Page:VCH Sussex 1.djvu/613

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POLITICAL HISTORY the townspeople, who refused to serve in the ranks, so that the whole burden of the defence fell upon the fifty or sixty officers and gentry. Besides the leaders already mentioned there were taken the Bishop of Chichester, Thomas May, member for Midhurst, forty of Lord Crawford's troop of horse, and the recorder of Chichester, Christopher Lewknore. The interpretation of the terms of surrender caused some bitterness, as it was alleged that Waller had undertaken that the officers should go out of the town on horseback with their swords, and the common soldiers on foot, leaving their arms and colours undefaced; but he seized the officers as prisoners and robbed them,' stripping them of everything except the clothes upon their backs/ Great injury was done to Chichester by the destruction of the suburbs for the better defence of the city and in the attack,^ and also by the victorious troops, who, under Sir Arthur Haselrig, wrought havoc in the cathedral, breaking the organs, defacing the monuments and plundering the treasury. In order to save the city from being plundered Waller demanded from the more wealthy inhabitants a quantity of plate, which with ^^900 worth of plate belonging to the Earl of Thanet, and as much more which the committee had sent to Portsmouth, was distributed amongst the soldiers as ' a month's donative.'* During the early part of 1643 little happened in Sussex; in June orders were issued for the raising of a hundred horse in this county and Surrey for the use of the parliament, and recruiting evidently went on in the villages, as we hear of a riot at West Hoathly fair when Ancient Streater was beating for volunteers and was assaulted and the head of his drum knocked in.^ Nor were the Royalists idle, for in August one Thomas Cotton, ' a dangerous papist,' was brought before Sir Thomas Pelham and other justices and found in possession of a warrant from Sir Edward Ford, the sheriff and now a captain of horse under Lord Hopton, authorizing him to seek contributions of horses, arms, plate or money for his majesty's service." In September Colonel Herbert Morley, the most prominent Sussex parliamentarian, wrote to Lenthall of the danger that Southampton might fall, and that ' this may raise a storm in Sussex, which county is full of neuters and malignants, and I have ever observed neuters to turn malignants on such occasions.' At the end of 1643 Lord Hopton was in command of a strong force of cavalry on the western borders of Sussex, and on 23 November a detachment of his horse belonging to Lord Crawford's regiment rode into South Harting and took up their quarters there. The same night 400 of Colonel Norton's parliamentarian dragoons also rode into the same village and made a fair bid to capture the whole force of their enemies; but the six Royalist officers, who were quartered in Sir John Caryll's house, Harting Place, slipping round to the rear of Norton's 1 Portland MSS. (Hist. MSS. Com.), i. 84. ' Ho. of Lords' MSS. (Hist. MSS. Com.), Rep. vii. 444. ' Ibid. p. 2.

  • Cal. S.P. Dom. Chas. I. ccccxcvii. 99.

6 Portland MSS. (Hist. MSS. Com.), i. 709. « Ibid. p. 126. 523