The south held unquestioned pre-eminence, as long as smuggling activities lasted, and the records of bloodshed and hard-fought encounters are fullest along the coasts of Kent and Sussex. Sometimes, but not often, they are varied by a touch of humour.
The convenience afforded by churches for the storing of smuggled goods is a commonplace of the history of smuggling; and there is scarce a seaboard church of which some like tale is not told, while not a few inland church-towers and churchyards enjoy the same reputation. Asked to account for this almost universal choice of a hiding-place by the smugglers, a parish clerk of that age supposed, truly enough, that it was because no one was ever likely to go near a church, except on Sundays. This casts an instructive side-light upon the Church of England and religion at any time from two hundred to seventy or eighty years ago.
But a tale of more than common humour was told of the old church at Hove, near Brighton, many years ago. It seems that this ancient building had been greatly injured by fire in the middle of the seventeenth century, but that the population was so small and so little disposed to increase that a mere patching up of the ruins was sufficient for local needs. Moreover, the spiritual needs of the place were considered to be so small that Hove and Preston parishes were ecclesiastically united, and were served by one clergyman, who conducted service at each parish church on alternate Sundays. At a later period, indeed, Hove church was used only once in six weeks.
But in the alternate Sunday period the smugglers of this then lonely shore found the half-ruined church of Hove peculiarly useful for their trade; hence the following story.
One “Hove Sunday” the vicar, duly robed, appeared here to take the duty, and found, greatly to his surprise, that no bell was ringing to call the faithful to worship. “Why is the bell not ringing?” demanded the vicar.
“Preston Sunday, sir,” returned the sexton shortly.
“No, no,” replied the vicar.
“Indeed, then, sir, ’tis.”
But the vicar was not to be argued out of his own plain conviction that he had taken Preston last Sunday, and desired the sexton to start the bell-ringing at once.
“’Taint no good, then, sir,” said the sexton, beaten back into his last ditch of defence; “you can’t preach to-day.”