172 THE FORESTS OF ENGLAND. 



tion of spire or tower. Neither would yield. At length a 

 holy monk suggested that each should build a church on her 

 own manor; the suggestion was approved, and for long years 

 the Sister Churches resounded with the voice of prayer 

 and praise, and offered a fair day-mark to the mariner. 



" But as of old, the devouring sea rushed higher and 

 higher upon the land, and the cliff, sapped and under- 

 mined, fell, and with it the church of Owthorne. In 1786 

 the edge of the buried places first began to fail ; the church 

 itself was not touched till thirty years later. It was said 

 to be a mournful sight to see the riven church-yard, and 

 skeletons and broken coffins sticking out from the new 

 cliff, and bones, skulls, and fragments of long buried wood 

 strewn on the beach. One of the coffins, washed out from 

 a vault under the east end of the church, contained an 

 embalmed corpse, the back of the scalp bearing the grey 

 hairs of one who had been the village pastor. The eyes of 

 the villagers were shocked by these ghastly relics of mor- 

 tality tossed rudely forth to the light of day ; and aged 

 folk who tottered down to see the havoc worked, wept as by 

 some remembered token they recognised a relative or friend 

 of bygone years whom they had followed to the grave the 

 resting-place of the dead, as they trusted, till the end of 

 time. In some places bodies, still clad in naval attire, 

 with bright coloured silk kerchiefs round the neck, were 

 unearthed, as if the sea were eager to reclaim the ship- 

 wrecked sailors whom it had in former days flung dead 

 upon the shore." 



As now, so in a former day, the sea may have made 

 inroads upon the land upon sand dunes, it may be, 

 lining the coast such sand dunes as may now be seen in 

 course of formation at Witheringsea, and for leagues 

 beyond ; and having brought below its own level the 

 embankment standing as a wall of defence between it and 

 the plain or hollow beyond, it may have swept in with a 

 rush, and submerged woodland and meadow, and all that 

 lay between. 



