Winchelsea

“ Once a Cinque Port of the first magnitude, Winchelsea is now an inland resort of the antiquary and the artist. Where fishermen once dropped their nets, shepherds now watch their sheep; where the marauding French were wont to rush in with sword and torch, tourists now toil with camera and guide-book.
The light above the sheep levels changes continually: at one hour Rye seems but a stone's throw from Winchelsea; at another she is miles distant ”

“ In the opinion of many good judges Sussex has nothing to offer so fascinating as Winchelsea and Rye; and in certain reposeful moods, when the past seems to be more than the present or future, I can agree with them. We have seen many ancient towns in our progress through the county—Chichester around her cathedral spire, Arundel beneath her grey castle, Lewes among her hills—but all have modern blood in their veins. Winchelsea and Rye seem wholly of the past. Nothing can modernise them. ”

“ Winchelsea and Rye are remarkable in being not only perched each upon a solitary hillock in a vast level or marsh, but in being hillocks in themselves. In the case of Winchelsea there are trees and green spaces to boot, but Rye and its hillock are one; every inch is given over to red brick and grey stone. They are true cities of the plain. ”

“ That may seem a little thing to the reader, but consider the delicate refinement of Miss Winchelsea's mind. Be as refined as you can and then think of writing yourself down:—"Snooks." She conceived herself being addressed as Mrs. Snooks by all the people she liked least, conceived the patronymic touched with a vague quality of insult. She figured a card of grey and silver bearing 'Winchelsea' triumphantly effaced by an arrow, Cupid's arrow, in favour of "Snooks." Degrading confession of feminine weakness! ”

“ History is little to us in such a place, which is to be enjoyed for its own sake, for its own unique beauty and delight. And yet the history of Winchelsea is almost as unique as is the place itself.
Winchelsea when we first hear of it as given by King Edward Confessor to the monks of Fécamp, was not set upon this hill-top as we see it to-day, but upon an island, low and flat, now submerged some three miles south and east of the present town. Here William the Conqueror landed upon his return from Normandy when he set out to take Exeter and subdue the West ”

“ It was in the churchyard of Winchelsea that John Wesley, who was almost always travelling about the country, preached his last open-air sermon, in 1790, under the shelter39 of the great tree on the western side, “to many folk,” we are told, “some few of which were converted so that tears ran a-down their cheeks.”
And thus the greatness of Winchelsea, stranded as it is from the lapping of the channel surges, though the boom of them when angry can be heard, is of the past. ”

“ A quaint old village is Winchelsea, on the coast about fifteen miles from Battle. It is a small, straggling place, with nothing but its imposing though ruinous church and the massive gateways of its ancient walls remaining to indicate that at one time it was a seaport of some consequence. But here, as at Pevensey, the sea receded several miles, destroying Winchelsea's harbor. Its mosts interesting relic is the parish church, built about 1288. The greater portion of this is now in ruins, nothing remaining but the nave, which is still used for services. ”

“ Binns that so far as she was concerned Miss Winchelsea might “go to her old Rome and stop there; SHE (Miss Lily Hardhurst) wouldn't grieve.” And the way in which Miss Winchelsea put herself upon terms of personal tenderness with Horace and Benvenuto Cellini and Raphael and Shelley and Keats—if she had been Shelley's widow she could not have professed a keener interest in his grave—was a matter of universal astonishment. ”

“ It stands on an abrupt hill-spur rising above flat lowlands which form a southward continuation of Romney marsh. This was within historic times a great inlet of the English Channel, and Winchelsea was a famous seaport until the 15th century. Two gates, the one of the time of Edward I., the other erected early in the 15th century, overlook the marshes; a third stands at a considerable distance west of the town, its position pointing the contrast between the extent of the ancient town and that of the shrunken village of to-day. ”

“ Periods there have been when every hand has seemed against it; but times there have been too—the Commonwealth, for instance—when the town has enjoyed a compensating prosperity. It has fought for its existence, and it has survived; and there are no more apt words concerning the two Antient Towns than those of Coventry Patmore: "Winchelsea is a town in a trance, a sunny dream of centuries ago, but Rye is a bit of the Old World living on in happy ignorance of the New".
At Winchelsea the church is the centre of everything: you cannot move a hundred yards without coming into sight of it. ”

