ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



The Isle of Wight, conquered by the Jutes, received its Christianity 

 from another source. In the strange vicissitudes and wanderings of 

 St. Wilfrid, that bishop sought shelter in 687 in the kingdom of Sussex 

 under the Christian king Ethelwald. Here he laboured successfully for 

 some years and befriended Cedwalla, an exiled member of the royal 

 house of Wessex. When Cedwalla came to the throne of the West 

 Saxons in 686 he gave to Wilfrid for the church a fourth part of the 

 Isle of Wight, which had been the last stronghold of paganism. At 

 this time Wilfrid was returning to the north of England, and he com- 

 mitted the charge of this property and the spiritual necessities of the 

 island to Bernwin, one of his clerks, and to a priest named Hiddila. 1 



The kingdom of Sussex, or the South Saxons, not only for some 

 time possessed the Isle of Wight, but also the Jutish settlement of the 

 Meonwaras on the mainland. When the Jutes arrived simultaneously 

 with the West Saxons, one of their tribes made their way up the Meon, 

 a tributary of Southampton Water. Along the borders of that stream 

 they established little colonies or settlements, and became known as the 

 Meonwara or men of Meon. They held themselves rigidly aloof from 

 their neighbours, and had not been touched by the Christian teaching of 

 Birinus and his successors. Here, at the end of the seventh century, 

 Wilfrid also laboured with conspicuous success, founding several churches 

 and christianizing this wedge of Jutish territory which had long before 

 been driven into the heart of Hampshire. The archaeologist finds many 

 traces of pre-Norman church fabrics along the banks of the Meon. At 

 Warnford a most interesting double inscription on the church, of a date 

 a generation or two after the Norman Conquest, still testifies to the 

 missionary zeal of St. Wilfrid, telling of the rebuilding of this seventh 

 century church by a great Hampshire landowner, Adam de Port, in the 

 time of Henry II. The inscriptions run as follows, the first on the 

 porch and the second on the north wall : 



(1) FRATRES ORATE PRECE VESTRA SANCTIFICATE 

 TEMPLI FACTORES SENIORES AC JUNIORES 



PRIVAVIT WILFRIT FUNDAVIT BONUS ADAM MODO RENO[VAVIT]. 



(2) ADAM me DE PORTU sous BENEDICAT AB ORTU GENS CRUCE <SIGNATA 



PER QUEM SUM SIC RENOVATA. 



Returning to the episcopate of the West Saxons, it should be noted 

 that Bishop Daniel, within a few years of his consecration, was the 

 better able to administer his diocese by the formation (in 711) of the 

 new diocese of Sussex, leaving only Hampshire, with the Isle of Wight 

 and Surrey, in his charge. This, with some slight modifications, has 

 ever since remained the extent of Winchester diocese. Daniel was the 

 contemporary and friend of Bede, and of much assistance to him in those 

 parts of his history that relate to Wessex and Sussex. He was a man 

 of much learning and devotion and of many gifts.* He was also able to 



1 Bede (Eng. Hist. Soc.), iv. 16. 



8 The author of the life of St. Aldhelm, the contemporary Bishop of Sherborne, writes of Daniel 

 as vir in multis itrenuisissimus. 



