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Increased intercourse with the Continent brought the Cinque Ports into importance; and, as premier Cinque Port, Hastings grew to be one of the chief towns in Sussex. The constant French wars made them prominent in mediaeval history. As trade grew up, other commercial harbours gave rise to considerable mercantile towns. Rye and Winchelsea, at the mouth of the Rother, were great ports of entry from France as late as the days of Elizabeth. Seaford, at the mouth of the Ouse, was also an important harbour till 1570, when a terrible storm changed the course of the stream to the town called from that fact Newhaven. Lewes was likewise a port, as the estuary of the Ouse was navigable from the mouth up to the town. Brighthelmstone was still a village; but old Shoreham on the Adur was a considerable place. Arundel Haven and Chichester Harbour recalls the old mercantile importance of their respective neighbourhoods. The only other places of any note in mediaeval Sussex were Steyning, under the walls of Bramber Castle; Hurstmonceux, which the Conqueror bestowed upon the lord of Eu; Battle, where he planted his great expiatory abbey; and Hurst Pierpont, which also dates from William’s own time. The sole important part of the county was still the strip along the coast between the Weald and the sea.

During the Plantagenet period, England became a wool-exporting country, like Australia at the present day; and therefore the wool-growing parts of the island rose quickly into great importance. Sussex, with its large expanse of chalk downs, naturally formed one of the best wool-producing tracts; and in the reign of Edward III., Chichester was made one of the ‘staples’ to which the wool trade was confined by statute. Sussex Proper and the Lewes valley were now among the most thickly populated regions of England.

The Weald, too, was beginning to have its turn. English iron was getting to be in request for the cannon, armour, and arms required in the French wars; and nowhere was iron more easily procured, side by side with the fuel for smelting it, than in the Sussex Weald. From the days of the Edwards to the early part of the eighteenth century, the woods of the Weald were cut down in quantities for the iron works. During this time, several small towns began to spring up in the old forest region, of which the chief are Midhurst, Petworth, Billinghurst, Horsham, Cuckfield, and East Grinstead. Many of the deserted smelting-places may still be seen, with their invariable accompaniment of a pond or dam. The wood supply began to fail as early as Elizabeth’s reign, but iron was still smelted in 1760. From that time onward, the competition of Sheffield and Birmingham–where iron was prepared by the ‘new method’ with coal–blew out the Sussex furnaces, and the Weald relapsed once more into a wild heather-clad and wood-covered region, now thickly interspersed with parks and country seats, of which Petworth, Cowdry, and Ashburnham are the best known.

Modern times, of course, have brought their changes. With the northward revolution caused by steam and coal, Sussex, like the rest of southern England, has fallen back to a purely agricultural life. The sea has blocked up the harbours of Rye, Winchelsea, Seaford, and Lewes. Man’s hand has drained the marshes of the Rother, of Pevensey, and of Selsea Bill; and railways have broken down the isolation of Sussex from the remainder of the country. Still, as of old, the natural configuration continues to produce its necessary effects. Even now there are no towns of any size in the Weald: few, save Lewes, Arundel, and Chichester, anywhere but on the coast. The Downs are given up to sheep-farming; the Weald to game and pleasure-grounds; the shore to holiday-making. The proximity to London is now the chief cause of Sussex prosperity. In the old coaching days, Brighton was a foregone conclusion. Sixty miles by road from town, it was the nearest accessible spot by the seaside. As soon as people began to think of annual holidays, Brighton must necessarily attract them. Hence George IV. and the Pavilion. The railroad has done more. It has made Brighton into a suburb, and raised its population to over 100,000. At the same time, the South Coast line has begotten watering-places at Worthing, Bognor, and Littlehampton. In the other direction, it has created Eastbourne. Those who do not love chalk (as the Georges did), choose rather the more broken and wooded country round Hastings and St. Leonards, where the Weald sandstone runs down to the sea. The difference between the rounded Downs and saucer-shaped combes of the chalk, and the deep glens traversing the soft friable strata of the Wealden, is well seen in passing from Beachy Head to Ecclesbourne and Fairlight. Shoreham is kept half alive by the Brighton coal trade: Newhaven struggles on as a port for Dieppe. But as a whole, the county is now one vast seaside resort from end to end, so that to-day the flat coasts at Selsea, Pevensey, and Rye, are alone left out in the cold. The iron trade and the wool trade have long since gone north to the coal districts. Brighton and Hastings sum up in themselves all that is vital in the Sussex of 1881.