CHICHESTER
The mere plan of Chichester proclaims its Roman origin. It is a little
walled city lying out upon the sea plain of Sussex, cruciform by reason
of its streets, North Street, South Street, East Street, and West
Street, which divide it into four quarters, of which that upon the
south became wholly ecclesiastical: the south-west quarter being
occupied by the Cathedral and its subject buildings, while the south-
east quarter was the Palatinate of the Archbishop. As for the quarter
north-east it was appropriated to the Castle and its dependencies, of
which however, nothing remains, while the quarter north-west was
occupied by the townspeople, and to-day contains their parish church of
St Peter Major. These four quarters meet at the Market Cross, whence
the streets that divide the city set out for the four quarters of the
world.
To come into Chichester to-day even by the quiet red-brick street--
South Street--from the railway station, the least interesting entry
into the city, is to understand at once what Chichester is; one of
those country towns that is to say, cities in the good old sense,
because they were the seat of the Bishop, which are not only the pride
of England, but perhaps the best things left to her and certainly the
most characteristic of all that she truly means and stands for. If such
places are without the feverish and confused life of the great
industrial centres of modern England, let us thank God for it, they
have nevertheless a quiet vitality of their own, which in the long run
will prove more persistent and strong than the futile excitement of
places noisy with machinery and wretched with the enslaved poor. Such
places as Chichester may indeed stand for England in a way that
Manchester, for instance, with its cosmopolitan population and
egotistical ambition, its greed, its helplessness, and appalling
intellectual mongrelism and parvenu and international society, can
never hope to do. England truly remains herself, the England of my
heart, because of such places as Chichester, Winchester, Salisbury,
Wells, and those dear market towns which still remember and maintain
her great past and renew the ways of our forefathers. All are very old,
co-eval with England, all have sturdy and unforgotten traditions, and
in these, if we but knew it, lies our best hope for the future.
Among these dear places Chichester is no exception, rather is she most
typical; she has an immemorial past, and out of it she will contrive
somehow or other to face and to outface whatever the future may bring.
Like everything that is best in England, that is indeed most typical of
ourselves, her origins are not barbarian, but Roman. Her ancient name
was Regnum, the city, it is said, first of Cogidubnus, King of the
Regni and Legate in Britain of Claudius Caesar. That the Romans built
and maintained an important town here cannot be doubted; the very form
of the city to-day would be enough to establish this, apart from the
notable discoveries of buildings, pavements, urns, inscriptions, and I
know not what else belonging to the whole of the Roman occupation of
Britain. It is obvious that Chichester played a great part in the Roman
administration of South Britain; its port was large, safe and
accessible, while it was the first town upon the east of that great
group of creeks and harbours which run up out of Spithead and
Southampton Water. Throughout the Middle Ages, Bosham, the port of
Chichester, maintained its position, while even in the eighteenth
century Chichester harbour was sufficiently important to warrant the
cutting of the canal which unites the Arun with Chichester Channel.
There is, however, something else which must always place beyond doubt
the importance of Chichester in Roman times. It was from Chichester,
out of the East Gate, that the great Roman road set forth for London,
the road we know as the Stane Street, chiefly, as we may suppose, a
great military way. This was the only Roman road over the South Downs,
the only road that connected London with the greater harbours of the
South Coast. Its terminus was Chichester.
[Illustration: THE MARKET CROSS, CHICHESTER]
Of the early connection of the town with Christianity there is to say
the least high probability. An inscription found in North Street, and
now preserved at Goodwood, recording the dedication of a Temple by the
College of Smiths to Neptune and Minerva, would seem to refer to that
Claudia and that Pudens mentioned by St Paul, and thus to connect them
with Regnum. However that may be, we know that it with the rest of Britain
must have been a Christian city long before the failure of the Roman
administration.
With that failure and the final departure of the Legions, Regnum fell
on evil days. Its position as the key to those harbours which had given
it its importance now exposed it to the first raids of the pirates.
These barbarians, according to legend, were Ella and his three sons,
one of whom, Cissa, is said to have given Chichester her name--Cissa's
camp, Cissa's Ceaster. Of Chichester's story during the Dark Ages we
know as little as we know of most of the cities of England, but that it
was destroyed utterly, as has been asserted, common sense refuses to
allow us to believe. It certainly continued to exist, in barbarous
fashion perhaps, but still to live, till with the conversion of the
English it began to take on a new life, and with the Conquest was
finally established as the seat of the Bishop.
