TO ARUNDEL AND CHICHESTER

From my little quiet retreat at Edburton, I set out one May morning to follow the road under the Downs, through Steyning for Arundel and Chichester, because it is one of the fairest ways in all the world, and, rightly understood, one of the most interesting. And to begin with, I found myself crossing one of those gaps in the South Downs, each of which is held by a castle. The one I now crossed was that made by the Adur, and it was held by the Castle of Bramber.

Now Bramber, merely beautiful to-day, must in the old times always have been of importance, for it holds an easy road through the rampart of the Downs, one of the great highways into Normandy, because of the harbour of Shoreham at the mouth of the Adur, one of the principal ports upon this coast. Of immemorial antiquity, the harbour of Shoreham, first of Old Shoreham, perhaps the Roman Portus Adurni, and then when that silted up of New, has played always a great part in the history of South England. That the Romans knew and used it is certain. It was probably here that the Saxon Ella and his three sons Cymne, Cissa, and Wlencing, landed in 477, and it is not likely that it was neglected by the Normans, who, in fact, built here a very noble cruciform church, dark and solemn, indeed, rather a fortress than a church. It was at Shoreham certainly that John landed when he returned to England to make himself king after the death of Coeur de Lion, and we may gather some idea of the real importance of the port from the fact that it furnished Edward III. with twenty-six ships for his fleet in 1346. Thereafter the place declined, but history repeated itself when Charles II., in flight in 1651 and anxious to reach the French coast, set out from Shoreham and landed at FÉcamp. Shoreham thus was an important way in and out of England, but the road by which it lived was not in its keeping at all, but in the power of the Castle of Bramber which dominated and held it on the north side of the Downs, where it issued out of the pass or gap made by the Adur.

Bramber Castle stands upon a headland thrust out into the valley and the Weald in the very mouth of the pass; and even in its ruin, only an old gateway tower and a fragment of the lofty barbican in which is a Norman window remain. It is easy to understand how important and how strong it must once have been. Indeed, Norman though these remains are, it was by no means the Normans who first fortified this promontory and held this pass. It is probable that the Castle of Bramber occupies the site of a Roman Castellum and a Saxon fortress, some say a palace of the Saxon kings. After the Conquest the castle came into the hands of the great William de Braose, lord of Braose, near Falaise in Normandy, who received such great estates in England from the Conqueror. He fixed his seat, however, here at Bramber, and built or rebuilt the Castle which became the greatest fortress in his possession. Later, by marriage, it passed to the Mowbrays, and from them descended to the Dukes of Norfolk, the present Duke, indeed, still holding it. It is, however, of William de Braose we think in Bramber; for he not only built the great Castle which gives its character to the place even to-day, but the church of St Nicholas also, under the Castle, of which the nave and tower of his time only remain. He built it indeed as a chapel to his Castle, and to serve it he founded there a small college of secular canons under a dean, and endowed it with the church of Beeding and many tithes, among them those of Shoreham. But about 1080 William de Braose seems to have repented of what he had done, for he then granted to the Abbey of St Florent in Saumur the reversion of the church of St Nicholas here, when the last of the canons then living in his college at Beeding should have died. It was thus that the Abbey of St Florent came to establish a Priory at Beeding, or Sele as the monks called it, and this about 1096; and William's son Philip confirmed them in his father's gifts, and before the end of the twelfth century this alien priory possessed the churches of Sele, Bramber, Washington, Old Shoreham and New, to say nothing of the little chapel of St Peter on the old bridge between Bramber and Beeding.

This old bridge over the Adur is worth notice, for it is said to have been first established by the Romans upon a road of theirs that ran under the north escarpment of the Downs from Dover to Winchester. Certain Roman remains have indeed been found there, and the chapel of St Peter de veteri ponte was doubtless founded in order to guard it and keep it open and in order.

