A HISTORY OF SUSSEX 



of Edward's reign, and Godwin appears to have obtained partial, if not 

 complete, possession of the lands of Bosham which lay near Lewes. Whether 

 these confiscations were due to rapacity, contempt of the church, or patriotic 

 dislike of the foreign clergy cannot now be decided. 



The Norman conquest wrought great changes in the religious life of 

 Sussex, the most noticeable in some ways, though by no means the most 

 important, being the removal of the bishop's see from Selsey to Chichester in 

 accordance with the recommendation of the Council of 1075 that episcopal 

 seats should be transferred from villages to towns. This removal took place 

 during the episcopate of Stigand, who had been consecrated bishop in 1070, and 

 probably in or very shortly after 1075." At the time of the Domesday Survey 

 the bishopric was endowed with lands valued at 150 5 J - a total quite 

 insignificant compared with that of the archbishop's peculiars, referred to 

 above, which totalled 274 ioj. 



The abbey of Fecamp, to which William had restored Steyning and 

 added the manor of Bury, held lands worth 176 4-r.; and Bosham, still in 

 the hands of Osbern, now bishop of Exeter, reached the total of ,55 5^., 

 though this was a tremendous downfall from its original value of 329. 



It was as builders and founders of religious houses that the Normans 

 wrought the greatest change. At the time of the conquest there seem to 

 have been few monastic establishments in Sussex ; besides the houses of 

 Selsey and Bosham and St. Michael of South Mailing we hear of a nunnery 

 of St. Peter at Chichester which was dissolved and its church converted into 

 the cathedral upon the removal of the see hither," a church of St. John, 

 already mentioned, and the clerks, or secular canons, of St. Nicholas, Arundel. 

 The clerks of Boxgrove, Singleton, and St. Pancras, Lewes, were probably 

 introduced between the dates of the Conquest and the Domesday Survey in 

 which they appear. 



The foundation by William of the great abbey of St. Martin of the 

 Place of Battle as a votive offering for his victory, and of the priory of Lewes 

 by William de Warenne and his wife, as well as of such lesser houses as 

 Boxgrove, Sele, Wilmington, and the nunnery of Lyminster, rapidly resulted 

 in the accumulation of wealth and power in the hands of the monastic clergy 

 of the diocese ; while the intimate connexion of most of these monasteries 

 with French houses must have assisted the Normanization of the county, 

 though it probably also led to the isolation of the clerical population from 

 the laity. 



The Norman period, including not only the years of the conquest and 



tlement of England, but also the period of the Norman influence in the 



reign of the Confessor, was noteworthy for multiplication of parish churches ; 



and this process is particularly evident in Sussex. Domesday, whose mention 



omission of churches is notoriously arbitrary, mentions ninety-eight 



churches, nine chapels and four priests (implying the existence of churches) 



this county. Nor is this a complete list by any means ; several that are 



own to have existed are passed over, 28 and no fewer than nineteen churches 



which still contain features of pre-conquest, or very early Norman, archi- 



are also omitted, so that at a moderate computation there must have 



Gesla 



See r.C.H. Su, x , i, 369. taTSS3;^J 



4 



