the old mercantile importance of their respective neighbourhoods. The
only other places of any note in mediaeval Sussex were Steyning, under
the walls of Bramber Castle; Hurstmonceux, which the Conqueror bestowed
upon the lord of Eu; Battle, where he planted his great expiatory
abbey; and Hurst Pierpont, which also dates from William's own time.
The sole important part of the county was still the strip along the
coast between the Weald and the sea.

During the Plantagenet period, England became a wool-exporting country,
like Australia at the present day; and therefore the wool-growing parts
of the island rose quickly into great importance. Sussex, with its
large expanse of chalk downs, naturally formed one of the best
wool-producing tracts; and in the reign of Edward III., Chichester was
made one of the 'staples' to which the wool trade was confined by
statute. Sussex Proper and the Lewes valley were now among the most
thickly populated regions of England.

The Weald, too, was beginning to have its turn. English iron was
getting to be in request for the cannon, armour, and arms required in
the French wars; and nowhere was iron more easily procured, side by
side with the fuel for smelting it, than in the Sussex Weald. From the
days of the Edwards to the early part of the eighteenth century, the
woods of the Weald were cut down in quantities for the iron works.
During this time, several small towns began to spring up in the old
forest region, of which the chief are Midhurst, Petworth, Billinghurst,
Horsham, Cuckfield, and East Grinstead. Many of the deserted
smelting-places may still be seen, with their invariable accompaniment
of a pond or dam. The wood supply began to fail as early as Elizabeth's
reign, but iron was still smelted in 1760. From that time onward, the
competition of Sheffield and Birmingham--where iron was prepared by the
'new method' with coal--blew out the Sussex furnaces, and the Weald
relapsed once more into a wild heather-clad and wood-covered region,
now thickly interspersed with parks and country seats, of which
Petworth, Cowdry, and Ashburnham are the best known.

Modern times, of course, have brought their changes. With the northward
revolution caused by steam and coal, Sussex, like the rest of southern
England, has fallen back to a purely agricultural life. The sea has
blocked up the harbours of Rye, Winchelsea, Seaford, and Lewes. Man's
hand has drained the marshes of the Rother, of Pevensey