The apostle of the South Saxons, St Wilfrid, wrecked upon the flat and
inhospitable shore of Selsey, was, as we know, their first bishop. He
established his See, however, not at Chichester, but at Selsey where it
remained until the Conqueror began to reorganise England upon a Roman
plan, when more than one See was removed from the village in which it
had long been established to the neighbouring great town. So it was
with the Bishopric of Sussex, which in the first years of the Norman
administration was removed from Selsey to Chichester.
Thus Chichester was restored in 1075 to the great position it had held
in the time of the Romans. Its lord was that Roger de Montgomery who
received it from the Conqueror, together with more than eighty manors,
and to him was due the castle which stood in the north-east quarter,
and the rebuilding of the Roman walls, which continually renewed and
rebuilt, still in some sort stand, upon Roman foundations, and mark the
limits of the Roman town.
Of the South Saxon cathedral church at Selsey we know almost nothing.
It seems to have been established as a Benedictine house under an
abbot who was also bishop, but later the monks were replaced by secular
canons. Then when in 1075 the See was removed from Selsey to Chichester
the old church dedicated in honour of St Peter, which stood upon the
site of the present cathedral, was used as the cathedral church, and
the Benedictine nuns, to whom it then belonged were dispossessed in
favour of the canons. This, however, did not last long; by 1091 a new
Norman church, the work of Bishop Ralph, whose great stone coffin
stands in the Lady Chapel, had been built upon this site and dedicated
in honour of the Blessed Trinity, the old church being commemorated in
the nave, which still was used as the parochial church of St Peter
Major. This new building, however, was soon so badly damaged by fire
that it was necessary to rebuild it--this in 1114; but a like fate
befell it in 1187, and again the church was restored, this time by
Bishop Seffrid. Then in the thirteenth century came Bishop Richard. He
was consecrated in 1245, and ruled the diocese for eight years. This
man was a saint, and in 1261 he was canonised. Thus Chichester got a
shrine of its own, which became exceedingly famous and attracted vast
crowds of pilgrims, and thus indirectly brought so much money to the
church that great works, such as the transformed Lady Chapel, and the
many chapels which the Cathedral boasts, were able to be undertaken.
St Richard of Chichester was not a Sussex man; he was born about 1197,
at Droitwich in Worcestershire, and thus gets his name Richard de
Wyche. His father, a man well-to-do, died, however, when Richard was
very young, and he being only a younger son fell into poverty. We find
him, according to his fifteenth-century biographer, labouring on his
brother's land, and to such good purpose, it is said, that he quite re-
established his family, and withal such love was there between the
brothers that the elder would have resigned all his estates in favour
of the younger. But Richard would not consent, preferring to go as a
poor scholar to Oxford, where, we learn, that he lived in the utmost
poverty sharing indeed a tunic and a hooded gown with two companions,
so that the three could only attend lectures in turn. At Oxford he
seems chiefly to have devoted himself to the study of Logic, and for
this purpose he presently went to Paris, returning, however, to Oxford
to take his degree. Thence once more he set out, this time to study
Canon Law at Bologna, where he not only won a great reputation, but was
appointed a public professor of that faculty. So beloved and respected
was he in that great university, where there was always a considerable
English contingent, that his tutor offered him his daughter in
marriage, and gladly would he have taken her, but that marriage was not
for him. So he set out for England and Oxford, where he was joyfully
received and indeed such was his fame that he was made chancellor of
the university. In truth, he was in such great demand that both
Canterbury and Lincoln wished to secure him, and at last Archbishop
Edmund Rich succeeded where Robert Grosseteste failed, and Richard
became chancellor of Canterbury and the dear friend of the Archbishop.
They were indeed two saints together, and even in their lifetime were
greeted as "two cherubim in glory." Together they faced the king, when
he continued to allow so many English bishoprics to remain vacant, and
together they went into exile to Pontigny, and later to Soissy, where
St Edmund died. Heart-broken by the loss of so dear a friend Richard
retired into a Dominican house in Orleans and immersed himself in the
study of Theology. There he was ordained priest, and there he founded a
chapel in honour of St Edmund. But Boniface of Savoy, who had succeeded
St Edmund in the archbishopric of Canterbury, besought him to return.
He obeyed, and was appointed rector of Charing and vicar of Deal in
1243, becoming once more Chancellor of Canterbury. But still there
remained the enmity of the King. Two good things Henry III. gave us,
Westminster Abbey and Edward I.; but he was almost as difficult as
Henry II., with regard to investitures. Fortunately he was not so
obstinate, or we might have had a martyr instead of a confessor in
Chichester, as we have in Canterbury.
