t of the Haslemere road where the new
route turns sharp round to the left and hugs the escarpment of Bexley
Hill. In front will be seen an overgrown track, the old highway,
plunging down the face of the hill. A few feet down this causeway,
paved with large slabs of stone, brings us to a surprising hamlet
clinging to the hillside and, with its "Duke of Cumberland" Inn,
looking across the wide Fernhurst vale to where Blackdown lords it on
the other side.

[Illustration: MIDHURST CHURCH.]

At Easebourne, about a mile north-east of Midhurst, is a Benedictine
Priory used, until quite lately, as a farmhouse. It is close to the
church, which, with the buildings of the nunnery, form three sides of a
hollow square. The restoration has been carried out with taste and care
and the whole is worth seeing. The nuns of Easebourne would seem to
have been "difficult females," for a Bishop of Chichester in 1441 was
obliged to call the Prioress to order for wearing sumptuous clothes
with fur trimmings and for using too many horses when travelling, the
penance being a restriction to four. The nuns were spoken of by a
contemporary writer as "wild females of high family put at Easebourne
to keep them quiet."

The church, besides the tomb of the first Viscount Montague, removed
from Midhurst, contains a figure of Sir David Owen (1540); also a
Transitional font.

CHAPTER VIII

GOODWOOD AND BOGNOR

We now leave the Rother, turn south by the Chichester road and passing
over Cocking causeway reach, in three miles, that little village at the
foot of the pass through the Downs to Singleton, or better still, by
taking a rather longer route through West Lavington we may see the
church in which Manning preached his last sermon as a member of the
Anglican communion. The church and accompanying buildings date from
1850 and were designed by Butterfield; they are a good example of
nineteenth-century Gothic and are placed in a fine situation. In the
churchyard, which is particularly well arranged, lies Richard Cobden
not far from the farmhouse in which he was born. Dunford House is not
far away; this was presented to Cobden by the Anti-Corn-Law League, and
here the last years of his life were spent.

Cocking once had a cell belonging to the Abbey of Seez in Normandy but
of this nothing remains. This beautifully situated little place has a
primitive Norman church with a fine canopied tomb and an old painting
of Angel and shepherds. We are