“ Winchelsea was an uncompromising churchman and a zealous upholder of the papal authority. Yet his love of power and influence was so great that it brought him into conflict with his clergy, his suffragans, many of the nobles, the king, and sometimes even with the pope. With longer English experience than Peckham, and the wider outlook of a secular priest, Winchelsea did not limit his interests so strictly to the ecclesiastical side of things as his predecessor. He thought it his business to protect nation and church alike. ”

“ By absolving Edward from his oath to the forest charters Clement destroyed the result of Winchelsea's most hard-won victory, while by decreeing that Edward should not be excommunicated or censured without papal permission he deprived Winchelsea of his most effective weapon. In January 1306 Winchelsea sent Walter Thorp, dean of arches, to Lyons to counteract Langton's machinations (Ann. Londin. p. 144) . But on 12 Feb. Clement suspended Winchelsea from his spiritual and temporal functions, and cited him to the curia within two months. ”

“ The barons' famous letter of protest addressed to Boniface was a repudiation of Winchelsea as well as of the pope. Edward made the split more emphatic by rejecting Winchelsea's addition to the articles of the barons limiting clerical taxation without papal consent. Another cause of quarrel soon arose between Winchelsea and Edward. During the vacancy at Canterbury the king had presented Theobald, brother of Edward's own son-in-law, the count of Bar, to the living of Pagham in Sussex, of which the archbishop was patron. ”

“ In the following March, Winchelsea had a personal interview with the King, in which he appears to have arranged some sort of temporary compromise; for immediately afterwards a meeting of the clergy was held, in which he recommended them to act each for himself as best he could. Determined to proceed in spite of all opposition, the King summoned the whole military force of the kingdom to meet him at London on the 7th of July. ”

“ The after-swell of the storms, excited by the petition of Lincoln and the statute of Carlisle, still continued troublous during Winchelsea's later years. The pope complained of the violated privileges of the Church and of the accumulated arrears of King John's tribute; and Winchelsea was anxious to promote the papal cause. But the barons in Edward's early parliaments still used the bold language of the magnates of 1301, and the letter of 1309, drawn up by the parliament of Stamford, is no unworthy pendant of the Lincoln letter. ”

“ Indeed, to liken Rye to any other place is to do her wrong, for both in herself and in that landscape over which she broods, there is enough beauty and enough character to give her a life and a meaning altogether her own. From afar off, from Winchelsea, for instance, in the sunlight, she seems like a town in a missal, crowned by that church which seems so much bigger than it is, gay and warm and yet with something of the greyness of the sea and the sea wind about her, a place that, as so few English places do, altogether makes a picture in the mind, and is at unity with itself. ”

“ At the parliament of April 1309 he refused to attend until the archbishop of York, disgusted at not being allowed to bear his cross, went back to the north. In his zeal for clerical privilege Winchelsea had even taken up the cause of his old enemy Langton, who was still imprisoned by royal authority alone. He refused to have any dealings with the king as long as Langton was unlawfully detained (Murimuth, p. 14) . In March 1310 Winchelsea was one of the lords ordainers, though in April Edward was still urging him to persuade convocation to make fresh grants from its spiritualities. ”

“ At last the election of Celestine V terminated the long vacancy on 5 July 1294. The new pope thought so well of Winchelsea that he offered him a cardinalate, which Winchelsea refused. Despite the opposition of the Franciscans (Worcester Ann. p. 518) , Celestine confirmed Winchelsea's election. On 12 Sept. he was consecrated bishop at Aquila, where the papal court then was (Wilkins, Concilia, ii. 198) . He left Rome on 5 Oct., and travelled home by way of Germany, Brabant, and Holland, to avoid the territories of Philip the Fair, with whom Edward I was then at war. ”

