probably here that the Saxon Ella and his three sons Cymne,
Cissa, and Wlencing, landed in 477, and it is not likely that it was
neglected by the Normans, who, in fact, built here a very noble
cruciform church, dark and solemn, indeed, rather a fortress than a
church. It was at Shoreham certainly that John landed when he returned
to England to make himself king after the death of Coeur de Lion, and
we may gather some idea of the real importance of the port from the
fact that it furnished Edward III. with twenty-six ships for his fleet
in 1346. Thereafter the place declined, but history repeated itself
when Charles II., in flight in 1651 and anxious to reach the French
coast, set out from Shoreham and landed at Fecamp. Shoreham thus was
an important way in and out of England, but the road by which it lived
was not in its keeping at all, but in the power of the Castle of
Bramber which dominated and held it on the north side of the Downs,
where it issued out of the pass or gap made by the Adur.

Bramber Castle stands upon a headland thrust out into the valley and
the Weald in the very mouth of the pass; and even in its ruin, only an
old gateway tower and a fragment of the lofty barbican in which is a
Norman window remain. It is easy to understand how important and how
strong it must once have been. Indeed, Norman though these remains
are, it was by no means the Normans who first fortified this
promontory and held this pass. It is probable that the Castle of
Bramber occupies the site of a Roman Castellum and a Saxon fortress,
some say a palace of the Saxon kings. After the Conquest the castle
came into the hands of the great William de Braose, lord of Braose,
near Falaise in Normandy, who received such great estates in England
from the Conqueror. He fixed his seat, however, here at Bramber, and
built or rebuilt the Castle which became the greatest fortress in his
possession. Later, by marriage, it passed to the Mowbrays, and from
them descended to the Dukes of Norfolk, the present Duke, indeed,
still holding it. It is, however, of William de Braose we think in
Bramber; for he not only built the great Castle which gives its
character to the place even to-day, but the church of St Nicholas
also, under the Castle, of which the nave and tower of his time only
remain. He built it indeed as a chapel to his Castle, and to serve it
he founded there a small college of secular canons under a dean, and
endowed it with the church of Be