, found a Scottish (most probably Irish) monk named
Dicul, who had, in a little monastery encompassed by the sea and the
woods, five or six brethren who served God in poverty and humility.
With the conversion of the South Saxons that monastery flourished, the
house grew rich, and Edward the Confessor bestowed it upon his Norman
chaplain Osbern, Bishop of Exeter, whom, of course, the Conqueror did
not dispossess. Indeed, the place became famous and appears in the
Bayeaux tapestry, in the very first picture, where we see "Harold and
his Knights riding towards Bosham" to embark for Normandy. Bosham,
indeed, was one of Harold's manors, his father, according to the
legend, having acquired it by a trick. _Da mihi basium_, says Earl
Godwin to the Archbishop Aethelnoth, thus claiming to have received
Bosham. That Earl Godwin held Bosham we are assured by the Domesday
Survey, which also speaks of the church, presumably the successor of
the old monastery of Dicul. This, as I have said, and as Domesday Book
tells us, Bishop Osbern of Exeter "holds of King William as he had held
it of King Edward." The Bishop of Exeter still held it, "a royal free
chapel" in the time of Henry I. Then was established here, in place, as
I suppose, of the monks, a college of six secular canons, the Bishop
being the Dean. Exeter, indeed, only once lost the church of Bosham,
and that in a most glorious cause, the cause of St Thomas. For when
Henry II. quarrelled with Becket [Footnote: Herbert of Bosham, possibly
a canon of Bosham, was St Thomas' secretary and devoted follower, and was
certainly born in Bosham.] he deprived the Bishop of Exeter, who took his
part, of this church and bestowed it upon the Abbot of Lisieux, who held
it till 1177, when it came once more to the Bishop of Exeter, who held it,
he and his successors till the Reformation. In 1548 the college was
suppressed, only one priest being left to serve the church, with a
curate to serve the dependent parish of Appledram.

The church, as we have it to-day upon a little sloping green hill over
the water, is of the very greatest interest. The foundations of a Roman
building have been discovered beneath the chancel, and the foundation
and basis of the chancel arch may be a part of this building. But the
greater part of the building we have is undoubtedly Saxon; the great
grey tower, the nave, the chancel arch, one of the most characteristic
works of that period, and the chancel itself, though e