The Rape of Chichester is not only the principal ecclesiastical influence in the county; it is, one might say with no great exaggeration, the only one. By which it is not meant that the Church as a whole did not have its full effect in the county; on the contrary, in moulding the type of Sussex character the Church had, if possible, a greater influence than it had in moulding the character of any other county. To this day we talk of “Scilly Sussex,” which means “holy Sussex,” just as we talk of “Hampshire hogs” or “Kentish men with tails”; and all up and down the soil of the county are to be seen the noblest collection of parish churches in England, the proofs of an ancient devotion.
But ecclesiastical influence, exercised as an economic power and with deliberate intention, is less strong in Sussex during the Middle Ages than in any other county. The monasteries were not very numerous, and when they were rich (which they rarely were) they do not seem to have had a very considerable effect upon the life of the county. The towns, of course, possessed their monks, as did all the towns of England; Lewes had its Benedictines, Arundel its Dominicans, and so forth. But the monks who, throughout the west of Europe, reclaimed land, opened up empty and uncultivated spaces, and were the pioneers of the mediæval civilisation, did nothing for this county on the same scale as they did, say, for the North country, or for East Anglia. The reason is plain. Sussex was cut off while the earlier part of the monastic effort was at work, and was very rapidly developed by a civil influence the moment that isolation ceased with the coming of the Normans.
Hardham and Boxgrove are almost the only examples which point by their sites to the economic work of the early monasteries, for they both lie along one of the old Roman roads; but both of them came comparatively late. Boxgrove was founded by the lords of Halnacker under Henry I., Hardham was later still. Robertsbridge, also a development of the central Middle Ages, may be cited as an example of the monks opening up wild country, but Battle was quite artificial, the result
GATEHOUSE, BATTLE ABBEY
THE MONASTERIES
of a vow paid and of the accidental site of a battle. Moreover, Battle, thus artificial, was by far the wealthiest of all. At the time of the dissolution Hammond, the last abbot (who surrendered with great pusillanimity to Henry VIII., and against whom the gravest charges have lain), gave up revenues of £1000 a year in the currency of the times—far more than £10,000 of our money. Boxgrove itself could only count about one hundred and fifty pounds.
The priory of Tortington, next to Arundel, is interesting in the history of England for reasons already mentioned, but it was not wealthy. Almost every other foundation, as the Dominicans of Chichester or Winchelsea, or those we have previously noted at Arundel, or the Franciscans of Winchester and Lewes, or those near the north gate of Chichester, or the Carmelites of New Shoreham, or the Friars of Rye, are connected with towns and do not therefore concern the development of the county.
So far we have been dealing with the historic basis upon which Sussex, like every other part of England, has been built.