After the revolution of 1688, the penalty of felony, imposed by the Act of Charles II., was thought too severe. Very few convictions had taken place under it; and, in 1698, a milder punishment was inflicted;[46] whilst, in 1698, a direct blow was aimed at the Kent and Sussex men by an enactment which lasted till our own day,[47] that no person living within fifteen miles of the sea, in those counties, should buy any wool before he entered into a bond, with sureties, that all the wool he should buy should not be sold by him to any persons within fifteen miles of the sea; and growers of wool within ten miles of the sea, in those counties, were obliged, within three days of shearing, to account for the number of fleeces, and where lodged. All the care of the Legislature had been to no purpose; the coast men had set the law at defiance--openly carrying their wool at shearing-time, on horses’ backs to the seashore, where French vessels were ready to receive it--and attacking fiercely anyone who ventured to interfere. Mr. W. Carter himself was sharply attacked in 1688. Having procured the necessary warrants, he repaired to Romney Marsh, where he seized eight or ten men, who were carrying the wool on the horses’ backs to be shipped, and desired the Mayor of Romney to commit them. The Mayor--wishing, no doubt, to live a peaceful life among his neighbours--admitted them to bail. Carter and his assistants retired to Lydd, but that town was made too hot to hold them--they were attacked at night; adopting the advice of the Mayor’s son, they next day, December 13, came towards Rye. They were pursued by some fifty armed horsemen till they got to Camber Point; so fast were they followed, that they could not get their horses over Guilford Ferry; but, luckily, some ships’ boats gave them assistance, so that the riders got safe into the town, which had been “put into much fear;” and “had they not got into the boats,” says one of the witnesses, “Mr. Carter would have received some hurt, for many of the exporters were desperate fellows, not caring what mischief they did.”[48] The new law was not, at first, much more efficient. Mr. Henry Baker, the supervisor of these counties, writing on his tour from Hastings, on September 18, 1698, refers the customs department to some observations he had made in relation to the “owling”[49] and smuggling trades; and in his letter of April 25, 1699, he states that in a few weeks there would be shorn in Romney Marsh (besides the adjacent parts in the level) about 160,000 sheep, whose fleeces would amount to about three thousand packs of wool, “the greatest part whereof will be immediately sent off hot into France--it being so designed, and provisions, in a great measure, already made for that purpose.”[50] All that the new law seems to have done at first was to send the wool grown by the Sussex and Kent men some fifteen miles up the country, to be thence recarried to the sea and shipped.