nd one
trooper to Arundel Castle prisoner, and one of Capt. Evernden's Dragoons
to heaven." A few years later, as we have seen, Charles II. ran a grave
risk at Bramber while on his way to Brighton and safety.

[Sidenote: A POCKET BOROUGH]

Bramber was, for many years, a pocket borough of the worst type. George
Spencer, writing to Algernon Sidney after the Bramber election in 1679,
says:--"You would have laughed to see how pleased I seemed to be in
kissing of old women; and drinking wine with handfuls of sugar, and
great glasses of burnt brandy; three things much against the stomach."
In 1768, eighteen votes were polled for one candidate and sixteen for
his rival. One of the tenants, in a cottage valued at about three
shillings a week, refused _L_1000 for his vote. Bramber remained a pocket
borough until the Reform Bill. William Wilberforce, the abolitionist,
sat for it for some years; there is a story that on passing one day
through the village he stopped his carriage to inquire the name.
"Bramber? Why, that's the place I'm Member for."

Bramber possesses a humorist in taxidermy, whose efforts win more
attention than the castle. They are to be seen in a small museum in its
single street, the price of admission being for children one penny, for
adults twopence, and for ladies and gentlemen "what they please"
(indicating that the naturalist also knows human nature). In one case,
guinea-pigs strive in cricket's manly toil; in another, rats read the
paper and play dominoes; in a third, rabbits learn their lessons in
school; in a fourth, the last scene in the tragedy of the _Babes of the
Wood_ is represented, Bramber Castle in the distance strictly
localising the event, although Norfolk usually claims it.

Isolated in the fields south of Bramber are two of the quaintest
churches in the county--Coombes and Botolphs. Neither has an attendant
village.

[Illustration: _Coombes Church._]

[Sidenote: JOSEPH POORGRASS IN FACT]

The owl story, which crops up all over the country and is found in
literature in Mr. Hardy's novel _Far from the Madding Crowd_, the scene
whereof is a hundred miles west of Sussex, has a home also at Upper
Beeding, the little dusty village beyond Bramber across the river. Mr.
Hardy gives the adventure to Joseph Poorgrass; at Beeding, the hero is
one Kiddy Wee. His rightful name was Kidd; but being very small the
village had invented this double diminutive. Lost in the wood he cried
for help, just a