alling Hill on the east and Offham Hill on
the west: both taking their names from two of the quaint little hamlets
by which Lewes is surrounded. It was at Mailing Deanery that the
assassins of Thomas a Becket sought shelter on their flight from
Canterbury. The legend records how, when they laid their armour on the
Deanery table, that noble piece of furniture rose and flung the accursed
accoutrements to the ground.

On Malling Hill is the residence of a Lewes lady whose charitable
impulses have taken a direction not common among those who suffer for
others. She receives into her stable old and overworked horses, thus
ensuring for them a sleek and peaceful dotage enlivened by sugar and
carrots, and marked by the kindest consideration. The pyramidal grave
(as of a Saxon chief) of one of these dependants may be seen from the
road.

[Illustration: _On the Ouse above Lewes._]

CHAPTER XXVI

LEWES

The Museum of Sussex--The riches of Lewes--Her leisure and
antiquity--A plea from _Idlehurst_--Old Lewes disabilities--The
Norman Conquest--Lewes Castle--Sussex curiosities--Lewes among her
hills--The Battle of Lewes--The Cluniac Priory--Repellers of the
French--A comprehender of Earthquakes--The author of _The Rights of
Man_--A game of bowls--"Clio" Rickman and Thomas Tipper--Famous
Lewes men--The Fifth of November--The Sussex martyrs.

Apart from the circumstance that the curiosities collected by the
county's Archaeological Society are preserved in the castle, Lewes is the
museum of Sussex; for she has managed to compress into small compass
more objects of antiquarian interest than any town I know. Chichester,
which is compact enough, sprawls by comparison.

The traveller arriving by train no sooner alights from his carriage than
he is on the site of the kitchens of the Cluniac Priory of St. Pancras,
some of the walls of which almost scrape the train on its way to
Brighton. That a priory eight hundred years old must be disturbed before
a railway station can be built is a melancholy circumstance; but in the
present case the vandalism had its compensation in the discovery by the
excavating navvies of the coffins of William de Warenne and his wife
Gundrada (the Conqueror's daughter), the founders of the priory, which
otherwise would probably have been lost evermore.

The castle, which dominates the oldest part of the town, is but a few
minutes' stiff climb from the station; Lewes's