In the year 1244 the See of Chichester fell vacant by the death of
Bishop Ralph Neville, and at the King's suggestion the canons elected
their archdeacon, a keen supporter of his. Boniface at once held a
synod, quashed the election, and recommended his chancellor Richard as
Bishop, to which the chapter agreed. The king was, of course, furious.
Richard, who was received by him, could do nothing with him, and so
immediately appealed to the Pope, Innocent IV., it was, who consecrated
him at Lyons upon March 5, 1245. Even this did not move the King.
Richard returned to England, found the temporalities of his See
disgracefully wasted by the King, sought and obtained an interview with
Henry, but achieved nothing. For a time he lived at Tarring with a poor
priest named Simon, for in his own diocese he was a beggar and a
stranger as it were in a foreign land. In 1246, however, the Pope
having threatened excommunication, the King gave way, and Richard at
once began to reform his diocese, to discipline his priests, and to
restore the ritual of his cathedral, and indeed of all the churches in
his diocese. He lived a life of severe asceticism, and gave so much in
alms that he was always a beggar. Usurers were punished by
excommunication, and Jews were forbidden to build new synagogues. It
was he, too, who first established the custom of the Easter offering
contribution from the faithful to the Cathedral, known later as St
Richard's pence. He loved the Friars, more especially the Dominicans,
who had befriended him at Orleans, and to which Order his confessor
belonged. He ardently preached the crusade and was eagerly loyal to St
Peter. It was, indeed, as he was journeying through southern England,
urging men to take the Cross, that at Dover he fell ill and died there
during Mass in the Hospitium Dei. His body was buried in a humble
grave, we read, near the altar he had built in honour of St Edmund, his
friend, in the Cathedral of Chichester. And from the moment of his
death he was accounted a saint. Miracles were performed at his tomb,
which even Prince Edward visited, and in 1262, in the church of the
Fransicans at Viterbo, Pope Urban IV. raised him to the altar. In June
1276 St Richard's body was taken from its grave in the nave of
Chichester Cathedral, and in the presence of King Edward I. and a crowd
of bishops, was translated to a silver gilt shrine. Later, this was
removed to the tomb in the south transept.
St Richard was not only a popular hero and saint both before and after
his death, to him and his shrine is due very much that is most lovely
in the Cathedral, and it was he who really reformed the chapter there.
Chichester had always been served by a dean and chapter of secular
canons. The canons were originally, of course, resident, but the
chapter had always been poorly endowed, and as time went on residence
was actually discouraged. Perhaps then arose the canon's vicars who
represented the canons and chanted in choir. The vicars choral were,
however, not incorporated until 1465; they were assisted by ten or
twelve boy choristers, whose chief business it was, I suppose, to sing
the Lady-Mass in prick-song. Beside this company of canons, vicars and
choristers directly serving the cathedral, a number of chaplains served
the various altars and chantries within it, which at the Dissolution
numbered fifteen. St Richard not only reorganised the cathedral staff,
but also established the "use" of Chichester, which he ordered to be
followed throughout the diocese. This "use" was followed until 1444,
when, by order of the archbishop, that of Sarum, was established.
With the Reformation, of course, everything but the Cathedral itself
and the form of its administration and government was swept away. Nor
was it long before even what Henry and Elizabeth had spared was
demolished. In 1643 Chichester was besieged by Waller and taken after
ten days. His soldiers, we read, "pulled down the idolatrous images
from the Market Cross; they brake down the organ in the Cathedral and
dashed the pipes with their pole-axes, crying in scoff, "Harke! how the
organs goe"; and after they ran up and down with their swords drawn,
defacing the monuments of the dead and hacking the seats and stalls."
Indeed, such was their malice that it is wonderful to see how much
loveliness remains.
No cathedral, I think, and certainly no lesser church in England is so
completely representative of the whole history of our architecture as
is Chichester. In Salisbury we have the most uniform building in our
island, in Chichester the most various, for it possesses work in every
style, from the time of the Saxons to that of Sir Gilbert Scott.
It was Bishop Ralph who before 1108 built the church we know, and
completed it save upon the west front, where only the lower parts of
the south-western tower are Norman. But work earlier than his, Saxon
work, may be seen in the south aisle of the choir, where there are two
carved stones representing Christ with Martha and Mary and the Raising
of Lazarus. Bishop Ralph's church was badly damaged by fire in 1114,
and it would seem that the four western bays of the nave date from the
following rebuilding and restoration. Then in 1187 the Cathedral was
burnt again, and Bishop Seffrid vaulted it for the first time--till
then only the aisles had been vaulted--building great buttresses to
support this and re-erecting the inner arcade of the clerestory.
