CHAPTER X

SELSEY AND BOSHAM


Chichester Harbour ends just west of the town and close to the
Portsmouth high road at New Fishbourne, a pleasant little place with a
restored Early English church. This may be said to be the north-western
limit of the Selsey Peninsula, one of the most primitive corners of
southern England. The few visitors who make use of the light railway to
Selsey have little or no knowledge of the lonely hamlets scattered over
the wind-swept flats, in which many old customs linger and where the
Saxon dialect may be heard in all its purity.

[Illustration: THE LOWLANDS.]

Selsey--"Seals' Island"[2]--was the scene of the first conversions to
Christianity in Sussex and, for this reason, a semi-sacred land to the
early mediaeval church in the south.

[2] Two seals were seen on the west of the Selsea Peninsula in
December, 1919, and one of them was shot for preservation in a
local museum.

St. Wilfrid's first visit was unpremeditated; he was shipwrecked while
returning from a visit to France, where his consecration had taken
place in A.D. 665. His reception was so hostile that after getting
safely away he decided to return at some future date and convert the
Barbarians to more gentle ways. Not for fifteen years did his