A HISTORY OF SUSSEX 



When Wilfrid returned to his northern diocese in 686, the South Saxon 

 see was united with that of the West Saxons, of which the seat was at Win- 

 chester ; but in 7 1 1 the see was revived, and Eadberht, abbot of Selsey, was 

 appointed bishop. 4 He was succeeded by Eolla, after whose death the see of 

 Selsey was vacant till 733, when Sigga was consecrated. Then followed a 

 succession of bishops, 6 of whom nothing more than their names is known, 

 with the exception of Ethelgar, who had been abbot of Winchester, and was 

 the first of the many occupants of the Sussex see who passed thence to the 

 primacy of Canterbury. 



Possibly the poverty and insignificance of the cathedral abbey of Selsey 

 saved its inmates from martyrdom during the period of the Danish ravages. 

 The only Saxon martyr of whom Sussex can boast is St. Lewinna, said to have 

 been one of St. Wilfrid's first converts, and to have suffered during the 

 primacy of Theodore, who died in 690. Of her life nothing is known, but 

 of the ' translation ' of her relics in 1058 we have a singularly interesting 

 contemporary account.' Balger, a monk of Bergue in Flanders who had 

 several times visited England on Easter Eve, 1058, was driven by stress of 

 weather into the harbour of Seaford ; next day he desired to hear mass, and 

 was directed to the monastery or church of St. Andrew, some three leagues 

 from the port. After service the priest of the church expatiated to him on 

 the great merits of St. Lewinna, whose body lay there, and translated various 

 parchments fastened on the walls containing an account of the miraculous 

 cures that she had wrought. Balger became so excited that he endeavoured 

 to bribe the priest to give him a bone of the saint, but his offer being 

 indignantly rejected, he had to pretend that it was made in jest. He 

 remained praying before the shrine, and took the opportunity of tampering 

 with the chest containing the body, and at last managed to open it. The 

 sacristan, being obliged to go away next day, left the church to the care of 

 Balger, who seized the golden opportunity to steal the whole of the saint's 

 relics, with the exception of a few small bones which fell out of the sheet in 

 which he had wrapped the body, and were evidently intended by the saint to 

 be left in ' the place where she had finished her life with the palm of 

 martyrdom.' The relics were safely conveyed to Bergue, where they were 

 received with delight and placed in a worthy shrine securely fastened, ' lest 

 any fraud might possibly be practised and any portion of the relics taken 

 away.' 



The only other South Saxon saint of whom we have any record is 

 St. Cuthman, who appears to have flourished in the ninth century. 7 He was 

 the child of Christian parents, and when left destitute by his father's death, set 

 out on his travels, taking with him his aged and infirm mother, in a sort of 

 wheelbarrow. This primitive vehicle breaking down at Steyning, he deter- 

 mined to stay there, and set about the building of a church, which was 

 ' accompanied by a number of miracles amply sufficient to justify his inclusion 

 in the calendar of saints. Another church-building saint connected with 

 Sussex was the holy Archbishop Dunstan, who erected a wooden church at 

 Mayfield, and finding that the orientation was incorrect, placed his shoulder 

 against the wall and adjusted it. 8 It was at Mayfield also that St. Dunstan 



4 Bede, op. cit. lib. v, c. 18. See list in Sun. Arch. Coll. xxviii. Saw. Arch. Coll. \, 46-54. 



' Bolland, Acta Sanctorum, Feb. ii, 197. Mem. of St. Dunstan (Rolls Ser.), 204, 342. 



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