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The only tangible reminders of the owling trade in today's landscape are several inns. Two with smuggling connections are the Woolpack, just off the A259 near Brookland, and another Woolpack Inn at the charming hamlet of Warehorne, four miles further north. The latter was linked by a tunnel to the church (though this is now blocked up, it is still periodically inspected by the Excise). Another legacy from the owling period was the public support for the smugglers at all levels of society, including many of those charged with the maintenance of law and order. Typical instances during the 1730s include and occasion when the Mayor of Winchelsea and Supervisor of Riding Officers discharged a prisoner accused of assaulting one of his own men, and the revelation that dragoons based at Lydd and Romney frequently sold their seizures to an Exciseman at the remarkable rate of a guinea a horse and two shillings for a half anker of brandy!
Poor Captain Pilgram, Commander of the Revenue vessel based at Rye, explained that he dare not leave harbour without the protection of a man-of-war, because three large Calais sloops loaded with brandy were waiting just outside. Even inside the harbour his small vessel was not immune from attack. One one occasion when smugglers boarded her, several crew members were wounded, and one lost his wig and trousers in the fight!
However, we must return to the career of Daniel Tomkins. Following his capture in 1721 he was sentenced to seven years transportation, but proceeded to give the authorities such valuable information that he was soon at liberty again. During 1728 he and Jacob Walter were vigorously pursuing their trade, each with a price of one hundred pounds on his head, and the following year they were involved in a skirmish at Battle, after landing what was said to be vast quantities of brandy. Back in prison once more, Gabriel Tomkins gave copious information, and was asked to testify before Sir John Cope's official inquiry into abuses in the Customs services. Though he managed to avoid betraying his associates, Tomkins explained in detail how he operated, and claimed to have sold between fifteen thousand and twenty thousand pounds of tea and coffee to London dealers in a year. His co-operation convinced the authorities of his change of heart, and he was appointed a Riding Officer!
John Collier remained suspicious of his activities, and was warned by an informer that Tomkins continued to be a double-dyed villain. However, by 1735, he was a Custom House Officer at Dartford, and Bailiff to the Sheriff of Sussex! It was in this last capacity that he was sent to Rye to arrest a smuggler called Moore, and stayed at the Mermaid Inn. The local magistrate released Moore on bail, as so often happened. Moore later went back to talk to Gabriel Tomkins, apparently in the belief that he would be able to buy the incrimination documents. When this failed, a group of local smugglers, helped by the landlord, dragged Tomkins from his room, seized his official papers, and put him on board a vessel in the harbour in order to take him to France. (Considering his record it is remarkable that they did not murder him on the spot!) Only the prompt action of the Commander of the Revenue sloop secured his release.
Gabriel Tomkins' later career was also full of incident. He managed to retain his post at Dartford until 1741, when he was forced to make a moonlight flit and disappear. Five years later the Board of Customs notified its officers that Gabriel Tomkins was wanted for robbing the Chester Mail Coach (he is described as being marked by smallpox). He was also implicated in documents seized in 1747 during a smuggling run by Hawkhurst men at Reculver. Then, using the alias Joseph Rawlins, he took part with Hawkhurst men in a robbery at Selbourne in Hampshire. Justice finally caught up with him in 1750; he was tried at Bedford Assize for robbing the Chester Mail and was duly hanged.
Well before the final disappearance of Gabriel Tomkins, it was clear that both the Groombridge and Hawkhurst gangs were also operating on Romney Marsh, although they more usually landed their good between Hastings and Pevensey. The first incident in which the Groombridge gang are known to have taken part began on the edge of Romney Marsh in 1733. Officers from both Rye and Hastings dared to search out a gang of thirty armed men with fifty horses who had been seen heading inland through Iden, north of Rye. The officers caught up with the smuggling convoy at Stonecrouch (on the A21 a mile beyond Flimwell), but were disarmed and threatened with pistols ready cocked and held to their heads.
They were forced to walk with the party for the next five miles on the road towards the smugglers' headquarters at Groombridge. They were finally released near Lamberhurst and given back their weapons (now unserviceable), and later reported that the leaders called themselves Old Joll, Toll, The Miller, Yorkshire George, Nasty Face and Towzer. (We know Towzer was Isaac Pope from Groombridge.) Three years later, when the same gang was landing tea at Fairlight, William Weston from Rotherfield and John Bowra from Groombridge were captured. Bowra was later acquitted and John Weston escaped through a window, using a rope his wife had brought concealed in her pocket! The leading members of the Groombridge gang were to remain at large until justice finally caught up with them at Rochester in 1749. It was then that Jerome Knapp (presumably a former gang member) revealed the names of those who had landed three thousand pounds of tea at Lydd in 1745.
John Collier, as Surveyor-General of Riding Officers for Kent, wrote with increasing concern about the violence and defiance shown by the smugglers. Irish seamen had been involved in the trade for some time, but in 1736, Collier reported that there was a gang of about twenty Irishmen 'lurking about in the woods near the sea coast' at Folkestone. They were smuggling tea there, and had managed to recapture a load held in Folkestone Custom House. The same month Collier had been told by an informer, Thomas Pettit, about another landing at Fairlight Beach, and it was the same informer who had earlier witnessed a battle at Hollington (just inland from Hastings) in October 1735, where for the first time there is a reference to what Pettit called the 'Holkhourst genge'.
