of it.
"Within the memory of many persons now living," writes Mr Duthy in
1839, "considerable vestiges of a strong and extensive building stood
in the meadows to the north of the church, which were the dilapidated
remains of an ancient palace of the Bishops of Winchester. The walls
were of great thickness and composed of flints and mortar, but it was
impossible to trace the disposition of the apartments or the form of
the edifice." Bishop Sutton had belonged to the church of Winchester
since King Ine's day, but in the early part of the eleventh century it
was held by Harold, and after the Conquest by Eustace of Boulogne.
Bishop Henry de Blois regained it for the church by exchange, in whose
possession it has remained but for a few brief intervals in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in one of which John Evelyn
bought it, until to-day.

It is probably to this fact we owe the beauty and preservation of the
church here, with its fine twelfth century nave, not fundamentally
altered, and its chancel still largely of the thirteenth century.
Especially notable are the two Norman doorways in the nave and curious
supports of the belfry there, four naked and massive posts.

[Illustration: SELBORNE FROM THE HANGER]

Bishop Sutton was the last place I was to see upon the old road, for a
mile beyond that village I left it where it turned northward, to go
east into Ripley and so by the byways to climb into the hills, and
crossing them to descend steeply at evening into the village of
Selborne by the Oakhanger stream just before it enters that narrow
brief pass into the Weald. There in the twilight I stayed for awhile
under the yew tree in the churchyard to think of the writer, for love
of whom I had made this journey all the way from Winchester.

"In the churchyard of this village," writes Gilbert White in "The
Antiquities of Selborne," "is a yew-tree whose aspect bespeaks it to be
of great age; it seems to have seen several centuries and is probably
co-eval with the church, and therefore may be deemed an antiquity; the
body is squat, short and thick, and measures twenty-three feet in the
girth, supporting a head of suitable extent to its bulk. This is a male
tree, which in the spring sheds clouds of dust and fills the atmosphere
around with its farina.... Antiquaries seem much at a loss to determine
at what period this tree first obtained a place in churchyards. A
statute was passed A.D. 1307 and 35 Edward I., the title o