he Merry Monarch never saw. The "Star" was once a sanctuary, within the
jurisdiction of the Abbot of Battle, for persons flying from justice;
and it is pleasant to sit in the large room upstairs, over the street,
and think of fugitives pattering up the valley, with fearful backward
glances, and hammering at the old door. One Birrel, in the reign of
Henry VIII., having stolen a horse at Lydd, in Kent, took refuge here.
The inn in those days was intended chiefly for the refreshment of
mendicant friars.

In 1767 the landlord was, according to a private letter, "as great a
curiosity as the house." I wish we had some information about him, for
the house is quaint and curious indeed, with its red lion sentinel at
the side (figure-head from a Dutch wreck in Cuckmere Haven), and its
carvings inside and out. The old and the new mingled very oddly when I
was lately at Alfriston. Hearing a familiar sound, as of a battledore
and a ball, in one of the rooms, I opened the door and discovered the
landlord and a groom from the racing stables near by in the throes of
the most modern of games, amid surroundings absolutely mediaeval.

[Sidenote: THE CATHEDRAL OF THE DOWNS]

The size of the grave and commanding church, which has been called the
cathedral of the South Downs, alone proves that Alfriston was once a
vastly more important place than it now is. Legend says that the
foundations were first cut in the meadow known as Savyne Croft. There
day after day the builders laid their stones, arriving each morning to
find them removed to the Tye, the field where the church now stands. At
last the meaning of the miracle entered their heads, and the church was
erected on the new site. Its shape was determined by the slumbers of
four oxen, who were observed by the architect to be sleeping in the form
of a cross. Poynings church, under the Dyke Hill, near Brighton, was
built, it has been conjectured, by the same architect. Within the
cathedral of the South Downs, which is a fourteenth century building, is
a superb east window, but it has no coloured glass. The register,
beginning with 1504, is perhaps the oldest in England. Hard by the
church is the simple little clergy house--unique in England, I
believe--dating from pre-Reformation times. It has lately been very
carefully restored.

Alfriston once had a scholar in the person of Thomas Chowne, of Frog
Firle, the old house on the road to Seaford, about a mile beyond the
village. Chowne, who d