Evil days fell upon the Priory with the rise of nationalism and the wars of the fourteenth century. Like every other alien house it came under suspicion of spying, and being near the coast, indeed, at the very threshold of an important gate, it was seized by the Crown. At last, in 1396, Richard II. permitted it to naturalise itself, and its only connection thereafter with St Florent was the payment of a small annual tribute. But the misfortunes of the Priory were not over. For sixty years or more all went well, but in 1459 the Bishop of Winchester bought the patronage of the place from the Duke of Norfolk, and won leave from the Pope and the Bishop of Chichester to suppress it and appropriate it to his new College of St Mary Magdalen in Oxford. The suppression, however, was not to take effect till the last monk then living should die, and this came to pass in 1480. For thirteen years the Priory was unoccupied, and then in 1493 the Fellows of Magdalen allowed the Carmelite Friars of Shoreham to use the place, their own house in Shoreham having been engulfed by the sea. These White Friars were the poorest in all Sussex; so poor were they that they failed even to maintain themselves at Sele. In July 1538, when the Bishop of Dover came to visit the place, he found "neither friar nor secular, but the doors open ... and none to serve God." Such was the end of the house William de Braose had built in the first years of the Conquest. What remains of it will be found in the church of St Peter in Upper Beeding, an Early English building of no great interest save that it contains many carved stones from the Priory, a window and a door also from the same house, upon the site of which the vicarage now stands.

William de Braose, who made Bramber his chief seat, must have had an enormous influence upon building in this neighbourhood, which abounds in Norman churches such as those of Botolphs and Coombes, to say nothing of those at Shoreham Old and New; but he was by no means the only renewer of life here.

The most beautiful thing in the still beautiful village of Steyning is the great church of St Andrew, but with this the Lord of Bramber has nothing to do; the Benedictine Abbey of FÉcamp rebuilt this noble sanctuary, but its foundation is said to be due to an English saint, St Cuthman, who, having been a shepherd boy, upon his father's death came out of the west into Sussex bearing his mother, who was crippled, in a kind of barrow which he dragged by a cord. A thousand queer stories are told of him as he went on his way, happily enough it seems, until he came to Steyning, where the cord of his barrow broke. There he built a hut for his mother, and constructed a little church of timber and wattles in which at last he was buried. In his life he had performed divers miracles so that his grave became a place of pilgrimage, and it is said to have been about this shrine that the village and church of Steyning grew up. It remained a holy place, and Ethelwolf, the father of Alfred, is said to have been buried there, his body later being removed to Winchester.

That the place was of some sort of importance would seem to be evident, for we find Edward the Confessor, granting the manor and churches of Steyning to the Benedictines of FÉcamp, Harold taking it from them, and the Conqueror restoring it. Two churches at Steyning are spoken of in the Domesday Survey, and it has been thought that the second of these is really that at Warminghurst. But we find a church in Steyning in the thirteenth century served by secular canons. This was, however, in all probability the church of St Andrew we know, which in 1290 was a royal free chapel answerable neither to the Archbishop nor to the Bishop of Chichester, but to the Abbot of FÉcamp only. The College of Canons had by then, if indeed it ever served this church, been dissolved. At the suppression of the alien priories in the fifteenth century Steyning passed to the new Abbey of Sion.

There can be no doubt that the church we have at Steyning is due to the Benedictines of FÉcamp, and it is one of the noblest buildings in the county. Of the earlier church they built here much would seem to remain, the rudely carved arches at the eastern end of the aisles, the Norman window on the north, and much of the aisle walls. This church was probably cruciform and may have been larger than that we now see. It was rebuilt again by the monks in the middle of the twelfth century, when the great chancel arch we have, the beautiful nave arcades and clerestory were built, with the fine mouldings and capitals and dog-tooth ornament. The font, too, would seem to be of about this time. The tower only dates from the sixteenth century, and the chancel is modern.

Now Steyning lies under Chanctonbury, but I resisted the temptation to spend the afternoon in the old camp there looking over the "blue goodness of the weald," for I wished especially to visit the church of Wiston, and to see, if I might, Wiston House, which Sir Thomas Shirley built about 1576, and where those three brothers were born who astonished not only Sussex and all England, but Rome itself and the Pope by their marvellous daring and adventures.

