about two
miles to the east. But it is worth while to keep to the road a little
longer, and entering Gilly Wood (on the right) explore as wild and
beautiful a ravine as any in the county. And, on the Brede by-road, it
is worth while also to turn aside again in order to see Brede Place.
This house, like all the old mansions (it is of the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries), is set in a hollow, and is sufficiently gloomy in
appearance and surroundings to lend colour to the rumour that would have
it haunted--a rumour originally spread by the smugglers who for some
years made the house their headquarters. An underground passage is said
to lead from Brede Place to the church, a good part of a mile distant;
but as is usual with underground passages, the legend has been held so
dear that no one seems to have ventured upon the risk of disproving it.
Amid these medieval surroundings the late Stephen Crane, the American
writer, conceived some of his curiously modern stories.

One of the original owners (the Oxenbridges) like Col. Lunsford of East
Hoathly was credited by the country people with an appetite for
children. Nothing could compass his death but a wooden saw, with which
after a drunken bout the villagers severed him in Stubb's Lane, by
Groaning Bridge. Not all the family, however, were bloodthirsty, for at
least two John Oxenbridges of the sixteenth century were divines, one a
Canon of Windsor, the other a "grave and reverent preacher."

[Sidenote: DEAN SWIFT'S CRADLE]

The present vicar of Brede, the village on the hill above Brede Place,
has added to the natural antiquities of his church several alien
curiosities, chief among them being the cradle in which Dean Swift was
rocked. It is worth a visit to Brede church to be persuaded that that
matured Irishman ever was a baby.

[Illustration: _Brede Place, from the South._]

CHAPTER XXXIX

ROBERTSBRIDGE

Horace Walpole in difficulties--A bibliophile's
threat--Salehurst--Bodiam--Northiam--Queen Elizabeth's dinner and
shoes--Brightling--Jack Fuller--Turner in East Sussex--The Burwash
country--Sussex superstitions--_Sussex Folk and Sussex
Ways_--Liberals and Conservatives--The Sussex
character--Independent bellringers--"Silly Sussex"--Burwash at
Cricket--James Hurdis--A donkey race--"A hint to great and little
men"--Henry Burwash--Etchingham--Sir John Lade and the
Prince--Ticehurst and Wadhurst.

Robertsbridge is