The iron manufacture of Sussex reached its height towards the close of the reign of Elizabeth, when the trade became so prosperous that, instead of importing iron, England began to export it in considerable quantities, in the shape of iron ordnance. Sir Thomas Leighton and Sir Henry Neville had obtained patents from the queen, which enabled them to send their ordnance abroad, the consequence of which was that the Spaniards were found arming their ships and fighting us with guns of our own manufacture. Sir Walter Raleigh, calling attention to the subject in the House of Commons, said, "I am sure heretofore one ship of Her Majesty's was able to beat ten Spaniards, but now, by reason of our own ordnance, we are hardly matcht one to one." Proclamations were issued forbidding the export of iron and brass ordnance, and a bill was brought into Parliament to put a stop to the trade; but, not withstanding these prohibitions, the Sussex guns long continued to be smuggled out of the country in considerable numbers. "It is almost incredible," says Camden, "how many guns are made of the iron in this county. Count Gondomar (the Spanish ambassador) well knew their goodness when he so often begged of King James the boon to export them." Though the king refused his sanction, it appears that Sir Anthony Shirley of Weston, an extensive iron-master, succeeded in forwarding to the King of Spain a hundred pieces of cannon. So active were the Sussex manufacturers, and so brisk was the trade they carried on, that during the reign of James I. it is supposed one-half of the whole quantity of iron produced in England was made there. Simon Sturtevant, in his 'Treatise of Metallica,' published in 1612, estimates the whole number of iron-mills in England and Wales at 800, of which, he says, "there are foure hundred milnes in Surry, Kent, and Sussex, as the townsmen of Haslemere have testified and numbered unto me." But the townsmen of Haslemere must certainly have been exaggerating, unless they counted smiths' and farriers' shops in the number of iron-mills. About the same time that Sturtevant's treatise was published, there appeared a treatise entitled the 'Surveyor's Dialogue,' by one John Norden, the object of which was to make out a case against the iron-works and their being allowed to burn up the timber of the country for fuel. Yet Norden does not make the number of iron-works much more than a third of Sturtevant's estimate. He says, "I have heard that there are or lately were in Sussex neere 140 hammers and furnaces for iron, and in it and Surrey adjoining three or four glasse-houses." Even the smaller number stated by Norden, however, shows that Sussex was then regarded as the principal seat of the iron-trade. Camden vividly describes the noise and bustle of the manufacture--the working of the heavy hammers, which, "beating upon the iron, fill the neighbourhood round about, day and night, with continual