138 ST. aldhelm's chapel. 



the architecture, the building would appear to have been erected 

 in the latter part of the twelfth century, and a conjecture may be 

 hazarded that it owed its foundation to one of our monarchs who 

 made Corfe Castle his temporary residence. Certain it is, that 

 in the reign of Henry III, the chapel was served by a chaplain 

 paid by the crown, through the hands of the Constable of the 

 castle,* at a salary of fifty shillings a year, the usual stipend of 

 royal chaplains; and it was not then dependent either on the 

 parish church, or on any other religious establishment. I think 

 it very probable it was rather in the nature of a hermitage, and 

 that the officiating chaplain lived either in, or immediately ad- 

 joining the present building. From this connexion with the 

 crown it may fairly be supposed to owe its foundation to objects 

 of a public or national, rather than of a private or personal cha- 

 racter ; and the situation of the building, crowning the summit 

 of a wild and lofty promontory which commanded to the right 

 and left extensive views along the whole range of this rugged and 

 dangerous coast, with the boundless ocean in the front, clearly in- 

 dicates what its object was, namely the safety, temporal as well 

 as spiritual, of the seafaring subjects of the realm. As the monks 

 of St. Bernard are placed on the summit of the Alps for the pur- 

 pose of aiding the traveller in his passage across that dreary and 

 inhospitable region, so no doubt the chaplain of St. Aldhelm's 

 inhabited this lonely cell, not only to pray for the souls of ship- 

 wrecked mariners as suggested by Hutchins, but to keep watch 

 on the stormy deep, and to warn the struggling helmsman by 

 bell and beacon to keep far aloof from this dangerous coast. 

 He was also to give the earliest intelligence of the occurrence of 

 a wreck upon the coast, and call for the prompt assistance of the 

 hardy inhabitants of the neighbouring village of Worth. The 

 frequency with which lofty promontories overhanging the sea 

 stiJl bear the names of some tutelary saint, is no doubt owing to 

 the fact that chapels of this kind have once existed there. In 

 foreign countries they are still very frequently met with, and by 

 their means the very last, and very first sight of land is associated 

 with his religion in the mind of the passing sailor. In the one 



' Tliis appears from the Great Roll of the Pipe, or the Chancellor's 

 roll, which contains returns by the Sheriff of the County of the receipts 

 and disbursements of the revenue of the crown. The castles of Corfe 

 and Sherborne were frequently committed to the custody of the Sheriff. 



