them;[78] but his companions refused to concur with him. Soon after his father’s execution, he met with Richard Hawkins, put him on horseback and carried him to the Dog and Partridge on Slindon Common, where Mills and his companions accused him of having stolen two bags of tea; and on his denying it, flogged and kicked him to death, and then, carrying his body twelve miles, tied stones to it and sunk it in a pond in Parham Park. Mills was entrapped to the house of an outlawed smuggler named William Pring, at Beckenham, and there betrayed. He was tried and convicted at the assizes holden at East Grinstead, and there hung on Aug. 12, 1749, being conducted to the place of execution by a guard of soldiers, as a rescue was feared from the smugglers; and after execution, he was hung in chains on Slindon Common. Others of the gang were tried at the same assizes as highwaymen, and executed.
At length two of the smugglers, who had been evidence against the men hanged at Chichester, gave information as to the place of meeting of Kingsmill, Fairall, Perrin and Glover; they were arrested for the breaking open of the custom-house at Poole, tried at Newgate, and convicted,[79] Glover being recommended by the jury to the royal mercy. Fairall behaved most insolently on the trial, and threatened one of the witnesses; Glover exhibited penitence; but Kingsmill and Perrin insisted that they had not been guilty of any robbery, because they only took the goods that once belonged to them. Perrin’s body was directed to be given to his friends, and he was lamenting the fate of his associates, when Fairall said: “We shall be hanging up in the sweet air, when you are rotting in your grave;” and the night before his execution, Fairall kept smoking with his friends till he was ordered by his keeper to go to his cell, when he exclaimed: “Why in such a hurry, cannot you let me stay a little longer with my friends? I shall not be able to drink with them to-morrow night.” Kingsmill was only twenty-eight and Fairall only twenty-five years of age, at the time of their trial.
Glover was pardoned; the other three were hung at Tyburn on April 26, 1749, and the body of Fairall was hung in chains on Horsendown Green, and Kingsmill’s on Goudhurst Gore.
This most formidable gang was thus broken up; but Horace Walpole’s letter of August 5, 1752, and the diary of Walter Gale,[80] show that to Sussex men, the profits of the illicit trade were too great a temptation to allow it to be given up.
The habit of smuggling, wrecking[81] and privateering led to perpetration of many other crimes; amongst others, to a revival of those acts of piracy which disgraced the Cinque Ports in the thirteenth century.[82]