Hastings during the latter part of the eighteenth and early years of the nineteenth centuries was one of the most notorious places along the whole Sussex coast for smuggling, on account of its convenient landing-places. The lawless Hawkhurst gang, to which reference will later be made, had several of its members hailing from the town, and the bands of smugglers in the immediate district were bold to a degree, often (as we are told) daring to land their cargoes of contraband under the very noses of the preventive men whose duty it was to frustrate such attempts. Wrecking, too, was an occasional variation of occupation for the smugglers, and several vessels are known in the first decade of the last century to have been lured to destruction by false lights shown on the cliffs.
The smugglers extended their operations far inland, daring to take their cargoes as far as Brede and other places for storage. Brede Place, which was one of their resorts, once the home of the Attefords, but afterwards that of the Oxenbridges, has several weird legends connected with it. Not the least uncanny is the story of one Sir Goddard Oxenbridge, who died in 1557, we should imagine little lamented by his neighbours. This owner of the manor, besides being a reputed dealer in the “black arts,” had so strong a liking for human flesh that children of the neighbourhood were constantly disappearing, to the grief of their parents and the “engorgement of this terrible ogre-like being.” For babies this Sir Goddard, who, we are informed, was of great stature and “flourished amazingly on his diet of human flesh,” had an especial partiality. Further, “neither bow, nor arrow, nor axe, nor sword, nor spear could slay this redoubtable giant, but some of the country people about here succeeded at length in making him drunk and in sawing him in half with a wooden saw!” A truly marvellous performance in good keeping with the rest of the tale!
But whether the legend of Sir Goddard Oxenbridge has any real foundation on fact or not, there is little doubt that soon after his death the place acquired so evil a reputation (owing to the appearance of his ghost, “with dripping jaws” and “an uncanny light from his eyes”) that people of a nervous and even those usually of a bold disposition avoided it. The ingenious smugglers of Hastings and the neighbourhood in the eighteenth century were not slow to appreciate the advantages afforded by this gloomy and ruinous old manor house, and they not only sedulously cultivated the idea that Brede was haunted but “put up some other very pretty tales amongst the country folk to dissuade them from approaching the house,” and in addition showed ghostly and mysterious lights. These tactics were so eminently successful that for some years the smugglers retained undisturbed possession of the place, using it as a storehouse for their goods.
There is reputed to be an underground passage leading from the house to the church—a distance of about a mile—but this has not of recent years, nor for all we know ever, been entered nor the existence of it proved. The disappearance of two revenue men was attributed to the Brede Place gang, and in the eighties of the eighteenth century the house was attacked and raided in the smugglers’ absence by the “preventives” in search of their missing comrades. Nothing, not even a tub or bale, was, however, then discovered, only an old man, who was as deaf as the proverbial adder and, it is very likely, as wise as the serpent.
Close to the house is a bridge which bears the name of “Groaning Bridge.” Tradition asserts that it was near here that Sir Goddard was sawn in half, and that the noises which are sometimes heard after dusk are his lamentable cries. Another tale is that it was in the hollow beneath the bridge that some of the smugglers used to hide at nights, and by making “most horrible and terrifying noises and groans so successfully prevented the further advance of any intending intruder towards the house.”
Onward from Hastings to our next port, Newhaven, one passes several of the ancient “limbs” of the Cinque Ports, Pevensey, one of the eight corporate members, the most important. No longer a port, the little town lies nearly a mile inland from the sea, which once almost washed the walls of its fine and impressive castle, set on a mound and surrounded by a rush-grown moat, and visible from afar.
Pevensey is nowadays, too, divided by stretches of flat marshy fields from the Channel, and has little of interest remaining save the traditions of its historic past as a Cinque Port “limb,” the jokes which are recorded against its municipal rulers, and the fact that it undoubtedly occupies the site of Anderida of the Romans. The remains of the Roman walls, which surround the Norman castle of Robert de Moreton, half-brother of the Conqueror, give to the place an interest not exceeded even by that of Lewes or Richborough. Here was once a city or at least a great settlement bordering upon that great, widely extending forest of Anderida, once covering the Weald of Sussex, which was probably as large, though perhaps not so famous, as the New Forest of Hampshire. The departure of the Roman legions was the signal for piratical descents upon our coasts, and the Saxons under Ella landed on the shore near Pevensey, and slew every Briton they came across.
Pevensey Castle has had a stirring and chequered history. Its stalwart walls, now ivy-clad and crumbling, have survived many an attack in those ages when the strongholds of nobles were called upon to resist not alone the assaults of foreign invaders, but also those of English nobles making private war; and within its walls have languished many whose names are written on the page of history for better or for worse. Brave Queen Maude held the place against the forces of Stephen, and only yielded when brought face to face with famine; and it has had yet another brave woman defender (ranking with Lady Bankes, of Corfe, in Dorsetshire) for the Lancastrians in the last year of the fourteenth century, Lady Joan Pelham.
As one writer has put it, “she wielded her pen not less readily than she commanded and directed the sword.” In a letter to her husband—a model of tenderness and felicitous expression—she says, “My dear Lord,—I recommend me to your high Lordship, with heart and body and all my poor might, and with all this I think (of) you, as my dear Lord, dearest and best beloved of all earthly Lords.... I heard by your letter that ye were strong enough with the grace of God for to keep you from the malice of your enemies. And, dear Lord, if it like you to your high Lordship that as soon as ye might that I might hear of your gracious speed, which God Almighty continue and increase. And my dear Lord, if it like you to know my fare, I am here laid by in manner of a siege with the county of Sussex, Surrey, and a great parcel of Kent, so that I may not go out nor no victuals get me, but with much hard.” Then, in the concluding paragraph, we get a sight of the tender heart of a devoted and loving woman, the same in all time and stress, and not variable at all. “Farewell, my dear Lord,” writes the beleaguered Joan Pelham, “the Holy Trinity keep you from your enemies, and soon send me good tidings of you.... By your own poor J. Pelham.” And then the superscription, “To my true Lord.” July 25, 1399.[B]
[B] Rendered into modern English from Brydge’s Peerage, vol. v, C.H.