28 HISTORY OF HARTING. 



Husseys, usually bore the royal name of Henry, and, 

 curiously enough, the family lasted here from the days 

 of the first King Henry to the last. 



We have seen that the Saxons made a home here, 

 and gave the place a name : the Norman baron made 

 here his mansion and park, and grew his vines, in 

 Normandy fashion, against the slope of the hills. 



In Henry the Second's reign, and probably at the 

 date which Leland gives, 1 169, the first Henry Hussey, 

 Lord of Harting, founded the Abbey Church of St. 

 Mary the Virgin and St. John the Baptist at Durford, 

 on the banks of the Rother, and also in connection 

 with this Premonstratentian Abbey a house of lepers, 

 called the House of St. Lazarus of Harting. There is 

 a local tradition that this latter house stood in the 

 Culvers at South Harting near the Vicarage, and that 

 its extreme western point is still marked by a thorn- 

 tree. Although, however, some foundations are still 

 traceable in this field, it is probable that the only 

 house here was the "Culver"* or Dovehouse mentioned 

 in the Survey of Harting made 1347 (of which mention 

 has already been made, and of which a transcript will 

 be given below), and that the Lazar house was near 

 to, and in connection with, the Abbey of Durford. It 

 is not likely that the lord of Harting would have 

 brought the lepers to South Harting, and thus to his 

 own door. 



The history of Durford Abbey has been excellently 

 written in the pages of the Sussex Archaeological 

 Journal, to which the reader is referred. It was a 

 place of considerable importance, and had a daughter 

 monastery in Wiltshire. 



After that its original endowment by the first Henry 

 Hussey had been endorsed by Hallary, and sub- 

 sequently Seyffrid, Bishops of Chichester, it had a 



"Culver" is the old English for "Dove." In Wyclif's trans- 

 lation of the Bible, Gen. viii. 8, he wrote of Noah, " He sent 

 forth a culver? for "dove." 