“ After many letters and messages between the parties (Lord Falmouth being Lord Winchelsea’s second) Lord Winchelsea declined making any apology, and they met. The letters on the Duke’s part are very creditable, so free from arrogance or an assuming tone; those on Lord Winchelsea’s not so, for one of them is a senseless repetition of the offence, in which he says that if the Duke will deny that his allegations are true he will apologise. They met at Wimbledon at eight o’clock. There were many people about, who saw what passed. ”

“ Lord Winchelsea told me to day at court, that two of the Mohocks caught a maid of old lady Winchelsea's, at the door of their house in the park, with a candle, and had just lighted out somebody. They cut all her face, and beat her without any provocation. I hear my friend Lewis has got a Mohock in one of the messenger's hands. The queen was at church to day, but was carried in an open chair. She has got an ugly cough, Arbuthnot, her physician, says. ”

“ Hastings, Romney, Hythe, Rye, and Winchelsea, with their dependencies, are now totally gone as ports, and greatly diminished in wealth and consequence. Winchelsea was once so large and handsome, that Elizabeth, during one of her progresses, bestowed upon it the appellation of Little London. ”

“ Winchelsea, who was present at the tumultuous parliament which preceded the baronial triumph, was in full sympathy with their action, though not taking a leading part in it himself. A devastating Scottish foray now made odious the unpatriotic attitude of the clergy. On 28 Nov. a new convocation granted a tenth, raised by each diocesan through clerical machinery. As Edward had not asked for a tax, and as the money was for occasions recognised by the bull of explanation, Winchelsea felt himself secure both from the king and the pope. ”

“ The gradual decay of the port was due to the retiring of the sea in the fifteenth century, which rendered the harbour useless. Winchelsea is a pretty place with massive gateways, survivals of the old fortified town. In the centre of the village is a square containing the remains of the old Parish Church built in 1288 in the Decorated style. The nave and transepts have gone, having been destroyed by the French, and only the chancel remains. ”

“ False Theseus, since thy vows are broke,
⁠May following nymphs beware;
(Methinks I hear how thus she spoke,
⁠Who will not trust too far)
In love, in play, in trade, in war
⁠They best themselves acquit,
Who though their interests shipwreck'd are,
⁠Keep unreprov'd their wit.
"Anne Countess of Winchelsea, Authoress of the foregoing Poems, was the daughter of Sir William Kingsmill of Sidmonton, in the County of Southampton. She married Heneage, second son of Heneage Earl of Winchelsea, who on the death of his Nephew, Charles, succeeded him in the title of Earl. ”

“ Listening to Edward's envoys, Langton and Henry Lacy, earl of Lincoln, Clement suspended the archbishop, who, after vainly imploring the intercession of the king, left England and journeyed to the papal court at Bordeaux, remaining in exile until Edward's death in July 1307. The new king, Edward II., requested Clement to allow Winchelsea to return to his see. The pope assented, but soon after his return to England early in 1308 the archbishop joined the king's enemies ”

“ As they came under the white cliffs the young man put his book of poetry away, and when at last the train stopped beside the boat, he displayed a graceful alacrity with the impedimenta of Miss Winchelsea and her friends. Miss Winchelsea hated nonsense, but she was pleased to see the young man perceived at once that they were ladies, and helped them without any violent geniality ”

“ The Winchelsea continued to be actively employed on the coast of Scotland, in the North Sea, and in the Channel. On 19 Nov. 1746, while cruising off Scilly in company with the Portland, they fell in with the French frigate Subtile of 26 guns. In the chase the Portland was lost sight of, and a severe action between the two frigates ensued, in the course of which Hood was wounded in the hand. On the Portland's coming up the Subtile surrendered, and was added to the English navy as the Amazon (Winchelsea's Log; Troude, i. 308) . ”

“ The same attitude had already been taken up by the royalist clergy in England, who redeemed their outlawry by offering to the king the fifth of their revenues. In March Edward made things easier for the recalcitrants by suspending the edict confiscating the lay fees of the Church. Even Winchelsea saw the wisdom of abandoning his too heroic attitude. In a convocation, held on March 24, he practically applied the doctrine of Romana mater to the English situation. "Let each man," he declared, "save his own soul and follow his own conscience. ”