| Share page |
|
200 THE SUSSEX COAST |
||
|
his own words: " When I found him pretty hearty one day, I desired him to tell me whether he conceived that a man living and dying a Turk, Papist, or Socinian could be saved. All the answer I could gain from him was, that he did not absolve them, and would not condemn them. I was much displeased with the answer upon divers reasons." When Chillingworth was buried in the cloisters of Chichester Cathedral, where his tablet may still be seen (1644), Cheynell flung after the body into the grave a copy of the book he disliked, bawling out, "Get thee gone then, thou cursed booke, which has seduced so many precious souls ; get thee gone, thou corrupt rotten booke, earth to earth and dust to dust; get thee gone into the place of rottenness, that thou mayest rot with thy author, and see corruption." A little farther out on the London Road is the Down village of Patcham, with an Early Norman church over wThose plain and massive chancel arch is a later fresco, very well preserved, representing the Last Judgment. The tower is Early English, but, like the rest of the church (except the new aisle), covered with Roman cement. In the chancel is a very crude tablet with two nude figures and Ionic pilasters to Richard Shelley, 1594. Patcham Place, one of the seats of the family, stands on low ground under a hanging wood on the Down-side. The original date stone (" 1567 I.A.S." apparently, but it is much decayed), brick-vaulted cellars, and old beams remain, but the house was remodelled in the eighteenth century. For a time it belonged to the Stapleys (who sold it in 1700); one of them, Anthony, played a leading part in the Civil War, being Governor of Chichester and a Regicide. There is an ancient round dove-cot near the church. |
||