fered to run in a wild state, they would in a very few years become
absolutely black. All these are the opinions of eminent breeders: in
order to reconcile them, others breed for speckled faces; and it is the
prevailing colour."

It is told that when the Duke of Newcastle used to pass through Glynde,
on his way from Halland House, near East Hoathly, to Bishopstone, the
peal of welcome was rung on ploughshares, since there was but one bell.

Ringmer, which lies about two miles north of Glynde, is not in itself a
village of much beauty. Its distinction is to have provided William Penn
with a wife--Gulielma Springett, daughter of Sir William Springett, a
Puritan, whose bust is in the church and who died at the siege of
Arundel Castle. The great Quaker thus took to wife the daughter of a
soldier. When Gulielma Penn died, at the age of fifty, her husband wrote
of her: "She was a Publick, as well as Private Loss; for she was not
only an excellent Wife and Mother, but an Entire and Constant Friend, of
a more than common Capacity, and greater Modesty and Humility; yet most
equal and undaunted in Danger. Religious as well as Ingenuous, without
Affectation. An easie Mistress, and Good Neighbour, especially to the
Poor. Neither lavish nor penurious, but an Example of Industry as well
as of other Vertues: Therefore our great Loss tho' her own Eternal
Gain."

[Sidenote: GODLY WIVES]

In Ringmer Church, I might add, is a monument to Mrs. Jeffray (_nee_
Mayney), wife of Francis Jeffray of South Malling, with another
beautiful testimony to the character of a good wife:--

Wise, modest, more than can be marshall'd heere,
(Her many vertues would a volume fill)
For all heaven's gifts--in many single sett--
In Jeffray's _Maney_ altogether mett.

[Sidenote: A DETERMINED CHURCHWOMAN]

Ringmer was long famous for its mud and bad roads. Defoe (or another)
says in the _Tour through Great Britain_:--"I travelled through the
dirtiest, but, in many respects, the richest and most profitable country
in all that part of England. The timber I saw here was prodigious, as
well in quantity as in bigness; and seemed in some places to be suffered
to grow only because it was so far from any navigation, that it was not
worth cutting down and carrying away. In dry summers, indeed, a great
deal is conveyed to Maidstone and other places on the Medway; and
sometimes I have seen one tree on a carriage, which they call in Sussex
a