The church of Holy Trinity, Bosham, is thus the most important Saxon work left to us in Sussex, indeed save for the aisles and arcades and the Norman and Early English additions to the chancel, that glorious eastern window of five lancets, which in itself is worth a journey to see, the clerestory, and the furniture we have here really a complete Saxon work.  The font is later Norman and not very interesting; but the exquisite recessed tomb with the effigy of a girl lying upon it is a noble work of the thirteenth century, said to mark the grave of Canute’s daughter.  The crypt dates also from that time.  Near the south door is another fine canopied tomb, said to be that of Herbert of Bosham.  The windows are Norman in the clerestory and Early English and Decorated elsewhere throughout the church.  The stalls in the chancel are Perpendicular.  But here if anywhere in south-eastern England we have a church dating from the Dark Age, in which happily we were persuaded back again within the influence of the Faith and of Rome.  Bosham then for every Englishman is a holy place only second to Glastonbury and Canterbury:  it is a monument of our conversion, of the re-entry of England into Christendom, of that Easter of ours which saw us rise from the dead.

A few ruins, mere heaps of stones, mark the site of the college to the north of the church.  Of Earl Godwin’s manor-house only the moat remains near an ancient mill towards the sea; and there, upon the little green between the grey church and the grey sea, one may best recall the reverent past of this lovely spot.  Little is here for pride, much to make us humble and exceeding thankful.  God was worshipped here between the sea and the greenwood when our South Saxon forefathers were not only the merest pagans, but so barbarous that they knew not even how to fish, when they were so wretched that in companies they would cast themselves into the sea because there was no light in their hearts and nothing else to do.  Out of that darkness St Wilfrid led them, but even before he came with the light of Christ and of Rome, in some half barbarous way in this little place men prayed and Mass was said, and there was the means of deliverance though men knew it not, being barbarians.

It is as though at Bosham we were able to catch a glimpse, as it were, of all that darkness out of which we are come by the guiding of a star.

[Illustration:  BOSHAM]

That Bosham was a harbour in Roman times, and that it had more than a little to do with the founding of Regnum, and the building perhaps of the Stane Street, I had long since convinced myself.  All these creeks and harbours were probably known and used even then, and certainly all through the Middle Ages Bosham was of importance as a port; and the series of creeks, the most eastern of which it served, and the most western of which is Southampton Water, with Portsmouth Harbour between them, was still among the greatest ports in England, easily the greatest, I suppose, in the south country.