[Illustration: St.] OSYTH’S PRIORY--an ancient and very venerable edifice--is situated on an estuary formed by the Rivers Stour and Blackwater, distant about twelve miles south-east from Colchester. The village in which it stands was originally named Cice, or Chich; and although its chroniclers give us no information as to its Saxon derivation, there is no lack of knowledge concerning its comparatively modern name--St. Osyth. But it is obtained from tradition and Monkish legends; from which we learn that the virgin saint was the daughter of Frithwald, King of East Anglia, betrothed to Sighere, the Christian king of the East Saxons; by whom, however, she was freed from marriage bonds, and permitted to found a church and institute a nunnery of Maturines of the order of the Holy Trinity--which she did at Chich, a village given to her by her generous lord. Her establishment was subsequently plundered and destroyed by the Danes, under Inguar and Hubba, and the royal lady was herself beheaded beside a fountain, at which, with her hapless maidens, she used to bathe.[23] The parish of St. Osyth was anciently part of the royal demesnes. Canute granted it to Godwin, Earl of Kent, who gave it to Christ’s Church, Canterbury, with permission of Edward the Confessor. Prior to the Conquest it must have passed into other hands, for we find at the time of the Survey it belonged to the bishop of London. Richard de Belmeis or de Beaumes, consecrated Bishop of London in 1108, obtained the manor and church of Cice, in order to build and endow a monastery there for canons of the order of St. Augustine, which was done about 1118; and the tithes being appropriated to the monks, they served the cure by one of their own canons. At the Dissolution, the amount of all the revenues was found to be, according to Speed, £758. 5_s._ 8_d._ Dugdale says it was £677. 7_s._ 2_d._ The abbot, prior, and eighteen canons, subscribed to the King’s supremacy--which shows the number then maintained. Alaric de Vere, the first Earl of Oxford, had a son a canon here, who wrote the Life of St. Osyth, about 1160. Soon after the suppression of religious houses, Henry VIII. granted it to Thomas Lord Cromwell. On his disgrace and attainder, the property reverted to the Crown.