e sort exists at Pagham to-day; it has disappeared with the
reclamation of the harbour, which itself was formed, we are told, in
the fourteenth century by a tidal wave, when nearly three thousand
acres were inundated. The only thing which the continual fight of man
against water in this peninsula has left us that is worth seeing in
Pagham to-day is the church of St Thomas of Canterbury. This is an
Early English building much spoiled by restoration, the best thing
remaining being the beautiful arcade of the end of the twelfth century.
But the eastern window which consists of three lancets is charming, as
is the fourteenth-century chantry at the top of the north aisle,
founded in 1383 by John Bowrere. In the chancel is a curious slab with
an inscription in Lombardic characters, perhaps a memorial of a former
rector. The font is Norman. The church was probably built by one of
the early successors of St Thomas in the See of Canterbury; for Pagham
belonged to the Archbishops until the Reformation, and certain ruins of
their palace remain in a field to the south-east of the church. At
Nyetimber, on the Chichester road, a mile out of Pagham, are the ruins
of a thirteenth-century chapel.

To reach Selsey and its old church of Our Lady, what remains of it,
from Pagham is not an easy matter, the footpaths across the fields
being sometimes a little vague. The walk, however, is worth the trouble
it involves, for you may thus gather some idea of the history of this
unfortunate coast, which the sea has been eating up for at least
fifteen hundred years. Indeed, in the time of St Wilfrid the peninsula
was probably nearly twice as big as it is to-day, and Selsey was
undoubtedly a little island, probably of mud, divided from the mainland
at least by the tide. It was here, St Wilfrid was shipwrecked in 666,
and it is from his adventures in Sussex that we learn of the
extraordinary barbarism of the South Saxons, two generations after the
advent of St Augustine.

St Wilfrid's ship, it seems, was stranded on the mud flats, and the
quite pagan South Saxons attacked him and the crew, and it was only the
rise of the tide which floated the ship that saved them, with a loss of
five men. It was not till 681 that Wilfrid, really a fugitive, came
again into Sussex, and this time as to a refuge, for Ethelwalch, king
of the South Saxons, and his queen were then Christians, though their
people were still pagan. There was a certain monk, however, proba