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.
[Illustration: ARUNDEL CASTLE]
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.