The news of the raid set the Customs folk by the ears, and a reward was offered for the apprehension of the raiders, but months passed by without the Government officials being able to obtain a clue. “A striking commentary, surely,” says Lieutenant H. N. Shore in “Smuggling Days and Smuggling Ways,” “on the state of merry England in the year of grace 1747! Here was a body of thirty armed men riding into a seaport town, storming the ‘King’s warehouse,’ and passing openly and undisguised the following morning with their booty through a portion of the most civilised and thickly populated part of England, and yet not a single individual of the many who witnessed the passage of the strange cavalcade, and were acquainted with many of those composing it, could be induced to come forward and assist the authorities in bringing the offenders to justice.”
Eventually, however, a clue was obtained. In the February following the raid one named Chater, a shoemaker of Fordingbridge, was going, in company with a Customs officer named Galley, to make a call upon Major Batten, J.P. for Sussex. The couple arrived at the small village of Rowland’s Castle, and put up at the “White Hart” for refreshment, and probably, after dining not wisely but too well, they let slip the information that they were bound for Major Batten. Now there were few people in those days who were not hand in glove with the smugglers, and the least suspicious sign was always conveyed to the smugglers to be on their guard. Widow Payne, who kept the inn, had two smuggler sons, and these she at once dispatched to give warning; and in due course men began to drop into the “White Hart.” They chummed up with the strangers, drank and talked with them, and at last Chater, inveigled outside, volunteered the information that he was on his way to swear against one of the men who had taken part in the Poole Custom House affair. Galley, Chater’s companion, began to wonder what was afoot, and came outside to see; and had no sooner shown his face out of the door than he was knocked head over heels.
“I am a King’s officer,” he exclaimed, “and——”
“A King’s officer, are you?” said his assailant. “I’ll make a King’s officer of you; and for a quartern of gin I’ll serve you so again!”
The smuggler’s mates gathered round, and realising that open methods would be rash, succeeded in soothing the irate King’s officer; and the company went back to the inn to drink and feast. Sad to relate, Chater and Galley got drunk, and had to be put to bed; and when they awoke they found themselves on the back of a horse, being carried they knew not whither, but with men slashing at them with whips and crying:
“Whip ’em, cut ’em, slash ’em, curse ’em!”
The smugglers had at first made up their minds to hide them for a while, until the commotion had blown over, and then send them away to France; but the smugglers’ wives had considered this too mild treatment, and had called out for their death. “Hang the dogs!” they cried. “For they came to hang us!”
Eventually, however, gentler measures were suggested, and it was decided that the men were to be secreted until it was discovered what was to be done with the smuggler who had been arrested—the man against whom Chater was going to give evidence. Each of the ruffians had agreed to give threepence a week towards the keep of the two men, but, drink-maddened, they soon forgot this, and set to work to belabour the unfortunate men, who at last rolled under the horse’s belly, and hung thus while the animal was driven like mad, the hoofs striking the men’s heads as they went. Then they were hoisted on to the horse’s back again, and the whipping renewed until the poor fellows were a mass of bruises and weals and too exhausted to keep on the horse’s back. They were then untied, slung across other horses, and carried on through the night, till the men cried out in their agony to be shot through the head.
Presently unconsciousness came to their relief. Arrived at Rake, near Liss, the smugglers drew up at the “Red Lion,” and induced the landlord to admit them. Here they imbibed afresh, and, drink-sodden, no doubt, they took Galley’s body and buried it in a sand-pit—probably while he was alive, for when the corpse was exhumed it was found that his hands were before his face, as though held there to protect it.
Chater, exhausted and running blood, was taken to the village of Trotton and chained to a post in a turf house, with two smugglers to guard him, and with barely enough food to keep him alive, pending the decision of the smugglers as to what to do with him. Next day they spent in revelry, and at night they repaired to the turf house, where one of them, drawing a large clasp knife, went up to Chater and cried: