The Act further proceeded to deal with backsliders who, having purged themselves as above, again resumed their evil courses, and it made the ways of transgressors very hard indeed; for, when captured, they were charged with not only their present offence, but also with that for which they had compounded with the Dev— that is to say, with the law. And, being so charged, and duly convicted, their case was desperate; for if the previous offence had carried with it, on conviction, a sentence of transportation (as many smuggling offences did: among them the carryingof firearms by three, or more men, while engaged in smuggling goods), the second brought a sentence of death.
With regard to the position of the pardoned smuggler who had earned his pardon by thus peaching on his fellows, it is not too much to say—certainly so far as the more ferocious smuggling gangs of Kent and Sussex were concerned—that by so doing he had already earned his capital sentence; for the temper of these men was such, and the risks they were made to run by these ferocious Acts were so great, that they would not—and, in a way of looking at these things, could not—suffer an informer to live.
Thus, even the additional inducements offered to informers by statute—including a reward of £50 each for the discovery and conviction of two or more accomplices—very generally failed to obtain results.
Many other items of unexampled severity were included in this Act, and in the yet more drastic measures of 1745 and the following year. By these it was provided that persons found loitering within five miles of the sea-coast, or any navigable river, might be considered suspicious persons; and they ran the risk of being taken before a magistrate, who was empowered, on any such person being unable to give a satisfactory account of himself, to commit him to the House of Correction, there to be whipped and kept at hard labour for any period not exceeding one month.
In 1746, assembling to run contraband goods was made a crime punishable with death as a felon, and counties were made liable for revenue losses. Smuggled goods seized and afterwards rescued entailed a fine of £200 upon the county; a revenue officer beaten by smugglers cost the county £40; or if killed, £100; with the provision that the county should be exempt if the offenders were convicted within six months.
As regards the offenders themselves, if they failed to surrender within forty days and were afterwards captured, the person who captured them was entitled to a reward of £500.
Dr. Johnson’s definition of a smuggler appears on the title-page of the present volume. It is not a flattering testimonial to character; but, on the other hand, his opinion of a Commissioner of Excise—and such were the sworn enemies of smugglers—was much more unfavourable. Such an one was bracketed by the doctor with a political pamphleteer, or what he termed “a scribbler for a party,” as one of “the two lowest of human beings.” Without the context in which these judgments are now placed, it would be more than a little difficult to trace their reasoning, which sounds as little sensible as it would be to declare at one and the same time a burglar to be a dangerous pest and a policeman a useless ornament. But if smugglers can be proved from these pages wicked and reckless men, so undoubtedly shall we find the Commissioners of Excise and Customs, in their several spheres, appealing to thebasest of human instincts, and thus abundantly worthy of Johnson’s censure.
The shifts and expedients of the Commissioners of Customs for the suppression of smuggling were many and ingenious, and none was more calculated to perform the maximum of service to the Revenue with the minimum of cost than the commissioning of privateers, authorised to search for, to chase, and to capture if possible any smuggling craft. “Minimum of cost” is indeed not the right expression for use here, for the cost and risks to the customs establishment werenil. It should be said here that, although the Acts of Parliament directed against smuggling were of the utmost stringency, they were not always applied with all the severity possible to be used; and, on the other hand, customs officers and the commanders of revenue cutters were well advised to guard against any excess of zeal in carrying out their instructions. To chase and capture a vessel that every one knew perfectly well to be a smuggler, and then to find no contraband aboard, because, as a matter of fact, it had been carefully sunk at some point where it could easily be recovered at leisure, was not only not the way to promotion as a zealous officer; but was, on the contrary, in the absence of proof that contraband had been carried, a certain way to official disfavour. And it was also, as many officers found to their cost, the way into actions at law, with resultant heavy damages not infrequently awarded against them. It was, indeed, a scandal thatthese public servants, who assuredly rarely ever brought to, or overhauled, a vessel without reasonable and probable cause, should have been subject to such contingencies, without remedy of any kind.
The happy idea of licensing private adventurers to build and equip vessels to make private war upon smuggling craft, and to capture them and their cargoes, was an extension of the original plan of issuing letters of marque to owners of vessels for the purpose of inflicting loss upon an enemy’s commerce; but persons intending to engage upon this private warfare against smuggling had, in the first instance, to give security to the Commissioners of a diligence in the cause thus undertaken, and to enter into business details respecting the cargoes captured. It was, however, not infrequently found, in practice, that these privateers very often took to smuggling on their own account, and that, under the protective cloak of their ostensible affairs, they did a very excellent business; while, to complete this picture of failure, those privateers that really did keep to their licensed trade generally contrived to lose money and to land their owners into bankruptcy.
Terrorising Bands of Smugglers—The Hawkhurst Gang—Organised Attack on Goudhurst—The “Smugglers’ Song”
Butthe smugglers of Kent and Sussex were by far the most formidable of all the “free-traders” in England, and were not easily to be suppressed. Smuggling, export and import, off those coasts was naturally heavier than elsewhere, for there the Channel was narrower, and runs more easily effected. The interests involved were consequently much greater, and the organisation of the smugglers, from the master-men to the labourers, more nearly perfect. To interfere with any of the several confederacies into which these men were banded for the furtherance of their illicit trade was therefore a matter of considerable danger, and, well knowing the terror into which they had thrown the country-side, they presumed upon it, to extend their activities into other, and even less reputable, doings. The intervals between carrying tubs, and otherwise working for the master-smugglers became filled, towards the middle of the eighteenth century, with acts of highwayrobbery and house-breaking, and, in the home counties, at any rate, smuggling proved often to be only the first step in a career of crime.
Among these powerful and terrorising confederacies, the Hawkhurst gang was pre-eminent. The constitution of it was, necessarily, a matter of inexact information, for the officers and the rank and file of such societies are mentioned by no minute-books or reports. But one of its principals was, without question, Arthur Gray, or Grey, who was one of those “Sea Cocks” after whom Seacox Heath, near Hawkhurst, in Kent, is supposed to be named. He was a man who did things on, for those times, a grand scale, and was said to be worth £10,000. He had built on that then lonely ridge of ground, overlooking at a great height the Weald of Kent, large store houses—a kind of illicit “bonded warehouses”—for smuggled goods, and made the spot a distributing centre. That all these facts should have been contemporaneously known, and Gray’s store not have been raided by the Revenue, points to an almost inconceivable state of lawlessness. The buildings were in after years known as “Gray’s Folly”; but it was left for modern times to treat the spot in a truly sportive way: when Lord Goschen, who built the modern mansion of Seacox Heath on the site of the smuggler’s place of business, became Chancellor of the Exchequer. If the unquiet ghosts of the old smugglers ever revisit their old haunts, how weird must have been the ironic laughter of Gray at finding thisthe home of the chief financial functionary of the Government!
