But since there was no magician in the young king’s escort to raise up for him a vision of the future splendid city, nor any astrologer to foretell its grandeur, Charles saw only that which was exhibited to the ordinary eye of humanity. And the picture, it must be owned, was one that did not excite any extraordinary interest in his breast; neither might it merit any special description, except that there may be some persons not indisposed to learn what the Queen of English watering-places was like two centuries ago.
Immediately below the gentle declivity where Charles was stationed, and almost on the spot now occupied by Royal Crescent, stood three windmills, not very far apart from each other. These windmills, with a solitary farm-house and barn, together with a few scattered cottages, were the only buildings discernible on the eastern cliff. The village of Brightelmstone actually stood on the western side of the Steyne, where the older part of the town is still to be found. Here, on a gentle declivity of the hill, on the summit of which stood the ancient church of Saint Nicholas, then far removed from every other habitation, and serving as a landmark to the mariner, was collected together a considerable number of houses, few of them of any size or pretension, and for the most part constructed of glazed bricks mingled with flints, in order to resist the weather, and having shingle roofs.
Like most old Sussex towns—as, for example, Chichester and Lewes—Brightelmstone was so closely and compactly built that it might be described as a great block of houses, intersected by alleys or lanes so extremely narrow as scarcely to allow two persons meeting in them to pass each other, and known in the dialect of the place as “twittens.” But perhaps the most curious feature of the old town, all traces of which have long since been swept away by the encroachments of the sea, was then to be found below the cliff. Here was built a long street of little tenements, stretching from the Steyne for more than a quarter of a mile along the shore in the direction of Hove. These tenements were exclusively inhabited by fishermen and boatmen, a bold and hardy, though somewhat troublesome, race, who claimed to themselves certain privileges and immunities, and were uncommonly tenacious, and, indeed, pugnacious, in the maintenance of their supposed rights. The Brightelmstone fishermen formed a distinct class from the rest of the townsfolk, and were constantly at loggerheads with the latter. On the edge of the cliff, and towering above these humble dwellings, which it threatened to crush by its fall (and such an accident did eventually occur), stood, at the date of our story, an ancient castle, or block-house of stone, constructed by Henry VIII about the year 1539, for the defence of the coast. The town of Brightelmstone, as we have stated, was chiefly concentrated on the side of the hill, and did not extend beyond West Street, whither we shall presently repair. From this point to the neighbouring village of Hove there only intervened a few cottages and a single farm-house, and these at wide intervals.
Noting much that we have described—namely, the old church, the cluster of houses on the hill-side, and the block-house—Charles suffered his gaze to stray towards Shoreham, where he could just descry the masts of the vessels within the harbour, and wondered whether any that he saw belonged to the Swiftsure.
Satisfied with his survey, Charles put his horse in motion, and the whole party rode on, taking their way down the declivity, which is now occupied by a dense mass of habitations, but which was then merely the green slope of a down—its smoothness being here and there broken by a patch of gorse or a venerable hawthorn. Sheep were fed, and the shepherd trod on the thymy turf then covering the descent where now runs the crowded thoroughfare of Saint James’-street. At the foot of the hill grew a small straggling holt, and the stunted trees composing it looked like well-worn brooms, so distorted were they by the strong south-westerly gales blowing along the valley.
On the verge of this thicket a halt was made, and it was then arranged that the king should proceed, under the guidance of Colonel Gunter only, to the George Inn, in West street. Lord Wilmot was to join them there after a while; but it was not deemed prudent that the others should appear at the inn—at all events, not until a much later hour. Meanwhile, they undertook to act as scouts about the town, under the direction of Clavering Maunsell.