AN ENGLISH SHIRE. 203 



* leaders and soldiers ' that is to say, the free military 

 English population ; while his attendant priests Eappa, 

 Padda, Burghelm, and Oiddi (it is pleasant to preserve 

 these little personal touches) proceeded to baptize the 

 ' plebs ' that is to say, the servile Anglicised Celt- 

 Euskarian substratum up and down the country villages. 

 It was to Wilfrith, too, that Sussex owed her first 

 cathedral. JEthelwealh made him a present of Selsea, 

 ' a place surrounded by the sea on every side save one, 

 where an isthmus about as broad as a stone's-throw 

 connects it with the mainland,' and there the ardent 

 bishop founded a regular monastery, in which he himself 

 remained for five years. On the soil were 250 serfs, 

 whom Wilfrith at once set free. After the death of 

 Aldhelm, the West Saxon bishop, in 709, Sussex was 

 made a separate bishopric, with its seat at Selsea ; and 

 it was not till after the Norman Conquest that the 

 cathedral was removed to Chichester. It may be noted 

 that all these arrangements were in strict accordance 

 with early English custom. The kings generally gave 

 their bishops a seat near their own chief town, as 

 Cuthbert had his see at Lindisfarne, close to the royal 

 Northumbrian capital of Bamborough ; so that the prox- 

 imity of Selsea to Chichester made it the most natural 

 place for a bishopstool ; and, again, it was usual to make 

 over spots in the fens or marshes to the monks, who, by 

 draining and cultivating them, performed a useful secular 

 work. No traces now remain of old Selsea Cathedral, 

 its site having long been swallowed up by incursions of 

 the sea. Baeda has the ordinary number of miracles to 

 record in connection with the monastery. 