Goudhurst Church
In December 1744 the gang were responsible for the impudent abduction of a customs officer and three men who had attempted to seize a run of goods at Shoreham. They wounded the officer and carried the four off to Hawkhurst, where they tied two of them, who had formerly been smugglers and had ratted to the customs service, to trees, whipped them almost to death, and then took them down to the coast again and shipped them to France. A reward of £50 was offered, but never claimed.
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 greatnumber 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 ofthese 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 Wollitand 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.
But to-day the stranger in the village may chance, if he inquires a little into the history of the place, to hear wild and whirling accounts of this famous event; and, if he be at all enterprising, will find in the parish registers of burials this one piece of documentary evidence toward the execution done that day:
“1747, Ap. 20, George Kingsmill, Dux sclerum glande plumbeo emisso, cecidit.”
“1747, Ap. 20, George Kingsmill, Dux sclerum glande plumbeo emisso, cecidit.”
All these things, moreover, are duly enshrined, amid much fiction, in the pages of G. P. R. James’s novel, “The Smuggler.”
And still the story of outrage continued. On August 14th, 1747, a band of twenty swaggering smugglers rode, well-armed and reckless, into Rye and halted at the “Red Lion” inn, where they remained drinking until they grew rowdy and violent.
Coming into the street again, they discharged their pistols at random, and, as the old account of these things concludes, “observing JamesMarshall, a young man, too curious of their behaviour, carried him off, and he has not since been heard of.”
History tells us nothing of the fate of that unfortunate young man; but, from other accounts of the bloodthirsty characters of these Kentish and Sussex malefactors, we imagine the very worst.
Others, contemporary with them—if, indeed, they were not the same men, as seems abundantly possible—captured two revenue officers near Seaford, and, securely pinning them down to the beach at low-water mark, so that they could not move, left them there, so that, when the tide rose, they were drowned.
Again, on September 14th of this same year, 1747, a smuggler named Austin, violently resisting arrest, shot a sergeant dead with a blunderbuss at Maidstone.
In “The Smugglers’ Song” Mr. Rudyard Kipling has vividly reconstructed those old times of dread, when, night and day, the numerous and well-armed bodies of smugglers openly traversed the country, terrorising every one. To look too curiously at these high-handed ruffians was, as we have already seen, an offence, and the most cautious among the rustics made quite sure of not incurring their high displeasure—and incidentally of not being called upon by the revenue authorities as witnesses to the identity of any among their number—by turning their faces the other way when the free-traders passed. Mothers,too, were careful to bid their little ones on the Marshland roads, or in the very streets of New Romney, to turn their faces to the hedge-side, or to the wall, “when the gentlemen went by.” And—
If you wake at midnight, and hear a horse’s feet,Don’t go drawing back the blind, or looking in the street;Them that ask no questions isn’t told a lie,Watch the wall, my darling, while the gentlemen go by.Five and twenty poniesTrotting through the dark—Brandy for the parson;’Baccy for the clerk;Laces for a lady; letters for a spy,And watch the wall, my darling, while the gentlemen go by.
If you wake at midnight, and hear a horse’s feet,Don’t go drawing back the blind, or looking in the street;Them that ask no questions isn’t told a lie,Watch the wall, my darling, while the gentlemen go by.
Five and twenty poniesTrotting through the dark—Brandy for the parson;’Baccy for the clerk;Laces for a lady; letters for a spy,
And watch the wall, my darling, while the gentlemen go by.
The cautious turned their faces away
The “Murders by Smugglers” in Hampshire
Themost outstanding chapter in the whole history of smuggling is that of the cold-blooded “Murders by Smugglers” which stained the annals of the southern counties in the mid-eighteenth century with peculiarly revolting deeds that have in them nothing of romance; nothing but a long-drawn story of villainy and fiendish cruelty. It is a story that long made dwellers in solitary situations shiver with apprehension, especially if they owned relatives connected in any way with the hated customs officers.
This grim chapter of horrors, upon which the historian can dwell only with loathing, and with pity for himself in being brought to the telling of it, was the direct outcome of the lawless and almost unchecked doings of the Hawkhurst Gang, whose daring grew continually with their long-continued success in terrorising the countryside.
The beginnings of this affair are found in an expedition entered upon by a number of the gang in September 1747, in Guernsey, where they purchased a considerable quantity of tea,for smuggling into this country. Unfortunately for their enterprise, they fell in with a revenue cutter, commanded by one Captain Johnson, who pursued and captured their vessel, took it into the port of Poole, and lodged the tea in the custom-house there.
The smugglers were equally incensed and dismayed at this disaster, the loss being a very heavy one; and they resolved, rather than submit to it, to go in an armed force and recover the goods. Accordingly a mounted body of them, to the number of sixty, well provided with firearms and other weapons, assembled in what is described as “Charlton Forest,” probably Chalton Downs, between Petersfield and Poole, and thence proceeded on their desperate errand. Thirty of them, it was agreed, should go to the attack, while the other thirty should take up positions as scouts along the various roads, to watch for riding-officers, or for any military force, and so alarm, or actively assist, if needs were, the attacking party.
It was in the midnight between October 6th and 7th that this advance party reached Poole, broke open the custom-house on the quay, and removed all the captured tea—thirty-seven hundredweight, valued at £500—except one bag of about five pounds weight. They returned in the morning, in leisurely fashion, through Fordingbridge; the affair apparently so public that hundreds of people were assembled in the streets of that little town to see these daring fellows pass.
. . breaking open the Customs House at Poole
Among these spectators was one Daniel Chater, a shoemaker, who recognised among this cavalcade of smugglers a certain John Diamond, with whom he had formerly worked in the harvest field. Diamond shook hands with him as he passed, and threw him a bag of tea.
