Down to the present day many Huggets are
blacksmiths in East Sussex. The terms pig and
sow are still associated with iron, and this may
be the origin of the device, and the name. And
Master Huggett and his man John may have a
more assured place in the Story of the Guns
than has yet been won by either Armstrong or
Whitworth. Two of Peter Baude's brass guns
are still to be seen in the Tower of London. The
cannon made at Robert's Bridge were floated
down the Rother by means of "shuts," a sort
of locks.

As men of free minds, the Sussex ironmasters
furnished several Protestant martyrs during the
Reformation struggle. Richard Woodman, of
Wartleton, in one of his examinations before
the Bishop of Winchester, said: "Let me go
home, I pray you, to my wife and children, to
see them kept, and other poore folke that I
would set aworke, by the help of God. I have
set aworke a hundreth persons, ere this, all the
yeare together." Richard Woodman was burnt
at Lewes in 1557. Archbishop Parker
denounced the iron trade to Queen Elizabeth as
"a plague."

Early editions of Camden's Britannia contain
quaint and graphic pictures of the iron districts
of the days of the Tudors and the Stuarts.
Speaking of Sussex, he says: "Full of iron
mines it is in sundry places, where, for the
making and founding thereof, there be furnaces
on every side, and a huge deal of wood is yearly
burnt, to which purpose divers brooks in many
places are brought to run in one channel, and
sundry meadows turned into pools and waters
that they might be of power sufficient to drive
hammer-mills, which, beating upon the iron,
resound all over the places adjoining."

Extracts from Memoirs of the Gale Family,
supplied by Mr. R. W. Blencowe to the Transactions
of the Sussex Archæological Society, give
us an insight into the minds and characters of
the ironmasters whose energy and sagacity
guided this noisy industry, which contrasts so
strikingly with the quiet now reigning among
the Sussex downs, except where it is disturbed
occasionally by the distant roar of a railway
train, or the screech of the locomotive whistle.
In the prospect of leaving his sons "in a world
of fraud and deceit, a world of all manner of
wickedness in all sorts of people," Leonard
Gale wrote the following breviate of his birth
and living. "The advice of me, Leonard Gale,
to my two sons, Leonard and Harry, being in
the 67th year of my age, A.D. 1687. My
sons hearken unto the words of your loving
father, who earnestly desireth your welfare, and
encreasing of grace, learning, and riches. I
was born in the parish of Sevenoake in Kent,
my father, a blacksmith, living in Riverhead-
street, in the parish aforesaid, who lived there
in very good repute, and drove a very good
trade; his name Francis Gale: my mother was
the daughter of one George Pratt, a very good
yeoman, living at Chelsford, about five miles
from Riverhead; my father had, by a former
wife, two sons, and by my mother three sons
and one daughter; and when I was between sixteen
and seventeen years of age, my father and
mother going to visit a friend at Sensom
(Kemsing?) in the said county, took the plague,
and quickly after they came home, my mother
fell sick, and about six days after died, nobody
thinking of such a disease. My father made a
great burial for her, and abundance came to it,
not fearing anything, and notwithstanding
several women layd my mother forth, and no
manner of clothes were taken out of the
chamber when she died, yet not one person
took the distemper; this I set down as a miracle.
After her burial, we were all well one whole
week, and a great many people frequented our
house, and we our neighbours' houses, but at
the week's end, in two days, fell sick my father,
my eldest brother, my sister, and myself; and
in three days after this my two younger brothers,
Edward and John, fell sick, and though I was
very ill, my father sent me to market to buy
provisions, but before I came home it was
noysed abroad that it was the plague, and as
soon as I was come in adoors they charged us
to keep in, and set a strong watch over us, yet,
all this while no one took the distemper of or
from us, and about the sixth day after they were
taken, three of them dyed in three hours, one
after another, and were all buryed in one grave,
and about two days after the two youngest dyed
both together, and were buryed in one grave.
All this while I lay sick in another bed, and
the tender looked every hour for my death; but
it pleased God most miraculously to preserve
me, and without any sore breaking, only I had
a swelling in my groin, which was long ere it
sunk away, and I have been the worse for it
ever since, and when I was recovered, I was
shut up with two women, one man, and one
child, for three months, and neither of them had
the distemper. And now, at between sixteen
and seventeen, I came into the world, to shift
for myself, having one brother left, which was
out at prentice, who presently fell out with me
about what my father had left me, and when I
had been at about £10 charges, we came to
an agreement. I, by my guardian, had the
administration, and my brother quickly spent all
his portion, and went to sea, and died; and I,
entering into the world at this age, worth about
£200, within the space of two years and a half,
ran out £150 of it, not with ill husbandry, for I
laboured night and day to save what I had left
to me, but bad servants and trusting was the
ruin of me, and then I turned away both man
and maid, and lived starke alone for the space of
one month, in which time I cast up my accounts,
and found that I was not worth £50 if I had
sold myself to my shirt; then I was in a great
strait, and knew not which way to steer, but I
cried unto the Lord with my whole heart and
with tears, and He heard my cry, and put into
my mind to try one year more, to see what I
could do, for I resolved to spend nothing but
mine own, and I resolved always ' to keep a
conscience void of offence towards God and towards
man.' Then I took a boy to strike and to blow