It was here that William Rufus landed in 1097 after one of his periodical visits to his Duchy. And to Littlehampton came some of the prisoners from Crecy, brought hither across seas by Richard FitzAlan, the 13th Earl of Arundel, in 1347. He was wise to bring them if the story is true that their “ransoms were of so great a summe that they served to paye for the building of the Great Hall at Arundell,” and other additions. Another Richard FitzAlan (his grandson), in the reign of Henry IV, brought no less than eighty French ships captured in the Channel, and laden with 20,000 tuns of wine, into the port; which Froissart averred made it possible to purchase in London the best wine for fourpence a gallon! And at Littlehampton? Well, small wonder that “men and wenches were merry, and had full stomachs and light hearts for many a day thereafter.” Many other strange things and important personages throughout the centuries were landed at this little Sussex port, amongst them “a great wale,” and Philip Howard, who, after having been taken on the high seas, was brought to Littlehampton, and conveyed thence to London, the Tower, and the scaffold. Its trade in the Middle Ages would appear from contemporary accounts of its houses, buildings and population, and maps to have been much larger than the size of the place would lead one to presume. In 1672, however, it had only its church, manor house, and fourteen other dwelling houses, and a few warehouses. But during the succeeding hundred years several attempts were made to improve the harbour, and the depth of water over the bar, and from the _Grub Street Journal_ of January 1, 1736, a copy of which, framed and glazed, is now in the possession of one of the inhabitants, we learn “The new Harbour at Littlehampton in Sussex was opened on Monday, and there was 7 feet of water at half spring tide, and 9 feet when the tide was highest, and in all likelihood it will prove the best harbour on that coast.” But these high hopes were destined to be unrealized, and Littlehampton has made practically no progress as a port during the last hundred years, though its popularity as a pleasant and pretty holiday resort is ever increasing. It was to the Earl of Surrey in 1790 that the town owed its start as a health resort, and after Surrey House was built other fashionable folk resorted hither. There is still a certain amount of shipbuilding done; but we have never of late years seen any vessel on the stocks approaching in size the craft of 900 tons which were formerly launched. And we fancy the industry--perhaps because of the greater use of steam--is a declining if not a dying one.