It was not long before a proclamation was issued offering rewards for the identification or apprehension of any persons concerned in this impudent raid, and Diamond was in the meanwhile arrested on suspicion at Chichester. Chater, who seems to have been a foolish, gossiping fellow, saying he knew Diamond and saw him go by with the gang, became an object of considerable interest to his neighbours at Fordingbridge, who, having seen that present of a bag of tea—a very considerable present as the price of tea then ran—no doubt thought he knew more of the affair than he cared to tell. At any rate, these things came to the knowledge of the Collector of Customs at Southampton, and the upshot of several interviews and some correspondence with him was that Chater agreed to go in company with one William Galley, an officer of excise, to Major Battin, a Justice of the Peace and a Commissioner of Customs at Chichester, to be examined as to his readiness and ability to identify Diamond, whose punishment, on conviction, would be, under the savage laws of that time, death.
Chater, in short, had offered himself as that detestable thing, a hired informer: a creatureall right-minded men abhor, and whom the smugglers of that age visited, whenever found, with persecution and often with the same extremity to which the law doomed themselves.
The ill-fated pair set out on Sunday, February 14th, on horseback, and, calling on their way at Havant, were directed by a friend of Chater’s at that place to go by way of Stanstead, near Rowlands Castle. They soon, however, missed their way, and calling at Leigh, at the “New Inn,” to refresh and to inquire the road, met there three men, George and Thomas Austin, and their brother-in-law, one Mr. Jenkes, who accompanied them to Rowlands Castle, where they all drew rein at the “White Hart” public-house, kept by a Mrs. Elizabeth Payne, a widow, who had two sons in the village, blacksmiths, and both reputed smugglers.
Some rum was called for, and was being drank, when Mrs. Payne, taking George Austin aside, told him she was afraid these two strangers were after no good; they had come, she suspected, with intent to do some injury to the smugglers. Such was the state of the rural districts in those times that the appearance of two strangers was of itself a cause for distrust; but when, in addition, there was the damning fact that one of them wore the uniform of a riding-officer of excise, suspicion became almost a certainty.
But to her remarks George Austin replied she need not be alarmed, the strangers wereonly carrying a letter to Major Battin, on some ordinary official business.
This explanation, however, served only to increase her suspicions, for what more likely than that this business with a man who was, among other things, a highly placed customs official, was connected in some way with these recent notorious happenings?
To make sure, Mrs. Payne sent privately one of her sons, who was then in the house, for William Jackson and William Carter, two men deeply involved with smuggling, who lived near at hand. In the meanwhile Chater and Galley wanted to be gone upon their journey, and asked for their horses. Mrs. Payne, to keep them until Jackson and Carter should arrive, told them the man who had the key of the stables was gone for a while, but would return presently.
As the unsuspecting men waited, gossiping and drinking, the two smugglers entered. Mrs. Payne drew them aside and whispered her suspicions; at the same time advising Mr. George Austin to go away, as she respected him, and was unwilling that any harm should come to him.
It is thus sufficiently clear that, even at this early stage, some very serious mischief was contemplated.
Mr. George Austin, being a prudent, if certainly not also an honest, man, did as he was advised. Thomas Austin, his brother, who does not appear to have in the same degree commanded the landlady’s respect, was not warned, andremained, together with his brother-in-law. To have won the reader’s respect also, she should, at the very least of it, have warned them as well. But as this was obviously not a school of morals, we will not labour the point, and will bid Mr. George Austin, with much relief, “goodbye.”
Mrs. Payne’s other son then entered, bringing with him four more smugglers: William Steel, Samuel Downer,aliasSamuel Howard,alias“Little Sam,” Edmund Richards, and Henry Sheerman,alias“Little Harry.”
After a while Jackson took Chater aside into the yard, and asked him after Diamond; whereupon the simple-minded man let fall the object of his and his companion’s journey.
While they were talking, Galley, suspecting Chater would be in some way indiscreet, came out and asked him to rejoin them; whereupon Jackson, with a horrible oath, struck him a violent blow in the face, knocking him down.
Galley then rushed into the house, Jackson following him. “I am a King’s officer,” exclaimed the unfortunate Galley, “and cannot put up with such treatment.”
“You a King’s officer!” replied Jackson, “I’ll make a King’s officer of you; and for a quartern of gin I’ll serve you so again!”
The others interposed, one of the Paynes exclaiming, “Don’t be such a fool; do you know what you are doing?”
Galley and Chater grew very uneasy, andagain wanted to be going; but the company present, including Jackson, pressed them to stay, Jackson declaring he was sorry for what had passed. The entire party then sat down to more drink, until Galley and Chater were overcome by drunkenness and were sent to sleep in an adjoining room. Thomas Austin and Mr. Jenkes were by this time also hopelessly drunk; but as they had no concern with the smugglers, nor the smugglers with them, they drop out of this narrative.
When Galley and Chater lay in their drunken sleep the compromising letters in their pockets were found and read, and the men present formed themselves into a kind of committee to decide what should be done with their enemies, as they thought them. John Race and Richard Kelly then came in, and Jackson and Carter told them they had got the old rogue, the shoemaker of Fordingbridge, who was going to give an information against John Diamond the shepherd, then in custody at Chichester.
They then consulted what was best to be done to their two prisoners, when William Steel proposed to take them both to a well, a little way from the house, and to murder them and throw them in. Less ferocious proposals were made—to send them over to France; but when it became obvious that they would return and give the evidence after all, the thoughts of the seven men present reverted to murder. At this juncture the wives of Jackson and Carter,who had entered the house, cried, “Hang the dogs, for they came here to hang us!”
Another proposition that was made—to imprison the two in some safe place until they knew what would be Diamond’s fate, and for each of the smugglers to subscribe threepence a week for their keep—was immediately scouted; and instantly the brutal fury of these ruffians was aroused by Jackson, who, going into the room where the unfortunate men were lying, spurred them on their foreheads with the heavy spurs of his riding-boots, and, having thus effectually wakened them, whipped them into the kitchen of the inn until they were streaming with blood. Then, taking them outside, the gang lifted them on to a horse, one behind the other, and, tying their hands and legs together, lashed them with heavy whips along the road, crying, “Whip them, cut them, slash them, damn them!” one of their number, Edmund Richards, with cocked pistol in hand, swearing he would shoot any person through the head who should mention anything of what he saw or heard.
