Sussex Archaeological Collections Relating to the History and Antiquities of the County (Volume 30)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1858 edition. Excerpt: ...year's tryall, &c. December, 1703. Hen. Baker. The new force was utterly inadequate to the suppression of the trade. In the next forty-five years the daring of the smugglers grew with the impunity with which they were enabled to act. Large gangs, of twenty, forty, fifty, and even one hundred, rode, armed with guns, bludgeons, and clubs, throughout the country, setting every one at defiance, and awing all the quiet inhabitants. They established warehouses and vaults in many districts, for the reception of their goods, and built large houses at Seacock's Heath in Etchingham (built by the well-known smuggler Arthur Gray, and called Gray's Folly), at Pix Hall and the Four Throws Hawkhurst,1 at Goudhurst, and elsewhere, with the profits of their trade. 1 Ex inf. Miss Ann Purrant, jet. 89, 1858. We have in the Treasury Papers' many particulars of the daring and desperate acts of these companies or gangs of men in both parts of Sussex, during the first half of the last century, principally in the smuggling of tea. In an engagement between the custom-house officers and upwards of sixty armed men, at Ferring, on June 21, 1720, William Gouldsmith, the custom-house officer, had his horse shot under him.2 In June, 1733, the officers of the customs at Newhaven attempted to seize ten horses laden with tea, at Cuckmere; but they were opposed by about thirty men, armed with pistols and blunderbusses, who fired on the officers, took them prisoners, and confined them whilst the goods were carried off.3 In August of the same year the riding officers observed upwards of twenty smugglers at Greenhay, most of them on horseback, armed with clubs, and their horses laden with tea, which the officers endeavoured to seize, but the smugglers fell...