provided
with water-power for working the hammer; and some of the old buildings
are still standing, among others the boring-house, of small size, now
used as an ordinary labourer's cottage, where the guns were bored. The
machine was a mere upright drill worked by the water-wheel, which was
only eighteen inches across the breast. The property belonged, as it
still does, to the Ashburnham family, who are said to have derived
great wealth from the manufacture of guns at their works, which were
among the last carried on in Sussex. The Ashburnham iron was
distinguished for its toughness, and was said to be equal to the best
Spanish or Swedish iron.

Many new men also became enriched, and founded county families; the
Fuller family frankly avowing their origin in the singular motto of
Carbone et forcipibus--literally, by charcoal and tongs.[10]

Men then went into Sussex to push their fortunes at the forges, as they
now do in Wales or Staffordshire; and they succeeded then, as they do
now, by dint of application, industry, and energy. The Sussex
Archaeological Papers for 1860 contain a curious record of such an
adventurer, in the history of the founder of the Gale family. Leonard
Gale was born in 1620 at Riverhead, near Sevenoaks, where his father
pursued the trade of a blacksmith. When the youth had reached his
seventeenth year, his father and mother, with five of their sons and
daughters, died of the plague, Leonard and his brother being the only
members of the family that survived. The patrimony of 200L. left them
was soon spent; after which Leonard paid off his servants, and took to
work diligently at his father's trade. Saving a little money, he
determined to go down into Sussex, where we shortly find him working
the St. Leonard's Forge, and afterwards the Tensley Forge near
Crawley, and the Cowden Iron-works, which then bore a high reputation.
After forty years' labour, he accumulated a good fortune, which he left
to his son of the same name, who went on iron-forging, and eventually
became a county gentleman, owner of the house and estate of Crabbett
near Worth, and Member of Parliament for East Grinstead.

Several of the new families, however, after occupying a high position
in the county, again subsided into the labouring class, illustrating
the Lancashire proverb of "Twice clogs, once boots," the sons
squandering what the father's had gathered, and falling back into the
ranks again. Thus the great Fowles