great friends with him. This, however, did not prevent him in 685
from ravaging Sussex, slaying the South Saxon king and at last
succeeding his old enemy Centwine upon the West Saxon throne.
Caedwalla, after conquering the Isle of Wight and putting
to death the two sons of King Arvaldus, having allowed them first to
be baptised, was himself converted, and to such purpose that he laid
down his crown, went on pilgrimage to Rome, and was baptised under the
name of Peter, by the Pope, on the vigil of Easter 689. He died,
however, before Domenica in albis, and was buried in Old St Peter's,
nor was he the only English king that lay there.

All this came out of the Weald; but it is most significant for us
because it allows us to understand the nature of this refuge and what
it offered in the way of safety to an exile.

This is confirmed by the experience of Sigebert, King of the West
Saxons. He, too, first took refuge in the Weald when deposed by his
witan. He fled away and was pursued, we read, by Cynewulf, so that he
took refuge in the forest of Andred where he was safe from pursuit by
many men, being killed at last at Privet near Petersfield in Hampshire
by a swineherd in revenge for his master's death. Such then was the
nature of the Weald and such fundamentally it remains, a stubborn and
really untameable country, even to-day not truly humanised, still
largely empty of towns and villages but scattered with isolated farms
and steadings. And the essential inhumanity of the true heart of the
Weald is borne out by the scarcity of religious houses there. Only the
little Priory of Rusper, a small Benedictine nunnery perhaps founded by
one of the De Braose family before the end of the twelfth century, and
the small Benedictine nunnery of Easebourne founded in the thirteenth
century may be said to belong to the true Weald; of the others, such
as the Abbey of Robertsbridge, the Priories of Michelham and Shulbred,
the Abbeys of Otham, Bayham, and Dureford not one is really old or
stands really within the true Weald. Nor are they of very much
importance. The greatest of these houses was the Cistercian Abbey of
Robertsbridge founded in 1176 by Alfred de St Martin, Sheriff of the
rape of Hastings, within which the abbey stood, really upon the last
of the forest ridge towards the Level of Pevensey. It is true that this
abbey played a considerable part in history during the first years of
its existence; for it was the Abbot of Robert