Apparently the apse and ambulatory which till then had closed the
great church, on the east had been destroyed in the fire. At any rate
Bishop Seffrid replaced them with the exquisite retro-choir we have,
and square eastern chapels. He did the same with the old apses of the
transepts, and he recased the choir with Caen stone, using Purbeck very
freely and with beautiful effect. All this work is very late
Transitional, the very last of the Norman or Romanesque.
Then in the thirteenth century, which was to see St Richard Bishop of
Chichester, the beautiful south porch was built, a pure Early English
work, the north porch almost as lovely and of the same date, and later
the sacristy beside the south porch. In St Richard's own day the south-
west tower was built as we see it. The Norman tower over the crossing
was destroyed and a lighter one built in its place as we see, and the
galilee was set up before the western doors. Then, too, the chapels
were built out from the nave aisles, upon the north those of St Thomas,
St Anna, and St Edmund, upon the south, those of St George and St
Clement, things unique in England, and all largely works of the second
half of the thirteenth century and the early Decorated style, which
indeed give to the Cathedral, with its dark Norman nave, all its charm,
its variety and delight.
Not much later than this transformation of the nave, though the nave
itself was not touched, was the rebuilding or rather the lengthening
and transformation of the Lady Chapel. Fundamentally this beautiful
Decorated chapel is a Norman work, transformed into a Transitional one,
to be glorified and transfigured in the very end of the thirteenth
century, and now spoilt as we see. All this was done either by St
Richard himself, or with the money gathered at his shrine.
In the first half of the fourteenth century little would appear to
have been built, save that certain beautiful windows, as that in the
end of the south aisle of the choir and that in the south transept,
with Bishop Langton's tomb beneath it, were inserted, and the fine
stalls were built in the choir.
In the Perpendicular period the detached campanile was erected to the
north-west and the Cathedral was crowned by the great spire, a noble
work lost to us in our own time and replaced by the copy of Sir Gilbert
Scott. Later still, in the sixteenth century, a great stone screen, now
destroyed, was erected across the church, with chantries, and the
cloister was built. There, over a doorway on the south, is a shield,
with the arms of Henry VII., and two figures kneeling before the
Blessed Virgin, attended by an angel holding a rose.
A few tombs of interest or beauty, which the Puritans failed to
destroy, remain to this great Catholic building. These are the tombs of
St Richard, of which I have spoken, in the north transept against the
choir, the restored Arundel Chantry and tomb of Richard Fitzalan in the
north aisle of the nave, and the exquisite Decorated tomb in the chapel
of St John Baptist at the eastern end of this aisle; little beside.
It must indeed be confessed that when all is said and done, essentially
romantic as the Cathedral of Chichester is with its so various styles
of architecture, lovely as certain parts of it are still, it must
always have been a building rather interesting than beautiful, and it
has suffered so much from vandalism and restoration that it cannot be
accounted a monument of the first order. Nevertheless, I always return
to it with delight and am reluctant to go away, for in England
certainly a cathedral, even of the second order, of restricted grandeur
and spoilt beauty, may be a very charming and delightful and precious
thing as indeed this church of Chichester is.
At any rate it is by far the most interesting thing left to us in the
city. The other churches, except perhaps St Olave's, are not worth a
visit; even in St Olave's everything has been done to make it as little
interesting as possible.
The best thing left to us in Chichester, apart from the Cathedral and
its subject buildings, is, I think, St Mary's Hospital, a foundation
dating from the time of Henry II., which possesses a noble great hall,
and a pretty Decorated chapel, with old stalls, which is still used as
an almshouse. It stands upon the site of the first Franciscan house
established in Chichester. In 1269 the Friars Minor left this place and
moved to the site of the old Castle. There they built the church of
which the choir still remains, a lovely work ruined at the dissolution
and used as the Guildhall. It is now a store room. Nothing in
Chichester is more beautiful than this Early English fragment, which
seems to remind us of all we have lost by that disastrous revolution of
the sixteenth century, whose latest results we still await with fear
and dread.
But let who will be disappointed in Chichester, I shall love it all my
days; not so much for these its monuments, but for itself, its
curiously sleepy air of disinterested quiet, its strong dislike of any
sort of enthusiasm, its English boredom, even of itself, its complete
surrender to what is, its indifference to what might be. May it ever
remain secure within sight of the hills, within sight of the sea,
steeped in the Tudor myth, certain in its English heart, that twice two
is not four but anything one likes to make it, nor ever hear ribald
voices calling upon it to decide what after all it stands for in the
world, denying it any longer the consolation it loves best of finding
in the conclusion what is not in the premises, or, as the vulgar might
put it, of having its cake and eating it too.