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.
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.