From Rowlands Castle, past Wood Ashes, Goodthorpe Deane, and to Lady Holt Park, this scourging was continued through the night, until the wretched men were three parts dead. At two o’clock in the morning this gruesome procession reached the Portsmouth Road at Rake, where the foremost members of the party halted at what was then the “Red Lion” inn, long since that time retired into private life, and now ahumble cottage. It was kept in those days by one Scardefield, who was no stranger to their kind, nor unused to the purchase and storing of smuggled spirits. Here they knocked and rattled at the door until Scardefield was obliged to get out of bed and open to them. Galley, still alive, was thrust into an outhouse, while the band, having roused the landlord and procured drink, caroused in the parlour of the inn. Chater they carried in with them; and when Scardefield stood horrified at seeing so ghastly a figure of a man, all bruised and broken, and spattered with blood, they told him a specious tale of an engagement they had had with the King’s officers: that here was a comrade, wounded, and another, dead or dying, in his brew-house.
The “Red Lion,” Rake
Chater they presently carried to an outhouse of the cottage of a man named Mills, not far off, and then returned for more drink and discussion of what was to be done with Galley, whom they decided to bury in Harting Combe. So, while it was yet dark, they carried him down from the ridge on which Rake stands, into the valley, and, digging a grave in a fox-earth by the light of a lantern, shovelled the dirt over him, without inquiring too closely whether their victim were alive or dead. That he was not dead at that time became evident when his body was discovered eight months later, hands raised to his face, as though to prevent the earth from suffocating him.
The whole of the next day this evil company sat drinking in the “Red Lion.” Richard Mills, son of the man in whose turf-shed Chater lay chained by the leg, passing by, they hailed him and told him of what they had done; whereupon he said he would, if he had had the doing of it, have flung the man down Harting Combe headlong and broken his neck.
On this Monday night they all returned home, lest their continued absence might be remarked by the neighbours; agreeing to meet again at Rake on the Wednesday evening, to consider how they might best put an end to Chater.
When Wednesday night had come this council of murderers, reinforced by others, and numbering in all fourteen, assembled accordingly. Dropping into the “Red Lion” one by one, it was late at night before they had all gathered.
They decided, after some argument, to dispatch him forthwith, and, going down to the turf-shed where he had lain all this while, suffering agonies from the cruel usage to which he had been subjected, they unchained him. Richard Mills at first had proposed to finish him there. “Let us,” said he, “load a gun with two or three bullets, lay it upon a stand with the muzzle of the piece levelled at his head, and, after having tied a long string to the trigger, we will all go off to the butt-end, and, each of us taking hold of the string, pull it all together; thus we shall be all equally guilty of his death, and it will be impossible for any one of us to charge the rest with his murder, withoutaccusing himself of the same crime; and none can pretend to lessen or to mitigate his guilt by saying he was only an accessory, since all will be principals.”
Chater being kicked and cut
Thus Richard Mills, according to the story of these things told in horrid detail (together with a full report of the subsequent trial) by the author of the contemporary “Genuine History.” The phraseology of the man’s coldly logical proposals is, of course, that of the author himself; since it is not possible that a Sussex rustic of over a hundred and sixty years ago would have spoken in literary English.
Mills’s proposition was not accepted. It seemed to the others too merciful and expeditious a method of putting an end to Chater’s misery. They had grown as epicurean in torture as the mediæval hell-hounds who racked and pinched and burnt for Church and State. They were resolved he should suffer as much and as long as they could eke out his life, as a warning to all other informers.
The proposal that found most favour was that they should take him to Harris’s Well, in Lady Holt Park, and throw him in.
Tapner, one of the recruits to the gang, thereupon inaugurated the new series of torments by pulling out a large clasp-knife, and, with a fearful oath, exclaiming, “Down on your knees and go to prayers, for with this knife I will be your butcher.”
Chater, expecting every moment to be his last, knelt down as he was ordered, and, while hewas thus praying, Cobby kicked him from behind, while Tapner in front slashed his face.
The elder Mills, owner of the turf-shed, at this grew alarmed for his own safety. “Take him away,” he said, “and do not murder him here. Do it somewhere else.”
They then mounted him on a horse and set out for Lady Holt Park; Tapner, more cruel, if possible, than the rest, slashing him with his knife, and whipping him with his whip, all the way.
It was dead of night by the time they had come to the Park, where there was a deep dry well. A wooden fence stretched across the track leading to it, and over this, although it was in places broken and could easily have been crawled through, they made their victim climb. Tapner then pulled a rope out of his pocket and tied it round Chater’s neck, and so pushed him over the opening of the well, where he hung, slowly strangling.
But by this time they were anxious to get home, and could afford no more time for these luxuries of cruelty, so they dropped him to the bottom of the well, imagining he would be quite killed by the fall. Unfortunately for Chater, he was remarkably tenacious of life, and was heard groaning there, where he had fallen.
They dared not leave him thus, lest any one passing should hear his cries, and went and roused a gardener, one William Combleach, who lived a little way off, and borrowed a ladder, telling him one of their companions had fallen intoHarris’s Well. With this ladder they intended to descend the well and finally dispatch Chater; but, seeing they could not manage to lower the ladder, they were reduced to finding some huge stones and two great gateposts, which they then flung down, and so ended the unhappy man’s martyrdom.
The problem that next faced the murderers was, how to dispose of the two horses their victims had been riding. It was first proposed to put them aboard the next smuggling vessel returning to France, but that idea was abandoned, on account of the risk of discovery. It was finally decided to slaughter them and remove their skins, and this was accordingly done to the grey that Galley had ridden, and his hide cut up into small pieces and buried; but, when they came to look for the bay that Chater had used, they could not find him.
The “Murders by Smugglers”continued—Trial and Execution of the Murderers—Further Crimes by the Hawkhurst Gang
Evenin those times two men, and especially men who had set out upon official business, could not disappear so utterly as Chater and Galley had done without comment being aroused, and presently the whole country was ringing with the news of this mysterious disappearance. The condition of the country can at once be guessed when it is stated that no one doubted the hands of the smugglers in this business. The only question was, in what manner had they spirited these two men away? Some thought they had been carried over to France, while others thought, shrewdly enough, they had been murdered.
