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Caldigate's guilt was an idea fixed in his mind which no Secretary of State, no Judge Bramber, no brother could expel. And so it came to pass that there were hard words between him and his brother. 'You are wrong, said William. 'How wrong? You cannot say that you believe him to be innocent. 'If he receives the Queen's pardon he is to be considered as innocent.
Two months after Wulf had gone down to Steyning one of Harold's men brought a short letter from the earl himself. "I am glad to hear, Wulf," it began, "from my steward, Egbert, that you are applying yourself so heartily to your work. I have also good accounts of you from the Prior of Bramber, who sometimes writes to me.
But Caldigate, who had not beheld her misery without some pang at his heart, had already left the court. Judge Bramber never opened his mouth upon the matter to a single human being. He was a man who, in the bosom of his family, did not say much about the daily work of his life, and who had but few friends sufficiently intimate to be trusted with his judicial feelings.
He went to their King who lived in Chichester, I suppose, or possibly at Bramber and asked him why the people were going on in this fashion, who said to him: "It is because of the famine." St. Wilfrid, shrugging his shoulders, said: "Why do they not eat fish?" "Because," said the King, "fish, swimming about in the water, are almost impossible to catch.
Some authorities claim Bramber to have been the Portus Adurni that we have already connected with Aldrington; however that may be, Roman remains have been discovered here in the form of bridge foundations and it is more than possible that a British fort stood either on or near the hillock where William de Braose improved and rebuilt the then existing castle; this, with the barony, was granted to him by the Conqueror, and the family continued for many years to be the most powerful in Mid-Sussex.
But when the law had declared itself, he was always strong in supporting the law. A man condemned for murder ought to be hanged, so thought Judge Bramber, and not released, in accordance with the phantasy of philanthropists. Such were the requirements of the law. If the law were cruel, let the legislators look to that.
An advocate in the north of England has a finer scope, because the people like to move counter to authority. A Lancashire jury will generally be unwilling to do what a judge tells them. And then Judge Bramber has a peculiar way of telling a jury. If he has a strong opinion of his own he never leaves the jury in doubt about it. Some judges are what I call flabby, Mr. Caldigate.
The most regular of his visitors was the prior of the monastery at Bramber, which had been founded by the piety of one of Wulf's ancestors.
The new feudal organisation of the county is doubtless shadowed forth in the existing rapes. Of these there are six, called respectively after Chichester, Arundel, Bramber, Lewes, Pevensey, and Hastings. It will be noticed at once that these were the seats of the new bishopric and of the five great early castles.
Justice Bramber, by whom the case was to be tried, was reputed to be an excellent judge, a man of no softnesses, able to wear the black cap without convulsive throbbings, anxious also that the law should run its course, averse to mercy when guilt had been proved, but as clear-sighted and as just as Minos; a man whom nothing could turn one way or another, who could hang his friend, but who would certainly not mulct his enemy because he was his enemy.
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