The old manor house is delightfully situated in its beautiful park under the dark height of Chanctonbury, and though much altered, retains on the whole its fine Elizabethan character. The manor originally belonged to the De Braose, from whom it passed by marriage to the Shirleys. In the church, a small Decorated building, there is a fine brass of 1426 to Sir John de Braose, on which over and over again we read Jesu Mercy: this in the south chapel. His little son is buried under an arch on the north, where there is a curious effigy of him. The first Shirley, whose monument we find here, though only in part, is that of Sir Richard, who died in 1540; but it was Sir Thomas, who also has his monument, that built Wiston and was the father of those three remarkable sons. He was the great-grandson of Ralph Shirley of Wiston, and the son of William Shirley, who died in 1551. Till his time the family had of course been Catholic; it was he who first abandoned the Faith; perhaps it was this spirit of adventure so unfortunate in him which descended to that famous "leash of brethren" and drove them out upon their adventures. The least remarkable and the most unfortunate of these sons of his was the eldest, Thomas, whose life, however, as a soldier and freebooter, both on shore in the Low Countries and at sea, is sufficiently full of adventure to satisfy anyone. He came, however, to utter grief at last, and had to sell Wiston, retiring to the Isle of Wight, where he died in 1630.

It was his brother Anthony who really made the Shirleys famous. He had graduated at Oxford in 1581, and having, as he said, "acquired those learnings which were fit for a gentleman's ornament," he went to the Low Countries with Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and was present at the battle of Zutphen, where Sir Philip Sidney fell. In 1591 he was in Normandy with the Earl of Essex, whom he devotedly followed, in support of Henry of Navarre, who made him a knight of St Michael. For accepting a foreign knighthood without her leave, Elizabeth locked him up in the Fleet, and only let him out when he promised to retire from the Order. This he actually did, but his title stuck to him, and he was always known as Sir Anthony. He then married Elizabeth Devereux, a first cousin of his patron, the Earl of Essex; but the marriage was unfortunate; he could not abide his wife, and in order to "occupy his mind from thinking of her vainest words," in 1595 he fitted out with Essex's aid and his father's a buccaneering expedition to the Gulf of Guinea. But in something less than two years after the most amazing adventures he came home to Wiston under the Downs, "alive but poor," and with his passion for adventure in nowise abated. In 1597 he accompanied Essex on the "Islands voyage," but, seeking more paying adventure, in the winter of 1598 he consented at Essex's suggestion to lead a little company of English adventurers to assist Cesare D'Este to regain his Duchy of Ferrara, then in the hands of the Pope. He set forth, but upon reaching Venice found that Cesare had submitted. Again he was out of employment; but it was upon the quays of Venice that he conceived the most astonishing enterprise that even an Englishman has ever undertaken. He proposed to set out for Persia with the object of persuading the Shah to ally himself with Christendom against the Turk, and hoped also to establish commercial relations between England and Persia. Upon this astonishing Crusade he left Venice with his brother Robert and twenty-five Englishmen disappointed of a row in Ferrara, on May 29, 1599, for Constantinople. Thence he went on to Aleppo, and so down the Euphrates, to Babylon, to Isapahan and Kazveen, where he met the Shah Abbas the Great. There, thanks to the Shah's two Christian wives, he had a good reception; the rank of Prince was conferred upon him, and he won the concession, for all Christians, of the right, not only to trade freely, but to practise their religion in Persia. For five months he remained at the court of the Shah, and then returned to Europe as his ambassador to invite all Christian powers to ally themselves with Persia against the Turk. He went first to Moscow, where he was, however, treated with contempt, as was his mission. He went to Prague and was well received. At last, in 1601, after visiting Nuremberg, Augsburg, Munich, Innsbruck, and Trent, he arrived in Rome, and, professing enthusiasm for the Faith his father had repudiated, was well received. The truth was, he was in grave money difficulties, and indeed in 1603 was arrested by the Venetians and imprisoned "in a certain obscure island near unto Scio." The English Government, however, came to his aid and obtained his release, but refused him permission to return to England. He went to Prague, and thence on the business of the Emperor to Morocco. There he was received in great state and remained five months. Before leaving, however, he released certain Portuguese whom he found in slavery, and sailed with them for Lisbon, where he hoped to reimburse himself for their ransom. In this he was disappointed, so on he went to Madrid, where he was made very much of and promised the Order of Sant'Iago. In the service now of Spain, he went to Naples in 1607, after a visit to the Emperor at Prague where he was created a Count of the Holy Roman Empire. He seems to have travelled considerably in Southern Italy, and after a brief visit, to obtain money, to Madrid, set out for Sicily in command of a fleet to attack the Moors and Turks. He achieved nothing and was dismissed. In 1611 he appeared again in Madrid in utter poverty, but the King took compassion upon him and gave him a pension, and in Madrid he remained writing an account of his adventures till he died in beggary. The English ambassador notes in 1619, "The poor man sometimes comes to my house and is as full of vanity as ever he was, making himself believe that he shall one day be a great prince." It might indeed seem a long road from Wiston under the Downs to the Gulf of Guinea, the Quays of Venice, Constantinople, the Euphrates, Babylon, Moscow, Prague, Rome, and Morocco, to die at last a beggar in purse, but in heart a great Prince in Madrid.