But no tidings nor any trace of either Galley or Chater came to satisfy public curiosity, or to allay official apprehensions, until some seven months later, when an anonymous letter sent to “a person of distinction,” and probably inspired by the hope of ultimately earning the large reward offered by the Government for information, hinted that “the body of one of the unfortunate men mentioned in his Majesty’s proclamation wasburied in the sands in a certain place near Rake.” And, sure enough, when search was made, the body of Galley was found “standing almost upright, with his hands covering his eyes.”
Another letter followed upon this discovery, implicating William Steel in these doings, and he was immediately arrested. To save himself, the prisoner turned King’s evidence, and revealed the whole dreadful story. John Race, among the others concerned, voluntarily surrendered, and was also admitted as evidence.
One after another, seven of the murderers were arrested in different parts of the counties of Hants and Surrey, and were committed to the gaols of Horsham and Newgate, afterwards being sent to Chichester, where a special Assize was held for the purpose of overawing the smugglers of the district, and of impressing them with the majesty and the power of the law, which, it was desired to show them, would eventually overtake all evil-doers.
We need not enter into the details of that trial, held on January 18th, 1749, and reported with painful elaboration by the author of the “Genuine History,” together with the sermon preached in Chichester Cathedral by Dean Ashburnham, who held forth in the obvious and conventional way of comfortably beneficed clergy, then and now.
Let it be sufficient to say that all were found guilty, and all sentenced to be hanged on the following day.
Six of them were duly executed, William Jackson, the seventh, dying in gaol. He had been for a considerable time in ill health. He was a Roman Catholic and the greatest villain of the gang, and, like all such, steeped in superstition. Carefully sewed up in a linen purse in his waistcoat pocket was found an amulet in French, which, translated, ran as follows:
Ye three Holy Kings,Gaspar, Melchior, Balthasar,Pray for us now, and in the hour of death.These papers have touched the three heads of the Holy Kings at Cologne.They are to preserve travellers from accidents on the road, headaches, falling sickness, fevers, witchcraft, all kinds of mischief, and sudden death.
Ye three Holy Kings,Gaspar, Melchior, Balthasar,Pray for us now, and in the hour of death.
These papers have touched the three heads of the Holy Kings at Cologne.
They are to preserve travellers from accidents on the road, headaches, falling sickness, fevers, witchcraft, all kinds of mischief, and sudden death.
His body was thrown into a pit on the Broyle, at Chichester, together with those of Richard Mills, the elder, and younger. The body of William Carter was hanged in chains upon the Portsmouth road, near Rake; that of Benjamin Tapner on Rook’s Hill, near Chichester, and those of John Cobby and John Hammond upon the sea-coast near Selsea Bill, so that they might be seen for great distances by any contrabandists engaged in running goods.
Another accomplice, Henry Shurman, or Sheerman,alias“Little Harry,” was indicted and tried at East Grinstead, and, being sentenced to death, was conveyed to Horsham Gaol by a strong guard of soldiers and hanged at Rake, and afterwards gibbeted.
In January 1749, a brutal murder wascommitted at the “Dog and Partridge” inn, on Slindon Common, near Arundel, where Richard Hawkins was whipped and kicked to death on suspicion of being concerned in stealing two bags of tea, belonging to one Jerry Curtis. Hawkins was enticed away from his work at Walberton, on some specious pretext, by Curtis and John Mills, known as “Smoker,” and went on horseback behind Mills to the “Dog and Partridge,” where they joined a man named Robb: all these men being well-known smugglers in that district. Having safely got Hawkins thus far, they informed him that he was their prisoner, and proceeded to put him under examination in the parlour of the inn. There were also present Thomas Winter (afterwards a witness for the prosecution), and James Reynolds, the innkeeper.
Hawkins denied having stolen the tea, and said he knew nothing of the matter, whereupon Curtis replied, “Damn you; you do know, and if you do not confess I will whip you till you do; for, damn you, I have whipped many a rogue and washed my hands in his blood.”
Reynolds said, “Dick, you had better confess; it will be better for you.” But his answer still was, “I know nothing of it.”
Reynolds then went out, and Mills and Robb thereupon beat and kicked Hawkins so ferociously that he cried out that the Cockrels, his father-in-law, and brother-in-law, who kept an inn at Yapton, were concerned in it. Curtis and Mills then took their horses and said they would goand fetch them. Going to the younger Cockrel, Mills entered the house first and called for some ale. Then Curtis came in and demanded his two bags of tea, which he said Hawkins had accused him of having. Cockrel denied having them, and then Curtis beat him with an oak stick until he was tired. Curtis and Mills then forcibly took him to where his father was, at Walberton, and thence, with his father, behind them on their horses, towards Slindon.
Meanwhile, at the “Dog and Partridge,” Robb and Winter placed the terribly injured man, Hawkins, in a chair by the fire, where he died.
Robb and Winter then took their own horses and rode out towards Yapton, meeting Curtis and Mills on the way, each with a man behind him. The men, who were the Cockrels, were told to get off, which they did, and the four others held a whispered conversation, when Winter told them that Hawkins was dead, and desired them to do no more mischief.
“By God!” exclaimed Curtis, “we will go through it now.” Winter again urged them to be content with what had already been done; and Curtis then bade the two Cockrels return home.
Then they all four rode back to the “Dog and Partridge,” where Reynolds was in despair, saying to Curtis, “You have ruined me.”
The whipping of Richard Rowland
Curtis replied that he would make him amends; and they all then consulted how to dispose of the body. The first proposition was to bury itin a park close at hand, and to give out that the smugglers had deported Hawkins to France. But Reynolds objected. The spot, he said, was too near, and would soon be found. In the end, they laid the body on a horse and carried it to Parham Park, twelve miles away, where they tied large stones to it, and sunk it in a pond.
This crime was in due course discovered, and a proclamation issued, offering a pardon to any one, not himself concerned in the murder, nor in the breaking open of the custom-house at Poole, who should give information that would lead to the capture and conviction of the offenders.
