<h2><SPAN name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></SPAN>CHAPTER III</h2>
<h3>FIRST SIGHT OF THE DOWNS</h3>
<blockquote><p>The Sussex hills—Gilbert White's praise—Britons, Romans,
Saxons—Charles the Second's ride through Sussex.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Between Midhurst and Chichester, our next centre, rise the Downs, to a
height of between seven hundred and eight hundred feet. Although we
shall often be crossing them again before we leave the county, I should
like to speak of them a little in this place.</p>
<p>The Downs are the symbol of Sussex. The sea, the Weald, the heather
hills of her great forest district, she shares with other counties, but
the Downs are her own. Wiltshire, Berkshire, Kent and Hampshire, it is
true, have also their turf-covered chalk hills, but the Sussex Downs are
vaster, more remarkable, and more beautiful than these, with more
individuality and charm. At first they have been known to disappoint the
traveller, but one has only to live among them or near them, within the
influence of their varying moods, and they surely conquer. They are the
smoothest things in England, gigantic, rotund, easy; the eye rests upon
their gentle contours and is at peace. They have no sublimity, no
grandeur, only the most spacious repose. Perhaps it is due to this
quality that the Wealden folk, accustomed to be overshadowed by this
unruffled range, are so deliberate in their mental processes and so
averse from speculation or experiment. There is a hypnotism of form: a
rugged peak will alarm the mind where a billowy green undulation will
lull it. The Downs change their complexion, but are never<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_24" id="Page_24"></SPAN></span> other than
soothing and still: no stress of weather produces in them any of that
sense of fatality that one is conscious of in Westmoreland.
Thunder-clouds empurple the turf and blacken the hangers, but they
cannot break the imperturbable equanimity of the line; rain throws over
the range a gauze veil of added softness; a mist makes them more
wonderful, unreal, romantic; snow brings them to one's doors. At sunrise
they are magical, a background for Malory; at sunset they are the lovely
home of the serenest thoughts, a spectacle for Marcus Aurelius. Their
combes, or hollows, are then filled with purple shadow cast by the
sinking sun, while the summits and shoulders are gold.</p>
<div class="sidenote">GILBERT WHITE IN SUSSEX</div>
<p>Gilbert White has an often-quoted passage on these hills:—"Though I
have now travelled the Sussex downs upwards of thirty years, yet I still
investigate that chain of majestic mountains with fresh admiration year
by year, and I think I see new beauties every time I traverse it. This
range, which runs from Chichester eastward as far as East Bourn, is
about sixty miles in length, and is called the South Downs, properly
speaking, only round Lewes. As you pass along you command a noble view
of the wild, or weald, on one hand, and the broad downs and sea on the
other. Mr. Ray used to visit a family [Mr. Courthope, of Danny] just at
the foot of these hills, and was so ravished with the prospect from
Plumpton Plain, near Lewes, that he mentions those scapes in his <i>Wisdom
of God in the Works of the Creation</i> with the utmost satisfaction, and
thinks them equal to anything he had seen in the finest parts of Europe.
For my own part, I think there is somewhat peculiarly sweet and amusing
in the shapely-figured aspect of the chalk hills in preference to those
of stone, which are rugged, broken, abrupt, and shapeless. Perhaps I may
be singular in my opinion, and not so happy as to convey to you the same
idea; but I never contemplate these mountains without thinking I
perceive somewhat analogous to growth in their gentle swellings and
smooth fungus-like protuberances, their fluted<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_25" id="Page_25"></SPAN></span> sides, and regular
hollows and slopes, that carry at once the air of vegetative dilatation
and expansion:—Or, was there even a time when these immense masses of
calcareous matter were thrown into fermentation by some adventitious
moisture, were raised and leavened into such shapes by some plastic
power; and so made to swell and heave their broad backs into the sky, so
much above the less animated clay of the wild below?"</p>
<p>The Downs have a human and historic as well as scenic interest. On many
of their highest points are the barrows or graves of our British
ancestors, who, could they revisit the glimpses of the moon, would find
little change, for these hills have been less interfered with than any
district within twice the distance from London. The English dislike of
climbing has saved them. They will probably be the last stronghold of
the horse when petrol has ousted him from every other region.</p>
<div class="sidenote">ROMAN AND SAXON</div>
<p>After the Briton came the Roman, to whose orderly military mind such a
chain of hills seemed a series of heaven-sent earthworks. Every point in
a favourable position was at once fortified by the legionaries. Standing
upon these ramparts to-day, identical in general configuration in spite
of the intervening centuries, one may imagine one's self a Cæsarian
soldier and see in fancy the hinds below running for safety.</p>
<p>After the Romans came the Saxons, who did not, however, use the heights
as their predecessors had. Yet they left even more intimate traces, for,
as I shall show in a later chapter on <SPAN href="#CHAPTER_XLI">Sussex dialect</SPAN>, the language of
the Sussex labourer is still largely theirs, the farms themselves often
follow their original Saxon disposition, the field names are unaltered,
and the character of the people is of the yellow-haired parent stock.