On that occasion, Thomas Carswell and other Custom House officers and regular soldiers had taken up positions on either side of the road and waited to ambush a smuggling convoy. In the fight which followed, the gang managed to escape with their laden horses, but Thomas Peen. a carpenter from Hawkhurst, had been shot by two soldiers. (It is in keeping with contemporary attitudes that the two soldiers were indicted for murder, though we do not know their ultimate fate.)
The next encounter involving the Hawkhurst gang took place in 1740 near Hurst Green and only two miles from Hawkhurst. Thomas Carswell was again involved, with other officers and soldiers. According to John Boxall or Boxwell (a gang member who later informed against his colleagues), about fifteen hundredweight of tea had been landed between Hastings and Bulverhythe and taken to a barn at Etchingham for concealment, while the smugglers refreshed themselves and went to bed. Thomas Carswell and his party found the tea and began to escort it back to Hastings in a wagon. This news reached James Stanford (otherwise Trip, and one of the Hawkhurst gang) and he immediately rode round the neighbourhood collecting as many fellow members as he could.
He assembles about thirty men, with their horses and weapons (an eyewitness later supplied the names of about half of these). At Hurst Green they stripped to their shirts for action, drank brandy and swore damnation on anyone who left before the tea had been recaptured. They caught up with the wagon and its escort at the top of Silver Hill (to this day an awkward descent on the main road down to Robertsbridge). Here an exchange of fire left Thomas Carswell dead and a dragoon seriously injured. The smugglers not only recaptured their tea, but they took the dragoons prisoner. The gang then carefully weighed out each man's share of the tea, giving a half-hundredweight to one who had only arrived in time to assist in the unloading! Among those who were later named as having part in this episode was Robert Moreton, presumably the same smuggler who was the recognised leader of the Groombridge gang; there were other occasions later when men from both organisations worked together.
It is known that by 1740 the Hawkhurst gang was fully established under the leadership of Arthur Gray and his brother William, and each was reported as having accumulated great wealth. Arthur Gray built a house, complete with his own bonded store, at Seacox Heath (just west of Hawkhurst), and William had bought a house in Goudhurst. Other leading members were Thomas Kingsmill and his brother George, both of Goudhurst, William Fairall of Horsmonden, and James Stanford, also reported to be very wealthy. At this point Jeremiah Curtis (otherwise Alexander Pollard) enters the picture.
One report claims that Curtis was a natural son of one of the Lambs, the leading family in Rye. He had organised his own gang, known as the Transports, and had apparently been working with another group led by John Grayling in the Hastings area. In May 1742 'the Curtis Lot' were held responsible for terrorising two of Collier's officers, John Darby and Freebody Dray. The two officers had been attempting to seize a load of brandy when they were intercepted by smugglers who took both them and the brandy towards Dungeness Point, where a gang of fifteen or sixteen were loading tea onto horses. The gang then put the two officers on board the smuggling vessel. They were carried over to Boulogne where (in the event) they were well treated and soon returned to Kent. Their horses were sent to meet them at the George Inn at Rye, so one can only assume that the intention was to frighten and not harm the officers. Poor John Darby was to be repeatedly threatened, and at one point he and his family were driven from their home at Lydd, and had to take refuge in Hythe. Just when Jeremiah Curtis merged his private army with the much larger Hawkhurst gang is unclear. Certainly he later became one its most ruthless members, and was to outlive most of them!
During the 1740s, the Hawkhurst men under Arthur Gray carried out a whole series of acts of violence. They are known to have sat drinking in the Mermaid Inn at Rye, with their weapons on the table before them, but it was when twenty of them visited the Red Lion nearby that they deliberately frightened the local people by firing in the air. James Marshall, a young bystander who showed unwise curiosity in their affairs, was taken away and never heard of again.
Two major attacks occurred in 1746 and 1747. The first concerned the landing of a huge cargo of tea (a report says eleven and a half tons) in Sandwich Bay, which was to have been collected by a joint force of Hawkhurst men and a local gang from Wingham. Something went wrong, and the Wingham group left with their loads before the landing was successfully completed. Whereupon, the Hawkhurst men, furious at losing part of the cargo, collected their weapons and returned to teach a lesson to their unsatisfactory collaborators. They fought with swords, wounding seven Wingham men, and taking back with them forty horses seized from the losers.
The second attack was on Goudhurst, and is the more famous. By 1747, local opposition to the terror tactics of the gang was mounting, and the people of Goudhurst began to organise resistance. Under 'General' George Sturt (a former soldier) they set up the Goudhurst Band of Militia and began training. Hawkhurst smuggler Thomas Kingsmill, who was a native of Goudhurst, was infuriated by this development, and sent a challenge to the village. He boasted that on April 20th 1747 he would attack Goudhurst, kill the residents and burn the place to the ground. Rather than submit, the people of Goudhurst organised themselves, dug trenches, collected arms, melted lead for bullets, set up observers' posts and trained under George Sturt to the point where they could fight back effectively. So, when Thomas Kingsmill advanced against them on that April day, it was the smugglers who were defeated. Kingsmill's brother George was killed in the first volley, and two more smugglers were to die in later fighting before the Hawkhurst men withdrew.