William Pring, an outlawed smuggler, who had heard some gossip of this affair among his smuggling acquaintance, and was apparently wishful of beginning a new life, determined to make a bid for his pardon for past offences, and, we are told, “applied to a great man in power,” informing him that he knew Mills, and that if he could be assured of his pardon he would endeavour to take him, for he was pretty certain to find him either at Bristol or Bath, whither he knew he was gone, to sell some run goods.
Being assured of his pardon, he set out accordingly, and found not only Mills, but two brothers, Lawrence and Thomas Kemp, themselves smugglers and highway robbers, and wanted for various offences; Thomas Kemp being additionally in request for having broken out of Newgate.
The informer, Pring, artfully talking mattersover with these three, and observing that the cases of all of them were desperate, offered the advice that they should all accompany him towards London, to his house at Beckenham, where they would decide upon some plan for taking to highway robbery and house-breaking, in the same manner as Gregory’s Gang[66]used to do.
This they all heartily agreed to, and confidentially, on the journey up to Beckenham, spoke and bragged of their various crimes.
Arrived at Beckenham, Pring made a plausible excuse to leave them awhile at his house, while he fetched his mare, in exchange for the very indifferent horse he had ridden. It would never do, he said, when on their highway business, for one of the company to be badly horsed.
He left the house and rode hurriedly to Horsham, whence he returned with eight or nine mounted officers of excise. They arrived at midnight, and found his three guests sitting down to supper.
The two Kemps were easily secured, and tied by the arms; but Mills would not so readily submit, and was slashed with a sword before he would give in.
The “Dog and Partridge,” Slindon Common
John Mills was a son of Richard Mills, and a brother of Richard Mills the younger, executed at Chichester for the murder of Chater and Galley,as already detailed, and he also had taken part in that business. Brought to trial at East Grinstead, he said he had indeed been a very wicked liver, but he bitterly complained of such of the witnesses against him as had been smugglers and had turned King’s evidence. They had, he declared, acted contrary from the solemn oaths and engagements they had made and sworn to among themselves, and he therefore wished they might all come to the same end, and be hanged like him and damned afterwards.
He was found guilty and duly sentenced to death, and was hanged and afterwards hung in chains on a gibbet erected for the purpose on Slindon Common, near the “Dog and Partridge.”
Curtis, an active partner in the same murder, fled the country, and was said to have enlisted in the Irish Brigade of the French Army. Robb was not taken, and Reynolds was acquitted of the murder. He and his wife were tried at the next Assizes, as accessories after the fact.
The “Dog and Partridge” has long ceased to be an inn, but the house survives, a good deal altered, as a cottage. In the garden may be seen a very capacious cellar, excavated out of the soil and sandstone, and very much larger than a small country inn could have ever required for ordinary business purposes. It is known as the “Smugglers’ Cellar.”
At the same sessions at which these bloodstained scoundrels were convicted a further body of five men, Lawrence and Thomas Kemp, JohnBrown, Robert Fuller, and Richard Savage, were all tried on charges of highway robbery, of housebreaking, and of stealing goods from a wagon. They were all members of the notorious Hawkhurst Gang, and had been smugglers for many years. All were found guilty and sentenced to death, except Savage, who was awarded transportation for life. The rest were executed at Horsham on April 1st, 1749. One of them had at least once already come near to being capitally convicted, but had been rescued from Newgate by a party of fellow-smugglers before justice could complete her processes.
These rescuers were in their turn arrested on other charges, and brought to trial at Rochester Assizes, with other malefactors, in March 1750. They were four notorious smugglers, Stephen Diprose, James Bartlett, Thomas Potter, and William Priggs, who were all executed on Penenden Heath, on March 30th.
Bartlett, pressed to declare, after sentence, if he had been concerned in any murders, particularly in that of Mr. Castle, an excise officer who had been shot on Selhurst Common by a gang of smugglers, would not give a positive answer, and it was therefore supposed he was concerned in it.
Potter described some of the doings of the gang, and told how, fully armed, they would roam the country districts at night, disguised, with blackened faces, and appear at lonely houses, where they would seize and bind thepeople they found, and then proceed to plunder at their leisure.
In the short interval that in those days was allowed between sentence and execution Potter was very communicative, and disclosed a long career of crime; but he declared that murder had never been committed by him. He had, it was true, proposed to murder the turnkey at Newgate at the time when he and his companions rescued their friends languishing in that doleful hold: but it had not, after all, been found necessary.
This, it will be conceded, was sufficiently frank and open. The official account of that rescue was that Thomas Potter and three other smugglers came into the press-yard at Newgate to visit two prisoners, Thomas Kemp and William Grey, also of the Hawkhurst Gang, when they agreed at all hazards to assist in getting them out. Accordingly the time was fixed (Kemp having no irons, and Grey having his so managed as to be able to let them fall off when he pleased), and Potter and the other three went again to the press-yard and rang the bell for the turnkey to come and let them in. When he came and unlocked the door Potter immediately knocked him down with a horse-pistol, and cut him terribly; and Kemp and Grey made their escape, while Potter and his companions got clear away without being discovered. Three other prisoners at the same time broke loose, but were immediately recaptured, having irons on.
All these men were, in fact, originally smugglers, and had, from being marked down as criminals for that offence, and from being “wanted” by the law, found themselves obliged to keep in hiding from their homes. In default of being able to take part in other runs of smuggled goods, and finding themselves unable to get employment, they were driven to other, and more serious, crimes.
On April 4th of the same year four other members of the terrible Hawkhurst Gang—Kingsmill, Fairall, Perrin, and Glover by name—were together brought to trial at the Old Bailey, charged with being concerned in the Poole affair, the breaking open of the custom-house, and the stealing of goods therefrom. They had been betrayed to the Government by the same two ex-smugglers who had turned King’s evidence at the Chichester trial, and their evidence again secured a conviction. Glover, recommended by the jury to the royal mercy, was eventually pardoned; but the remaining three were hanged. Fairall behaved most insolently at the trial, and even threatened one of the witnesses. Glover displayed penitence; and Kingsmill and Perrin insisted that they had not been guilty of any robbery, because the goods they had taken were their own.
Kingsmill had been leader in the ferocious attack on Goudhurst in April 1747, and was an extremely dangerous ruffian, ready for any extremity.
