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. CHAPTER XV CHICHESTER