t forget to pray
for the soul of Elizabeth Juliers, who died there after a most
unfortunate and most wretched life in 1411. This lady, daughter of the
Marquis of Juliers and widow of John Plantagenet, Earl of Kent, took
the veil in her widowhood at Waverley. Then appears Sir Eustace
Dabrieschescourt, and she being young, in spite of her vow, marries
him. And having repented and confessed she devoted her life to penance,
being condemned daily to repeat the Gradual and the Penitential Psalms,
and every year to go on pilgrimage to the shrine of St Thomas. This
penance, with others, she performed during fifty-one years. She was
married to Dabrieschescourt in the church of Wingham in Kent, and died
here in Bedhampton, and was buried in the church of St Thomas, for the
manor was her father's and part of her first dower.

Porchester, where I found myself late in the afternoon, is a very
interesting and curious place. What we really have that is ancient
there is a great walled green about six hundred feet square. We enter
this area to-day on the west, the outer gate being thus opposite to us
in the eastern wall, the castle keep and bailey on our left in the
north-west corner, and the church to the south-east. All this is
mediaeval work, but the origins of Porchester are far older than that;
the place was a fortress of the Romans.

It is certain that a Roman road ran, as I have said, from Southampton
to Chichester, which it entered by the West Gate, and met the Roman
military highway, the Stane Street which entered Chichester by the East
Gate, whither it had come from London' Bridge. This Roman road
doubtless served many a little port upon these creeks and harbours that
lie between Southampton Water and Chichester Harbour, but undoubtedly
the most important port upon that road, apart from the two cities which
it joined, was the Roman Porchester.

It has been suggested, and not without reason, that the Stane Street
itself dates only from the latter part of the Roman occupation of
Britain, that it was, in fact, a purely military way built for the
passage of troops, which until the fourth century were certainly not
needed in any quantity in southern Britain. That they were needed then
was due to the Saxon pirates. The same pagan robbers, who, when the
Legions left us never to return in the first years of the fifth
century, might seem to have overrun the whole country. Now it seems
fairly certain that Roman Porchester was a m