Fairall was proved to be a particularly desperate fellow. Two years earlier he had been apprehended, as a smuggler, in Sussex, and, being brought before Mr. Butler, a magistrate, at Lewes, was remitted by him for trial in London.
Brought under escort overnight to the New Prison in the Borough, Fairall found means to make a dash from the custody of his guards, and, leaping upon a horse that was standing in Blackman Street, rode away and escaped, within sight of numerous people.
Returning to the gang, who were reasonably surprised at his safe return from the jaws of death, he was filled with an unreasoning hatred of Mr. Butler, the justice who, in the ordinary course of his duty, had committed him. He proposed a complete and terrible revenge: firstly, by destroying all the deer in his park, and all his trees, which was readily agreed to by the gang; and then, since those measures were not extreme enough for them, the idea was discussed of setting fire to his house and burning him alive in it. Some of the conspirators, however, thought this too extreme a step, and they parted without coming to any decision. Fairall, Kingsmill, and others, however, determined not to be baulked, then each procured a brace of pistols, and waited for the magistrate, near his own park wall, to shoot him when he returned home that night from a journey to Horsham.
Fortunately for him, some accident kept him from returning, and the party of would-beassassins, tired of waiting, at last said to one another, “Damn him, he will not come home to-night! Let us be gone about our business.” They then dispersed, swearing they would watch for a month together, but they would have him; and that they would make an example of all who should dare to obstruct them.
Perrin’s body was directed to be given to his friends, instead of being hanged in chains, and he was pitying the misfortunes of his two companions, who were not only, like himself, to be hanged, but whose bodies were afterwards to be gibbeted, when Fairall said, “Weshall be hanging up in the sweet air whenyouare rotting in your grave.”
Fairall kept a bold front to the very last. The night before the execution, he smoked continually with his friends, until ordered by the warder to go to his cell; when he exclaimed, “Why in such a hurry? Cannot you let me stay a little longer with my friends? I shall not be able to drink with them to-morrow night.”
But perhaps there was more self-pity in those apparently careless words and in that indifferent demeanour than those thought who heard them.
Kingsmill was but twenty-eight years of age, and Fairall twenty-five, at the time of their execution, which took place at Tyburn on April 26th, 1749. Fairall’s body was hanged in chains on Horsenden Green, and that of Kingsmill on Goudhurst Gore, appropriately near the frighted village whose inhabitants he hadpromised the vengeance of himself and his reckless band.
When G. P. R. James wrote his romance, “The Smuggler,” about the middle of the nineteenth century, reminiscences of the smuggling age were yet fresh, and many an one who had passed his youth and middle age in the art was still in a hale and hearty eld, ready to tell wonderful stories of bygone years. James therefore heard at first hand all the ins and outs of this shy business; and although his story deals with the exploits of the Ransley Gang (whom he styles “Ramley”) of a much earlier period, the circumstances of smuggling, and the conditions prevailing in Kent and Sussex, remained much the same in the experiences of the elderly ex-smugglers he met. What he has to say is therefore of more than common value.
Scarcely any one of the maritime counties, he tells us, was without its gang of smugglers; for if France was not opposite, Holland was not far off; and if brandy was not the object, nor silk, nor wine, yet tea and cinnamon, and hollands, and various East India goods, were duly estimated by the British public, especially when they could be obtained without the payment of custom-house dues.
As there are land-sharks and water-sharks, so there were land-smugglers and water-smugglers. The latter brought the objects of their commerce either from foreign countries or from foreign vessels, and landed them on the coast—and abold, daring, reckless body of men they were; the former, in gangs, consisting frequently of many hundreds, generally well-mounted and armed, conveyed the commodities so landed into the interior and distributed them to others, who retailed them as occasion required. Nor were these gentry one whit less fearless, enterprising, and lawless than their brethren of the sea.
The ramifications of this vast and magnificent league extended themselves to almost every class of society. Each tradesman smuggled, or dealt in smuggled goods; each public-house was supported by smugglers, and gave them in return every facility possible; each country gentleman on the coast dabbled a little in the interesting traffic; almost every magistrate shared in the proceeds, or partook of the commodities. Scarcely a house but had its place of concealment, which would accommodate either kegs or bales, or human beings, as the case might be; and many streets in seaport towns had private passages from one house to another, so that the gentleman inquired for by the officers at No. 1 was often walking quietly out of No. 20, while they were searching for him in vain. The back of one street had always excellent means of communication with the front of another, and the gardens gave exit to the country with as little delay as possible.
Of all counties, however, the most favoured by nature and art for the very pleasant and exciting sport of smuggling was the county ofKent. Its geographical position, its local features, its variety of coast, all afforded it the greatest advantages, and the daring character of the natives on the shores of the Channel was sure to turn those advantages to the purposes in question. Sussex, indeed, was not without its share of facilities, nor did the Sussex men fail to improve them; but they were so much farther off from the opposite coast that the chief commerce—the regular trade—was not in any degree at Hastings, Rye, or Winchelsea to be compared with that carried on from the North Foreland to Romney Hoy. At one time the fine level of the Marsh, a dark night, and a fair wind, afforded a delightful opportunity for landing a cargo and carrying it rapidly into the interior; at another, Sandwich Flats and Pevensey Bay presented harbours of refuge and places of repose for kegs innumerable and bales of great value; at another, the cliffs round Folkestone and near the South Foreland saw spirits travelling up by paths which seemed inaccessible to mortal foot; and at another, the wild and broken ground at the back of Sandgate was traversed by long trains of horses, escorting or carrying every description of contraband articles.
The interior of the county was not less favourable to the traffic than the coast: large masses of wood, numerous gentlemen’s parks, hills and dales tossed about in wild confusion; roads such as nothing but horses could travel, or men on foot, often constructed with felledtrees or broad stones laid side by side; wide tracts of ground, partly copse and partly moor, called in that county “minnises,” and a long extent of the Weald of Kent, through which no highway existed, and where such a thing as coach or carriage was never seen, offered the land-smugglers opportunities of carrying on their transactions with a degree of secrecy and safety no other county afforded. Their numbers, too, were so great, their boldness and violence so notorious, their powers of injuring or annoying so various, that even those who took no part in their operations were glad to connive at their proceedings, and at times to aid in concealing their persons or their goods. Not a park, not a wood, not a barn, that did not at some period afford them a refuge when pursued, or become a depository for their commodities, and many a man, on visiting his stables or his cart-shed early in the morning, found it tenanted by anything but horses or wagons. The churchyards were frequently crowded at night by other spirits than those of the dead, and not even the church was exempted from such visitations.
