Many years ago, when I lived in Sussex, stories of the smugglers who formerly abounded along the coast were still told by those who had actually witnessed and, in some cases, taken part in their operations. Smuggling, as a matter of fact, hurting as it did no one but the Revenue, was not regarded with any particular horror, and the long trains of heavily loaded carts escorted by the smugglers were generally interfered with by no one except the Revenue officers and the coastguardsmen. One of the favourite haunts of the “Free Traders” was in Parham Park, and old Baroness de la Zouche used to say that, when she was a little girl, walking one day in the park with her governess, some smugglers had made her open a gate in order to facilitate the passage of a long train of pack-horses loaded with kegs, then on its way to a remote part of the park near the heronry. In Eridge Park, also, caves still exist where smugglers used to store their bales of goods. During the eighteenth century the house was not inhabited, and the surrounding park was practically a wilderness, so that these caves formed a most excellent and secure retreat. There runs beneath the present Eridge Castle a long passage, the entrance to which is far distant from the house, and as its existence has never been accounted for it is not improbable that smugglers may have had something to do with its construction; it is almost certain, at least, that they knew of it and kept it in repair. The officers of the Customs, who were called “riding officers,” though sometimes assisted by dragoons, could do but little against the smugglers, who sometimes indulged in very savage reprisals. The last occasion when life was lost in a smuggling affray was in 1838 at Camber Castle, but it was some time before that date that the last great party of smugglers passed through Petworth—sixty well-armed men, pistols in their belts and cutlasses by their sides. They escorted two carts and a number of horses loaded with tubs of brandy and hollands, whilst a few of them also had bales of silk slung across their backs. This picturesque procession—the funeral cortège, as it were, of smuggling—came into the old town on a Sunday morning, whilst the inhabitants were at church, and made its way through the streets in a very leisurely fashion, some of the smugglers even halting at the inns to have a drink, for it was in the days when licensing reform was as yet a thing of the future. The last of the smugglers were armed chiefly with “bats”—thick ash poles about six feet long. An old smuggler, Smithurst by name, killed in a fight at Bexhill in 1828, was found with his bat almost hacked to pieces but still grasped tightly in his hands.