In order to see something of this low and muddy coast, which has seen so much of the history of England, I set out from Bosham very early one morning, intending to make my way through Emsworth and Havant, by the Roman road which joins Chichester and Southampton and runs across the north of these creeks, which may perhaps be considered as one great port of which only the more western part is famous still.

That way has little to recommend it, and indeed I learned little, for the modern world has obliterated with its terrible footsteps nearly all that might have remained of our humble and yet so glorious past, and it was still early morning when I crossed the Hampshire boundary and came into the little town of Emsworth, once famous for its trade in foreign wines, now, I suppose, best known as a yachting station.  Emsworth was originally of far less importance than Warblington, of which it was a hamlet.  There the fair was upon the morrow of the feast of the Translation of St Thomas of Canterbury, to which saint the parish church of Warblington is dedicated.  This is a very beautiful and interesting building, but it is obvious at once that it cannot always have stood in the name of St Thomas, for part of its central tower—­the church consists of chancel, and nave, with a tower between them, north chancel, vestry, north and south nave-aisles, and north porch—­is of Saxon workmanship.  Only one stage of this, however, now remains, the lower part having been altogether rebuilt.  This tower was originally a western tower, the Saxon church standing to the east of it.  There is no sign of Norman work here, and it seems probable that the Saxon church remained until in the first years of the thirteenth century a new nave and aisles were built to the west of the old tower, the lower part of which was then removed and the tower supported by arches in order to open a way into the nave of the old church, which thus became the chancel of the new.  It was then in all probability that the church was newly dedicated in honour of St Thomas.  The whole of the old church, nave and chancel together, however, was destroyed before the end of the thirteenth century, and a large new chancel built with a chapel or vestry at the eastern end upon the north; at the same time the aisles of the nave were rebuilt.  Later in the fourteenth century the eastern arch bearing the tower was rebuilt, and thus appeared the church which in the main we still see.  The difference in the north and south arcades of the nave is, though, very striking here, because of the great contrast between the exquisite and delicate beauty of the south with its clustered columns of Purbeck and the plain round stone columns of the north, common enough.  Tradition has it that the church was built by two maiden ladies who lived in the old castle near the church, and that each built a side of the church according to her taste.  One is said to lie in the chapel at the east end of the south aisle, where there is