Sussex, in many respects, is still Saxon. In a poem by Mr. W. G. Hole is
a stanza which no one that knows Sussex can read without visualising
instantly a Sussex hill-side farm:—</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<div>The Saxon lies, too, in his grave where the plough-lands swell;</div>
<div class="i2">And he feels with the joy that is Earth's</div>
<div class="i2">The Spring with its myriad births;</div>
<div class="i2"><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_26" id="Page_26"></SPAN></span>And he scents as the evening falls</div>
<div class="i2">The rich deep breath of the stalls;</div>
<div>And he says, "Still the seasons bring increase and joy to the world—It is well!"</div>
</div></div>
<div class="sidenote">THE ESCAPE OF CHARLES II.</div>
<p>Standing on one of these hills above the Hartings one may remember an
event in English history of more recent date than any of the periods
that we have been recalling—the escape of Charles II in 1651. It was
over these Downs that he passed; and it has been suggested that a
traveller wishing for a picturesque route across the Downs might do well
to follow his course.</p>
<p>According to the best accounts Charles was met, on the evening of
October 13, near Hambledon, in Hampshire (afterwards to be famous as the
cradle of first-class cricket), by Thomas and George Gunter of Racton,
with a leash of greyhounds as if for coursing. The King slept at the
house of Thomas Symonds, Gunter's brother-in-law, in the character of a
Roundhead. The next morning at daybreak, the King, Lord Wilmot and the
two Gunters crossed Broad Halfpenny Down (celebrated by Nyren), and
proceeding by way of Catherington Down, Charlton Down, and Ibsworth
Down, reached Compting Down in Sussex. At Stanstead House Thomas Gunter
left the King, and hurried on to Brighton to arrange for the crossing to
France. The others rode on by way of the hills, with a descent from
Duncton Beacon, until they reached what promised to be the security of
Houghton Forest. There they were panic-stricken nearly to meet Captain
Morley, governor of Arundel Castle, and therefore by no means a King's
man. The King, on being told who it was, replied merrily, "I did not
much like his starched mouchates." This peril avoided, they descended to
Houghton village, where the Arun was crossed, and so to Amberley, where
in Sir John Briscoe's castle the King slept.<SPAN name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</SPAN></p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_27" id="Page_27"></SPAN></span></p>
<div class="sidenote">ROUNDHEADS OUTWITTED</div>
<p>On Amberley Mount the King's horse cast a shoe, necessitating a drop to
one of the Burphams, at Lee Farm, to have the mishap put right.
Ascending the hills again the fugitives held the high track as far as
Steyning. At Bramber they survived a second meeting with Cromwellians,
three or four soldiers of Col. Herbert Morley of Glynde suddenly
appearing, but being satisfied merely to insult them. At Beeding, George
Gunter rode on by way of the lower road to Brighton, while the King and
Lord Wilmot climbed the hill at Horton, crossing by way of White Lot to
Southwick, where, according to one story, in a cottage at the west of
the Green was a hiding-hole in which the King lay until Captain Nicholas
Tattersall of Brighton was ready to embark him for Fécamp. George
Gunter's own story is, however, that the King rode direct to Brighton.
He reached Fécamp on October 16. Two hours after Gunter left Brighton,
"soldiers came thither to search for a tall black man, six feet four
inches high"—to wit, the Merry Monarch.</p>
<p>Such is the bare narrative of Charles' Sussex ride. If the reader would
have it garnished and spiced he should turn to the pages of Ainsworth's
<i>Ovingdean Grange</i>, where much that never happened is set forth as
entertainingly (or so I thought when I read it as a boy) as if it were truth.</p>
<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTE:</h3>
<div class="footnote"><p><SPAN name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></SPAN> That is the story as the Amberley people like to have it,
but another version makes him ride from Hambledon to Brighton in one
day; in which case he may have avoided Amberley altogether.</p>
</div>
</div>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_28" id="Page_28"></SPAN></span></p>
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