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ARUNDEL AND LITTLEHAMPTON 113
remain traces of the Maison Dieu, or Hospital of the Holy Trinity, founded like the church by the good Earl Richard, but its walls of stone and flint and chalk were sadly battered in the siege, and subsequently used as a quarry for materials to build a bridge over the Arun.
Arundel, like Sussex generally, was vigorously on the side of John Wilkes in that gentleman's differences with George III. and his ministers (p. 253); in 1754 he had been admitted to the Sublime Society of the Beefsteaks, and a little later had become a member of the Hell Fire Club (p. 316). The Sussex Weekly Advertiser or Lewes Journal (p. 278) for April, 1770, records: "Wednesday night last, almost every place in this County had illuminations and rejoicings, on account of Mr. Wilkes's enlargement: in particular Chichester, Arundel, Grinstead, Horsham, Uckfield, &c, &c. The shew was very elegant at Chichester, the Cross being finely illuminated with Forty-five* pounds of Candles; but we hear there were many who did not join the multitude, who had their windows broke for their non-compliance. It is said a gentleman in a small town in this county gave the ringers a crown to ring the bells backwards, which they did, but at night his windows were broke." From the same paper about two years later we get an account of a happy event at Arundel which rather illustrates an old mediaeval proverb about the best kind of woman to marry; it is a point of view not wholly incomprehensible to our own age of gold. "Was married at Arundel in this county Mr. Henry Blackman, Wine Merchant, in this town, to Miss Best of the same
* This was the number of Wilkes's paper, the North Briton, complained of.
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