“This (is) the seventh time Morten’s people have workt this winter, and have not lost any thing but one half hundred (of tea) they gave to a dragoon and one officer they met with the first of this winter; and the Hoo company have lost no goods, although they constantly work, and at home too, since they lost the seven hundredweight. When once the smuglers are drove from home they will soon be all taken. Note, that some say it was Gurr that fired first. You must well secure Cat, or else your Honours will soon lose the man; the best way will be to send for him up to London, for he knows the whole company, and hath been Morten’s servant two years. There were several young chaps with the smuglers, whom, when taken, will soon discover the whole company. The number was twenty-six men. Mark’s horse, Morten’s, and Hoad’s, were killed, and they lost not half their goods. They have sent for more goods, and twenty-nine horses set out from Groomsbridge this day, about four in the afternoon, and all the men well armed with long guns.... There are some smuglers worth a good sum of money, and they pay for taking.... The Hoo company might have been all ruined when they lost their goods; the officers and soldiers knew them all, but they were not prosecuted.... Morten and Boura sold, last winter, someways, 3,000 lb. weight a week.” In fact, the smugglers overawed most of the riding officers, and bribed many others, so that the peaceable inhabitants of the villages were completely at the mercy of these lawless bands. On June 13, 1744, the officers of the customs at Eastbourne, having intelligence of a gang of smugglers, went, with five dragoons mounted, to the seashore, near Pevensey; but one hundred smugglers rode up, and after disarming the officers, fired about forty shots at them, cut them with the swords in a dangerous manner, loaded the goods on above one hundred horses, and made towards London.[69] In “Seasonable Advice to all Smugglers of French Cambricks and French Lawns, with a brief State from the Honourable Commissioners of His Majesty’s Customs of Smuggling, in the year 1745,”[70] it is said that before the Committee of the House of Commons, which sat in 1745 to inquire into the causes of the most infamous practice of smuggling, it was in evidence:--“From Chichester it is represented that in January, 1745, nine smuggling cutters sailed from Rye, in that month, for Guernsey, in order to take in large quantities of goods, to be run on the coast; and they had intelligence that one of the cutters had landed her cargo.” The remedy suggested was the annexing the Isle of Man to the Crown of England, by purchase, and the employment of 2,060 sea officers and men, in sixty vessels, to be stationed on different parts of the coast.