The Smugglers: Picturesque Chapters in the Story of an Ancient Craft

by Charles G. Harper

To exhume yet another incident from the forgotten doings of the time: In March 1745 a band of twelve or fourteen smugglers assaulted three custom-house officers whom they found in an alehouse at Grinstead Green, wounded them in a barbarous manner, and robbed them of their watches and money.

In the same year a gang entered a farmhouse near Sheerness, in Sheppey, and stole a great quantity of wool, valued at £1,500. A week later £300 worth of wool, which may or may not have been a portion of that stolen, was seized upon a vessel engaged in smuggling it from Sheerness, and eight men were secured.

The long immunity of the Hawkhurst Gang from serious interference inevitably led to its operations being extended in every direction, and the law-abiding populace of Kent and Sussex eventually found themselves dominated by a great number of fearless marauders, whose will for a time was a greater law than the law of the land. None could take legal action against them without going hourly in personal danger, or in fear of house, crops, wheat-stacks, hay-ricks, or stock being burnt or otherwise injured.

The village of Goudhurst, a picturesque spot situated upon a hill on the borders of Kent and Sussex, was the first place to resent this ignoble subserviency. The villagers and the farmers round about were wearied of having their horses commandeered by mysterious strangers for the carrying of contraband goods that did not concern them, and were determined no longer to have their houses raided with violence for money or anything else that took the fancy of these fellows.

They had at last found themselves faced with the alternatives, almost incredible in a civilised country, of either deserting their houses and leaving their property at the mercy of these marauders, or of uniting to oppose by force their lawless inroads. The second alternative was chosen; a paper expressive of their abhorrence of the conduct of the smugglers, and of the determination to oppose them was drawn up and subscribed to by a considerable number of persons, who assumed the style of the “Goudhurst Band of Militia.” At their head was a young man named Sturt, who had recently been a soldier. He it was who had persuaded the villagers to be men, and make some spirited resistance.

News of this unexpected stand on the part of these hitherto meek-spirited people soon reached the ears of the dreaded Hawkhurst Gang, who contrived to waylay one of the “Militia,” and, by means of torture and imprisonment, extorted from him a full disclosure of the plans and intentions of his colleagues. They swore the man not to take up arms against them, and then let him go; telling him to inform the Goudhurst people that they would, on a certain day named, attack the place, murder every one in it, and then burn it to the ground.

Sturt, on receiving this impudent message, assembled his “Militia,” and, pointing out to them the danger of the situation, employed them in earnest preparations. While some were sent to collect firearms, others were set to casting bullets and making cartridges, and to providing defences.

Punctually at the time appointed (a piece of very bad policy on their part, by which they would appear to have been fools as well as rogues) the gang appeared, headed by Thomas Kingsmill, and fired a volley into the village, over the entrenchments made. The embattled villagers replied, some from the houses and roof-tops, and others from the leads of the church-tower; when George Kingsmill, brother of the leading spirit in the attack, was shot dead. He is alluded to in contemporary accounts as the person who had killed a man at Hurst Green, a few miles distant.

In the firing that for some time continued two others of the smugglers, one Barnet Wollit and a man whose name is not mentioned, were killed and several wounded. The rest then fled, pursued by the valorous “Militia,” who took a few prisoners, afterwards handed over by them to the law, and executed.

Surprisingly little is heard of this—as we, in these more equable times, are prone to think it—extraordinary incident. A stray paragraph or so in the chronicles of the time is met with, and that is all. It was only one of the usual lawless doings of the age.