The Gentleman's Magazine (Volume 282) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SMUGGLING IN SUSSEX. IN no county of England, and perhaps in no country of the world, did the art of smuggling flourish to such an extent as it did in old-time Sussex. During the latter half of the sixteenth and the early part and middle of the seventeenth centuries the gangs of smugglers became so formidable that they even carried on their evil practices in the broad light of day, and rode about the country armed to the teeth, and with the boldness of a band of Scottish marauders about to descend on the castle of some northern English nobleman who lived on this side of the border. But even the atrocities of some of the Scottish rovers of old pale before the stonyhearted deeds of many of the Sussex smuggling gangs, and the parallel of some of their acts of atrocity is perhaps only to be found in the bloody pages of the " Newgate Calendar," or the early history of the North American Indian tribes. The most formidable and feared of these Sussex bands of smugglers was the body of desperadoes known as " The Hawkhurst Gang." At the time this gang existed (1748), Hawkhurst, in Kent, was a mere village; it is now a slowly growing town. The members of the Hawkhurst band of smugglers were, with one or two exceptions, Sussex men?fishermen, labourers, shepherds, farm-hands, and the like. More than one of the most desperate among these contrabandists were men who held a respectable position in life until circumstances or their own inclinations led them to adopt smuggling as their main pursuit. The quaint and historical town of Rye was a hotbed of ruffianism about the middle of last century. Large bodies of contrabandists rode fearlessly through the streets. On August 14, 1747, a band of twenty of these desperadoes, well armed and mounted, rode to the " Red Lion " inn in that town. T...