tes
and was defended upon the west, where it was not naturally strong, by
a great ditch. It was attacked and sacked by the French as often as
Rye, though not always at the same time. Thus in 1377, when Rye was
half destroyed, Winchelsea was saved by the Abbot of Battle, only to
be taken three years later by John de Vienne, when the town was burnt.
No doubt these constant and mostly successful attacks deeply injured
the place which, after the sea had begun to retreat in the sixteenth
century, at the time of Elizabeth's visit in 1573, only mustered some
sixty families. From that time Winchelsea slowly declined till there
remains only the exquisite ghost we see to-day.

One comes up out of the Marsh into Winchelsea to-day through the
Strand Gate of the time of Edward I., and presently finds oneself in
the beautiful and spacious square in which stands the lovely fragment
of the church of St Thomas of Canterbury.

This extraordinarily lovely building dates from the fourteenth
century. As we see it, it is but a fragment, consisting of the chancel
and two side chapels, but as originally planned it would seem to have
been a cruciform building of chancel, choir with side chapels, a
central tower, transept and nave. It is doubtful, however, whether
the nave was ever built, the ruins of the transepts and of two piers
of the tower only remain.

I say it was doubtful whether this nave was ever built. It has been
asserted, it is true, that it was burnt by the French either in 1380
or in 1449, but it seems more probable that it was never completed
owing to the devastation of the Black Death of 1348-9, though certain
discoveries made of late would seem to endorse the older theory.
Certain it is that until the end of the eighteenth century, there
stood to the south-west of the church a great bell tower, a detached
campanile, now dismantled, whose stones are said to have been used to
build Rye Harbour.

The church, as we have it, is one of the loveliest Decorated buildings
in the county; the Perpendicular porch, however, by which we enter does
not belong to the church but possibly came here from one of the
destroyed churches of Winchelsea, St Giles's or St Leonard's. Within
we find ourselves in a great choir or chancel, with a chapel
on either hand, that on the right dedicated in honour of St
Nicholas and known as the Alard Chantry, that on the left the Lady
Chapel known as the Farncombe Chantry. The arcades which divide these
chap