Now, when I had been reminded of all this, I was directed to visit Buncton Chapel to the north of Wiston Park, where I found indeed some Norman work in the nave and chancel arch. And so I went on my way through the failing afternoon by that beautiful road within sight of the high Downs to the Washington Inn, where I slept, for it is a quiet place not to be passed by.

And on the morrow I went on my way, still through as fair a country as is to be found in all South England, through Storrington, and so by way of Parham Park, with its noble Elizabethan house and little church with the last leaden font in Sussex, a work of the fourteenth century, to Amberley in the meads of the Arun, a dear and beautiful place.

Amberley boasts a Castle and stands right in the mouth of one of those gaps in the Downs as Bramber does, the gap of the Arun, and it might well be thought that Amberley held this pass. As a fact she did not. That gap is held by Arundel; the Castle at Amberley was a palace of the Bishop of Chichester, granted to the Bishop of Selsey long before the Conquest; it was only castellated in the fourteenth century. It is none the less an interesting ruin, very picturesque, with remains of a chapel, while the beautiful house built within the castle walls early in the sixteenth century is altogether lovely. And as for the church, I can never hope to tell of all its interest and beauty. Certainly a Norman church once stood here, of which the nave of that we see was part, as was the very noble chancel arch; but the chancel itself, the south aisle, and the tower are of the thirteenth century, while the south door is very early Decorated, most beautifully carved. There is not surely in all Sussex a more delightful spot than this lying so quietly in the meads, with its beautiful church, its ruined castle, and fine old Elizabethan house, where Arun bends slowly and lazily towards the Downs and the sea.

It was with real regret that on that May morning I left Amberley, turning often to look back at it, and last from the great seven-arched bridge over the Arun, whence one may look down stream upon the wooded slopes of Arundel Park. Then I went on up the road that winds through the steep village of Houghton swiftly up on to the Downs, wooded here very nobly, and so at the top of Rewell Hill I turned to the left and made my way through the noble park to the little town of Arundel.

Now I cannot say why, but in spite of its seduction, which is full of splendour, of its noble history and great buildings, I have never been able to love Arundel. One is there always I feel too much in the shadow of that mighty Castle which for the most part is not old at all, too much in the power of that great new church that surely was never built by English hands, which has altogether blotted out the older sanctuary, and which, Catholic though it be, has never won my affection. Arundel itself is all in the shadow of these two things, each of which is too big for it, too heavy for free laughter and light- heartedness. So it seems to me.

