s a holy place only second to
Glastonbury and Canterbury: it is a monument of our conversion, of the
re-entry of England into Christendom, of that Easter of ours which saw
us rise from the dead.

A few ruins, mere heaps of stones, mark the site of the college to the
north of the church. Of Earl Godwin's manor-house only the moat remains
near an ancient mill towards the sea; and there, upon the little green
between the grey church and the grey sea, one may best recall the
reverent past of this lovely spot. Little is here for pride, much to
make us humble and exceeding thankful. God was worshipped here between
the sea and the greenwood when our South Saxon forefathers were not
only the merest pagans, but so barbarous that they knew not even how to
fish, when they were so wretched that in companies they would cast
themselves into the sea because there was no light in their hearts and
nothing else to do. Out of that darkness St Wilfrid led them, but even
before he came with the light of Christ and of Rome, in some half
barbarous way in this little place men prayed and Mass was said, and
there was the means of deliverance though men knew it not, being
barbarians.

It is as though at Bosham we were able to catch a glimpse, as it were,
of all that darkness out of which we are come by the guiding of a star.

[Illustration: BOSHAM]

That Bosham was a harbour in Roman times, and that it had more than a
little to do with the founding of Regnum, and the building perhaps of
the Stane Street, I had long since convinced myself. All these creeks
and harbours were probably known and used even then, and certainly all
through the Middle Ages Bosham was of importance as a port; and the
series of creeks, the most eastern of which it served, and the most
western of which is Southampton Water, with Portsmouth Harbour between
them, was still among the greatest ports in England, easily the
greatest, I suppose, in the south country.

In order to see something of this low and muddy coast, which has seen
so much of the history of England, I set out from Bosham very early one
morning, intending to make my way through Emsworth and Havant, by the
Roman road which joins Chichester and Southampton and runs across the
north of these creeks, which may perhaps be considered as one great
port of which only the more western part is famous still.

That way has little to recommend it, and indeed I learned little, for
the modern world has obliterated wi