[15] Hoskins; Encylopædia Britannica, 7th edit.
[16] Just as Charles, Duke of Norfolk, in our day, was accustomed to feed his favourite dogs, by cutting pieces from joints on the dinner-table, and throwing them to the dogs on the polished floor of Arundel Castle.
[17] The chief iron-works of Sussex were in the Wealden strata, whence the iron ore was extracted from the argillaceous beds, and was smelted with charcoal made from the abundance of wood. At Buxted, near Lindfield, iron ordnance were made three centuries since by Ralph Hogge, assisted by Peter Bawde, a Frenchman, and his covenanted servant, John Johnson; and the memory of whose works, of which two specimens are still existing in the Tower of London, is preserved in
"Master Hogfe, and his man John,
They did cast the first can-non."
(W. D. Cooper, F.S.A., Archæologia, vol. xxxvii. p. 483.)
Up to 1720, Sussex was the principal seat of the iron manufacture in England: the last furnace, at Ashburnham, was blown out in 1827. Kent was alike noted for its iron; and the last great work of its furnaces was the noble balustrades and gates which surround St. Paul's Cathedral, London: they were cast at Gloucester Furnace, Lamberhurst, and cost upwards of £11,202. "In the middle ages, and down even to a late date, while Dudley and Wolverhampton were obscure names, the forges of Kent and Sussex were all a-glow with smelting and hammering the iron which the soil still yields, although it is not worth the while of any one to work it. The discovery of the coalfields of Wales and Staffordshire gave the Kent and Sussex furnaces their deathblow, leaving the country dotted with forge and furnace farms, and deep holes, now filled with tangled underwood, from which the ore was brought." (Saturday Review, No. 182.) Kent and Sussex have no coal, and the iron manufacture left these counties when smelting with coal or coke began to supersede smelting with charcoal. Iron was also worked in Surrey. John Evelyn, in a letter to John Aubrey, dated February 8, 1675, states, that on the stream which winds through the valley of Wotton "were set up the first brass mills, for casting, hammering into plates, and cutting and drawing into wire, that were in England; also a fulling mill, and a mill for hammering iron, all of which are now demolished." The last of these mills gave its name to a small street or hamlet in the parish of Abinger, which to this day is called the Hammer.—Curiosities of Science. Second Series.
[18] In some parts of England, the badness of the roads continued to our day, when mud and clay were almost as great hindrances as in the Saxon times. Kent and Sussex were specially ill-favoured in this respect. Defoe, after travelling through all the counties, tells us that the road from Tunbridge was "the deepest and dirtiest" in all that part of England; and hereabouts it was, not far from Lewes, that he describes a sight which he had never seen in any other part of England, "that going to church at a country village, he saw an ancient lady, and a lady of very good quality, drawn to church in her coach with six oxen; nor was it either frolic or humour, but mere necessity." In 1708, Prince George of Denmark journeyed from Godalming, through the Sussex mud to Petworth, to meet Charles VI. of Spain: it cost six hours to conquer the last nine miles of the way. At a later date, Horace Walpole calls Sussex "a fruitful country, but very dirty for travellers, so that it may be better measured by days' journeys than by miles; whence it was, that in a late order for regulating the wages of coachmen at such a price a day's journey from London, Sussex alone was excepted, as wherein shorter way or better pay was allowed." Yet, in this county, stage-coach travelling attained higher perfection than in the majority of the counties of England. "In these days of railroads, express trains, excursion trains, mail trains, parliamentary trains, and special trains, there is no great difficulty in making a tour in Sussex, without any very great outlay of expense or time."—Quarterly Review.
[19] Host and Guest. By A. V. Kirwan. 1864.
[20] Miss Baker's Northamptonshire Glossary.
[21] Southey's Naval History of England, vol. i. p. 121.
[22] From Poundbury may be seen Woolverton House, formerly the seat of the Trenchard family, and in it the fortunes of the House of Russell, humanly speaking, began to rise in the ascendant. When the Archduke of Spain was obliged to land at Weymouth, he was brought to the Sheriff of Dorset, and lived at Woolverton House. The Sheriff, not being able to speak in any language but "Dorset," found it difficult to converse with the Archduke, and bethought him of a young kinsman, named Russell, who had been a factor in Spain, and sent for him. The young man made himself so agreeable to the Archduke that he brought him to London, where the King took a fancy to him, and in time he became Duke of Bedford, and was the founder of the House of Russell.