All I can find in Arundel that pleases me lies in the little town itself, and in the old church of which one half, the chancel, has been closed to all who do not hold the Duke's written permission to enter it—as though the house of God, even though it be the property of a Catholic duke, were not by nature as it were free to all. And so there is a kind of sorrowfulness about Arundel that spoils my pleasure in it, yes, even in the very noble remains of the old Castle that are hidden away within the sham Gothic affair of 1791. Even in the beautiful old church, of which one half is closed, even in the steep little town which might have been as gay as Rye, I felt, overwhelmed by the new Castle and the new church, neither of which has any antiquity, tradition, or beauty.

The old Castle, with its great circular Norman keep within the huge sham "fortress" of the eighteenth century, beneath which the town lies like one afraid to ask for mercy, should not be left unvisited, for it was probably built by that Roger de Montgomery, who led the Breton centre at Hastings, and has thus nearly a thousand years of history behind it, to say nothing of three sieges, that of 1102, when it was surrendered to Henry I., that of 1139, when Stephen there held Matilda prisoner and allowed her to pass out, and that of 1643, when Waller took it after seventeen days.

Nor indeed should anyone fail to visit the beautiful parish church of St Nicholas, a glorious cruciform building, Perpendicular in style, built in 1380. It, too, has a long history. The church was originally served by secular canons, but in 1177 the then Earl of Arundel introduced in their place four or five monks under a Prior from St Martin of Seez. In the fourteenth century, however, these alien monks withdrew to their mother house, and in 1380 the Priory of St Nicholas in Arundel was reconverted into a collegiate church. This college consisted of a master and sub-master, ten chaplains, two deacons, two sub-deacons, and five choristers. The choir of the church was the chapel of the college, the remainder being parochial. The college survived the general suppression, but was eventually bought by the Earl of Arundel, who had previously offered a thousand pounds for it. And so it was that after a long law-suit in 1880 the chancel of the parish church of Arundel was given up to the Duke of Norfolk.

I did not sleep in Arundel, but, though it was already afternoon, I set out westward once more through the great park, and just before sunset I came to the great church of Boxgrove, which stands between the road I had followed from Arundel and the Roman Stane Street, where they approach to enter the East Gate of Chichester together at last. This great and beautiful sanctuary, gives one, I think, a better idea of what the great monastic churches really were, than any other building left to us in Sussex. It is like a cathedral for solemnity, and for size too, though it is only a fragment, and its beauty cannot be forgotten.

In its foundation the church is very ancient, a small college of secular canons serving it in Saxon times. But all was changed when Robert de Haza, to whom Henry I. had granted the honour of Halnaker, in 1105 bestowed the church upon the Abbey of Lessay, which sent hither its Benedictines and built for them a new sanctuary. Boxgrove was thus an alien priory from 1108 till in 1339. Richard II. affirmed its independence, and this was confirmed by the Pope in 1402. It seems then to have been in a bad way, but later recovered. In the thirteenth century it had boasted nineteen monks, but at the time of the suppression it only mustered eight priests, who seem to have kept a school for the children of the neighbourhood. What remains of the Priory, not much more than a gateway, for most of it was destroyed in 1780, stands to the north of the church.

The original Norman church here was cruciform. Of this building we still see the tower, the transepts and the lower part of what remains of the nave, and the arcade to the south. This Norman church was greatly enlarged in the twelfth century, when the nave now destroyed was built, the tower piers were then cased in the Transitional style and the arches which carry the tower were altered. Later, about 1235, the chancel we see and its aisles, as lovely as anything in southern England, were added in the Early English style, that often reminds one of Chichester Cathedral. To the fourteenth century belong the south porch and more than one window in the aisles, while the font and other windows are Perpendicular.

I had often read of the unique vaulting of the choir of Boxgrove Priory, but the twilight was so deep in the church, for it was already evening, that I could not see it. I saw, however, the empty tomb, very fine and splendid, of the Earl de la Warr, who begged Boxgrove of Thomas Cromwell unsuccessfully; and then I went out and marched on into Chichester, the East Gate of which I entered not long after dark.