Shoreham has had the dubious honour in the past (to be accurate, in 1770) of having its returning officer for Parliamentary elections summoned to the Bar of the House to give an account of his misdeeds. It happened in this way. The Borough in those days sent two representatives to Parliament, and it occurred to a body of ingenious souls that these elections might be made the source of much profit to themselves, so they formed themselves into an organization called the Christian Club! It met at the inn for the reputed purpose of transacting charitable and other highly commendable business. The members were not summoned by the usual means of letters or verbal notice, but by the hoisting of a certain flag on the inn. The funds by which the members used to grant assistance to each other were the proceeds of “rigged” elections. In those days there were comparatively few electors, so that most were members of the Christian Society; but at last their real object was discovered. One of the defeated candidates lodged a petition, and it was then found that the Returning Officer had calmly secured the election of the gentleman who enjoyed (on the payment of an agreed and substantial sum) the good will of the Christian Society members, by the simple expedient of disallowing the votes recorded for his opponent. It is said that this revelation of corruption helped materially the passing of the great Reform Bill. However that may be, the Returning Officer was severely censured, the right of voting was extended to every forty-shilling holder in the Rape of Bramber; and as a punishment no less than eighty-five (or about three-fifths) of the Shoreham “free and independent” electors were disfranchised. It is New Shoreham that most people see, and that usually passes under the name of Shoreham. The old Shoreham, with its interesting and fine Norman church, is but a tiny place nowadays, famous chiefly for its wooden bridge over the Adur leading to the old smuggling inn known as the Old Sussex Pad, which was burned to the ground a few years ago, and was once the haunt and hiding place of the most notorious smugglers of the district, and literally honeycombed with secret chambers, “tub holes,” and recesses for the stowing away “of humans when there was a hue and cry, and smuggled goods.”