e making of
mortar and cement! In several places here the cement has endured
through all these hundreds of years, while even the outer stones have
crumbled away. At other points, too, the actual marks of the masons'
tools are visible in the ancient mortar.

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[Illustration: PEVENSEY CASTLE FROM THE MEADOWS]

Through centuries of serviceable isolation it has seen real life as a
castle--withstood sieges, beaten off marauding foes, and taken sides in
internal strife.

(_See page 23_)

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At the eastern end of the enclosure is the castle itself, with a
reed-grown moat on the northern and western sides. Most of this ruin
dates back only to the time of Edward the First, for the original
Norman fabric suffered too many sieges to endure in any completeness.
One of the great towers flanking the main gateway still stands, but the
other, like the drawbridge, has long since disappeared; three others
project from the wall at various intervals. Inside, very little
remains. Fragmentary ruins reveal the original site of the keep: the
extent of the chapel may be traced on the sward. But, for all the
scarcity of definite relics, the place is one to linger in and conjure
up the past, when these grass-grown spaces were instinct with a
hurrying life, when the meadows where now the cattle browse were filled
with anxious faces and beating hearts.

Pevensey can own to one famous son at least, Andrew Borde, a man of
many parts. Carthusian monk, physician to Henry the Eighth,
litterateur, poor Borde died a prisoner in the Fleet Prison in 1549.
He was one of those unfortunates who seem never to do or say the right
thing at the right time. Born at the vicarage early in the sixteenth
century, he developed a turn for jesting, and it proved his undoing,
for bishops and kings had not his lively wit, and failed lamentably to
appreciate what was at once his gift and his failing. To his ready pen
have been ascribed the immortal epic "Tom Thumb", and the oft-told
"Merry Tales of the Wise Men of Gotham"--the latter collected and put
into literary form from the oral traditions of the country-side.

Just up under the eastern wall of the castle is the so-called Mint
House, where Borde is reputed to have spent many of his days. It was
an interesting old place, with its panelled walls and numerous
passage