The most celebrated example of violence at Hastings, though, was perpetrated by the preventive forces. Joseph Swaine, a fisherman, was shot in 1821 by an exciseman who was intending to search his fishing boat. There was a struggle, during which the excise officer's gun went off (accidentally, he claimed). The incident was the flash point for seething discontent among the fishermen, in a dispute that was focused on the searching of their boats. The increasing vigilance of the government's anti-smuggling campaign had forced the free-traders to rope together tubs into rafts, which were anchored off-shore and (allegedly) recovered by the local fishermen. Fishing boats were so numerous that a thorough and methodical search of each one was impossible, so the customs men resorted to poking a metal spike through the piles of net to feel for barrels concealed beneath. According to the fishing folk, the prodding damaged the nets, and Swaine was shot while trying to prevent such damage to his tackle.
Swaine became a local martyr, with the Hastings mob baying for blood. The exciseman, George England, was convicted of murder, despite desperate and heart-rending pleas from the dock as the sentence was read:
'...you be taken from hence... Consider I was in execution of my duty... to the place whence you came.. .Gentlemen of the Jury, pray consider your verdict again. ..and from thence to the place of execution, on Friday next, where you are to be hanged by the neck until you are dead, and may the Lord have mercy upon your soul... Oh Gentlemen of the Jury, pray consider your verdict again !'
The sentence was never carried out, for England was reprieved soon afterwards, much to the fury of the residents of Hastings. After the shooting there had been considerable civil disturbance locally, and dragoons were sent in to restore order. The reprieve caused a renewal of rioting, and if England had returned to his former posting, the mob would almost certainly have taken the law into their own hands and carried out what they saw as a just sentence. Instead, England was discharged from his job and spirited out of harm's way.