None of the people of the county took notice of, or opposed these proceedings. The peasantry laughed at, or aided, and very often got a good day’s work, or, at all events, a jug of genuine hollands, from the friendly smugglers; the clerk and the sexton willingly aided and abetted, and opened the door of vault, or vestry, or church for the reception of the passing goods; the clergymanshut his eyes if he saw tubs or jars in his way; and it is remarkable what good brandy-punch was generally to be found at the house of the village pastor. The magistrates of the county, when called upon to aid in pursuit of the smugglers, looked grave and swore in constables very slowly, dispatched servants on horseback to see what was going on, and ordered the steward or the butler to “send the sheep to the wood”: an intimation not lost upon those for whom it was intended. The magistrates and officers of seaport towns were in general so deeply implicated in the trade themselves that smuggling had a fairer chance than the law, in any case that came before them; and never was a more hopeless enterprise undertaken, in ordinary circumstances, than that of convicting a smuggler, unless capturedin flagrante delicto.
“For our Parson”
Outrage at Hastings by the Ruxley Gang—Battle on the Whitstable-Canterbury Road—Church-Towers as Smugglers’ Cellars—The Drummer of Herstmonceux—Epitaph at Tandridge—Deplorable Affair at Hastings—The Incident of “The Four Brothers”
Sussexwas again the scene of a barbarous incident, in 1768; and on this occasion seafaring men were the malefactors.
It is still an article of faith with the writers of guide-books who do not make their own inquiries, and thus perpetuate obsolete things, that to call a Hastings fisherman a “Chop-back” will rouse him to fury. But when a modern visitor, primed with such romance as this, timidly approaches one of these broad-shouldered and amply-paunched fisherfolk and suggests “Chop-backs” as a subject of inquiry, I give you my word they only look upon you with a puzzled expression, and don’t understand in the least your meaning.
But in an earlier generation this was a term of great offence to the Hastingers. It arose, according to tradition, from the supposed descentof these fisherfolk from the Norse rovers who used the axe, and cleaved their enemies with them from skull to chine. But the true facts of the case are laid to the account of some of the notorious Ruxley Gang, who in 1768 boarded a Dutch hoy, theThree Sisters, in mid-channel, on pretence of trading, and chopped the master, Peter Bootes, down the back with a hatchet. This horrid deed might never have come to light had not these ruffians betrayed themselves by bragging to one another of their cleverness, and dwelling upon the way in which the Dutchman wriggled when they had slashed him on the backbone.
The Chop-Backs
The Government in November of that year sent a detachment of two hundred Inniskilling Dragoons to Hastings, to arrest the men implicated, and a man-o’-war and cutter lay off shore to receive them when they had been taken prisoners. The soldiers had strict orders to keep their mission secret, but the day after their arrival they were called out to arrest rioters who had violently assaulted the Mayor, whom they suspected of laying information against the murderers. The secret of the reason for the soldiers’ coming had evidently in some manner leaked out. Several arrests of rioters were made, and the men implicated in the outrage on the Dutch boat were duly taken into custody.
The whole affair was so closely interwoven with smuggling that it was by many suspected that the men who had been seized were held for that offence as well; and persons in the higherwalks of the smuggling business, namely, those who financed it, and those others who largely purchased the goods, grew seriously alarmed for their own liberty. In the panic that thus laid hold of the town a well-to-do shopkeeper absconded altogether.
Thirteen men were indicted in the Admiralty Court on October 30th, 1769, for piracy and murder on the high seas; namely, Thomas Phillips, elder and younger, William and George Phillips, Mark Chatfield, Robert Webb, Thomas and Samuel Ailsbury, James and Richard Hyde, William Geary,aliasJustice,aliasGeorge Wood, Thomas Knight, and William Wenham, and were capitally convicted. Of these, four, Thomas Ailsbury, William Geary, William Wenham, and Richard Hyde, were hanged at Execution Dock, November 27th.
The next most outstanding incident, a bloody affray which occurred on February 26th, 1780, belongs to Kent.
As Mr. Joseph Nicholson, supervisor of excise, was removing to Canterbury a large seizure of geneva he had made at Whitstable, a numerous body of smugglers followed him and his escort of a corporal and eight troopers of the 4th Dragoons. Fifty of the smugglers had firearms, and, coming up with the escort, opened fire without warning or demanding their goods. Two Dragoons were killed on the spot, and two others dangerously wounded. The smugglers then loaded up the goods and disappeared. A reward of £100 was atonce offered by the Commissioners of Excise, with a pardon, for informers; and Lieutenant-Colonel Hugonin, of the 4th Dragoons, offered another £50. John Knight, of Whitstable, was shortly afterwards arrested, on information received, and was tried and convicted at Maidstone Assizes. He was hanged on Penenden Heath and his body afterwards gibbeted on Borstal Hill, the spot where the attack had been made.
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 ancientbuilding 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.”
The Drummer of Herstmonceux
“Can’t, fellow?” angrily responded the vicar; “what do you mean by ‘can’t’?”
“Well, then, sir,” said the sexton, “if you must know, the church is full of tubs, and the pulpit’s full of tea.”
An especially impudent smuggling incident was reported from Hove on Sunday, October 16th, 1819, in the following words:
“A suspected smuggling boat being seen off Hove by some of the custom-house officers, they, with two of the crew of theHoundrevenue cutter, gave chase in a galley. On coming up with the boat their suspicions were confirmed, and they at once boarded her; but while intent on securing their prize, nine of the smugglers leapt into theHound’sgalley and escaped. Landing at Hove, seven of them got away at once, two being taken prisoners by some officers who were waiting for them. Upon this a large company of smugglers assembled, at once commenced a desperate attack upon the officers, and, having overpowered them, assaulted them with stones and large sticks, knocked them down, and cut the belts of the chief officer’s arms, which they took away, and thereby enabled the two prisoners to escape.”
A reward of £200 was offered, but without result. The cargo of the smugglers consisted of 225 tubs of gin, 52 tubs of brandy, and one bag of tobacco.