The Sussex Coast - online book

A Literary & Historical travel guide to the Sussex Coast

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PEVENSEY
309
" Certes this writer (otherwise being a lewd popish hypocrite and vngratious priest) shewed himselfe herein not to be altogether void of iudgement, sith the phantasticall follie of our nation, even from the courtier to the carter is such, that no forme of apparell liketh vs longer than the first garment is in the wearing."
Holinshed is rather hard on poor Merry Andrew, but when one comes on such a passage as the following one does feel that he was one of those who hope to improve the world rather by what they say than by what they do—
" U The Auctor respondeth : O good Englyshe man, here what I shall say; Study to have learning, with vertue night and day ; Leve thy swearyng, and set pryde a syde, And cal thou for grace that with thee it may byde."
The church of Westham (west hamlet), which forms so beautiful a picture amid its foliage when seen from Anderida framed by the ivied ruins of the gateway, is older than anything existing in Pevensey church. The arch into the south transept and the south wall of the nave with splayed windows are parts of a cruciform Norman church, which seems to have had three eastern apses opening from chancel and transepts. A north aisle was added in the Early English period and its arcade remains. The rest of the building is good fifteenth-century work, including chancel, aisle walls, porch with niches and fine tower with flint and stone in squares and a perfect stoup by its door. A rood turret projects from the aisle, a bay from its east end; there was a second rood stair just north of the chancel arch; under the east window is an inlaid cross of flint. The nave
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