Chichester, like most of our cathedral cities, has a long history dating back to the time of the Romans. The Roman town stood on the line of the road now known as Stane Street, and seems to have been a populous place where trade was carried on, and not merely a military station. A marble slab discovered in 1713 (preserved at Goodwood) bears an inscription which tells us much of the Roman city and runs as follows: _Neptuni et Minervæ templum pro salute domus divinæ ex auctoritate Tih. Claud. Cogidubni r. leg. aug. in Brit. collegium fabror. et qui in eo a sacris sunt d. s. d. donante aream Pudente Pudentini fil_. Much has been made of this inscription, that there was a temple here dedicated to Neptune and Minerva, that there was a large body of craftsmen who built this temple, and that Chichester was the seat of King Cogidubnus mentioned by Tacitus as possessing independent authority in Britain. When the Pagan Saxons under Ælla came they destroyed the place. "Ælle and Cissa," says the chronicle, "beset Anderida[7] and slew all that were therein, nor was there afterwards one Briton left," and overran the coast, establishing the kingdom of the South Saxons, or Sussex. Then Cissa, having captured the old Roman city, made it the capital of his kingdom, calling the place _Cissan-caestre_, or the fortress of Cissa, now corrupted to Chichester. This was at the close of the fifth century. Shut in by the great forest of Anderida, these South Saxons retained their Paganism long after the advent of Augustine and the conversion of other parts of the country. St. Wilfrid was shipwrecked on their coast, but they fiercely attacked the crew of the vessel, which escaped with difficulty from the perilous coast owing to the prayers of the saint. Thirty years later he returned and converted them to Christianity. A famine raged owing to long draught. He taught them to fish in the sea, and so won their confidence, and on the day when their chiefs came to be baptised rain fell and the famine ceased. The Island of Selsey or Seal's Island was given to the saint, where he founded a monastery and became the first bishop of the South Saxons. Until the conquest Selsey remained the seat of the bishopric. The last Saxon prelate, Ethelric, though he was a learned, and moreover a very aged man, received harsh treatment from William I. He was deprived of his bishopric and imprisoned. Then came Stigand, who moved the bishop's throne to Chichester, and made the minster Church of St. Peter's Monastery his Cathedral. The waves of the sea now roll over the site of the Early Saxon church. Ralph de Luffa, the third Norman prelate (1091-1123), began the building of the present Cathedral. Fire played havoc with the newly-erected church in 1114, four years after its completion, but Ralph again set to work to restore it. It was consecrated in 1148, twenty-five years after his death. He was a noble bishop, and accomplished much for his diocese and for the Church of