[Illustration:  ARUNDEL CASTLE]

The old Castle, with its great circular Norman keep within the huge sham “fortress” of the eighteenth century, beneath which the town lies like one afraid to ask for mercy, should not be left unvisited, for it was probably built by that Roger de Montgomery, who led the Breton centre at Hastings, and has thus nearly a thousand years of history behind it, to say nothing of three sieges, that of 1102, when it was surrendered to Henry I., that of 1139, when Stephen there held Matilda prisoner and allowed her to pass out, and that of 1643, when Waller took it after seventeen days.

Nor indeed should anyone fail to visit the beautiful parish church of St Nicholas, a glorious cruciform building, Perpendicular in style, built in 1380.  It, too, has a long history.  The church was originally served by secular canons, but in 1177 the then Earl of Arundel introduced in their place four or five monks under a Prior from St Martin of Seez.  In the fourteenth century, however, these alien monks withdrew to their mother house, and in 1380 the Priory of St Nicholas in Arundel was reconverted into a collegiate church.  This college consisted of a master and sub-master, ten chaplains, two deacons, two sub-deacons, and five choristers.  The choir of the church was the chapel of the college, the remainder being parochial.  The college survived the general suppression, but was eventually bought by the Earl of Arundel, who had previously offered a thousand pounds for it.  And so it was that after a long law-suit in 1880 the chancel of the parish church of Arundel was given up to the Duke of Norfolk.

I did not sleep in Arundel, but, though it was already afternoon, I set out westward once more through the great park, and just before sunset I came to the great church of Boxgrove, which stands between the road I had followed from Arundel and the Roman Stane Street, where they approach to enter the East Gate of Chichester together at last.  This great and beautiful sanctuary, gives one, I think, a better idea of what the great monastic churches really were, than any other building left to us in Sussex.  It is like a cathedral for solemnity, and for size too, though it is only a fragment, and its beauty cannot be forgotten.

In its foundation the church is very ancient, a small college of secular canons serving it in Saxon times.  But all was changed when Robert de Haza, to whom Henry I. had granted the honour of Halnaker, in 1105 bestowed the church upon the Abbey of Lessay, which sent hither its Benedictines and built for them a new sanctuary.  Boxgrove was thus an alien priory from 1108 till in 1339.  Richard II. affirmed its independence, and this was confirmed by the Pope in 1402.  It seems then to have been in a bad way, but later recovered.  In the thirteenth century it had boasted nineteen monks, but at the time of the suppression it only mustered eight priests, who seem to have kept a school for the children of the neighbourhood.  What remains of the Priory, not much more than a gateway, for most of it was destroyed in 1780, stands to the north of the church.