of the
Shurleys (connected only by marriage with the Shirleys of Wiston). The
house can never have been so fine as Slaugham Place, but it is evident
that abundance also reigned here, as there. Over the main door was the
motto "Non minor est virtus quam querere parta tueri," which Horsfield
whimsically translates "Catch is a good dog, but Holdfast is a better."
In the Shurley chapel, one of the sweetest spots in Sussex, are brasses
and monuments to the family, notably the canopied altar tomb to Sir John
Shurley, who died in 1631, his two wives (Jane Shirley of Wiston and
Dorothy Bowyer, _nee_ Goring, of Cuckfield) and nine children, who kneel
prettily in a row at the foot. Of these children it is said in the
inscription that some "were called into Heaven and the others into
several marriages of good quality"; while of Dorothy Shurley it is
prettily recorded (this, as we have seen, being a district rich in
exemplary wives) that she had "a merite beyond most of her time, ...
her pitty was the clothing of the poore ... and all her minutes were but
steppes to heaven." Our county has many fine monuments, but I think
that, this is the most charming of all.

[Sidenote: FRAMFIELD]

At Framfield, two miles east of Uckfield, which we may take here, we
again enter the iron country, and for the first time see Sussex hops,
which are grown largely to the north and east of this neighbourhood.

[Illustration: _Framfield._]

[Sidenote: RICHARD REALF]

Framfield has a Tudor church and no particular interest. In 1792 eleven
out of fifteen persons in Framfield, whose united ages amounted to one
thousand and thirty-four years, offered, through the county paper, to
play a cricket match with an equal number of the same age from any part
of Sussex; but I do not find any record of the result. Nor can I find
that any one at Framfield is proud of the fact that here, in 1834, was
born Richard Realf, the orator and poet, son of Sussex peasants. In
England his name is scarcely known; and in America, where his work was
done, it is not common knowledge that he was by birth and parentage
English. Realf was the friend of man, liberty and John Brown; he fought
against slavery in the war, and helped the cause with some noble verses;
and he died miserably by his own hand in 1878, leaving these lines
beside his body:--

"De mortuis nil nisi bonum." When
For me this end has come and I am dead,
And the little voluble, chattering daw