Stirrups and spurs were known to the Saxons; the Britons had bridles ornamented with ivory: a bit, presumed to have belonged to a British chief in the Roman service, is a jointed snaffle. The side-pieces, or branches, of curb bits, are of equal antiquity. The Saxons had very superb bridles, ornamented with plates of tin and pewter; and those for women's horses were lily-white. We have seen a bridle of Norman manufacture, said to have been on the horse which William Rufus rode when killed in the New Forest: it has blinkers, is very broad; and cloth, cut by a mould into rich patterns, is glued upon the leather. We read of Athelstan receiving valuable presents of running horses, with their saddles and bridles studded with gold; one of our earliest illustrations of horse-racing.
[15] Hoskins; _Encylopædia Britannica_, 7th edit.
[16] Just as Charles, Duke of Norfolk, in our day, was accustomed to feed his favourite dogs, by cutting pieces from joints on the dinner-table, and throwing them to the dogs on the polished floor of Arundel Castle.
[17] The chief iron-works of Sussex were in the Wealden strata, whence the iron ore was extracted from the argillaceous beds, and was smelted with charcoal made from the abundance of wood. At Buxted, near Lindfield, iron ordnance were made three centuries since by Ralph Hogge, assisted by Peter Bawde, a Frenchman, and his covenanted servant, John Johnson; and the memory of whose works, of which two specimens are still existing in the Tower of London, is preserved in
"Master Hogfe, and his man John, They did cast the first can-non."
(_W. D. Cooper, F.S.A., Archæologia_, vol. xxxvii. p. 483.)
Up to 1720, Sussex was the principal seat of the iron manufacture in England: the last furnace, at Ashburnham, was blown out in 1827. Kent was alike noted for its iron; and the last great work of its furnaces was the noble balustrades and gates which surround St. Paul's Cathedral, London: they were cast at Gloucester Furnace, Lamberhurst, and cost upwards of £11,202. "In the middle ages, and down even to a late date, while Dudley and Wolverhampton were obscure names, the forges of Kent and Sussex were all a-glow with smelting and hammering the iron which the soil still yields, although it is not worth the while of any one to work it. The discovery of the coalfields of Wales and Staffordshire gave the Kent and Sussex furnaces their deathblow, leaving the country dotted with forge and furnace farms, and deep holes, now filled with tangled underwood, from which the ore was brought." (_Saturday Review_, No. 182.) Kent and Sussex have no coal, and the iron manufacture left these counties when smelting with coal or coke began to supersede smelting with charcoal. Iron was also worked in Surrey. John Evelyn, in a letter to John Aubrey, dated February 8, 1675, states, that on the stream which winds through the valley of Wotton "were set up the first brass mills, for casting, hammering into plates, and cutting and drawing into wire, that were in England; also a fulling mill, and a mill for hammering iron, all of which are now demolished." The last of these mills gave its name to a small street or hamlet in the parish of Abinger, which to this day is called _the Hammer_.--_Curiosities of Science._ Second Series.