bly an
Irishman, who had a small monastery at Bosham encompassed by the sea
and the woods, and in it were five or six brethren who served God in
poverty and humility; but none of the natives cared either to follow
their course of life or to hear their preaching. Of these heathen St
Wilfrid at once became the Apostle. For, as Bede tells us, he "not only
delivered them from the misery of perpetual damnation, but also from an
inexpressible calamity of temporal death, for no rain had fallen in
that province in three years before his arrival, whereupon a dreadful
famine ensued which cruelly destroyed the people. In short, it is
reported that very often forty or fifty men, being spent with want,
would go together to some precipice, or to the sea-shore, and there
hand in hand perish by the fall, or be swallowed up by the waves. But
on the very day on which the nation received the baptism of faith there
fell a soft but plentiful rain; the earth revived again, and, the
verdure being restored to the fields, the season was pleasant and
fruitful. Thus the former superstition being rejected, and idolatry
exploded, the hearts and flesh of all rejoiced in the living God and
became convinced that He who is the true God had, through His heavenly
grace, enriched them with wealth, both temporal and spiritual. For the
bishop, when he came into the province and found so great misery from
famine, taught them to get their food by fishing; for their sea and
rivers abounded in fish, but the people had no skill to take them
except eels alone. The bishop's men having gathered eel-nets
everywhere, cast them into the sea, and by the blessing of God took
three hundred fishes of several sorts, which, being divided into three
parts, they gave a hundred to the poor, a hundred to those of whom they
had the nets, and kept a hundred for their own use. By this benefit the
bishop gained the affections of them all, and they began more readily
to hear his preaching and to hope for heavenly good, seeing that by his
help they had received that good which is temporal. Now at this time
King Ethelwalch gave to the most reverend prelate Wilfrid, land of
eighty-seven families, which place is called Selsey, that is, the
Island of the Sea-Calf. That place is encompassed by the sea on all
sides, except the west, where is an entrance about the cast of a sling
in width; which sort of place by the Latins is called a peninsula, by
the Greeks a chersonesus. Bishop Wilfrid, h