Page:Highways and Byways in Sussex.djvu/178

 "As to the generall performance of these three brethren, I know the Affidavit of a Poet carrieth but a small credit in the court of History; and the Comedy made of them is but a friendly foe to their Memory, as suspected more accomodated to please the present spectators, then inform posterity. However, as the belief of Mitio (when an Inventory of his adopted Sons misdemeanours was brought unto him) embraced a middle and moderate way, nec omnia credere nec nihil, neither to believe all things nor nothing of what was told him: so in the list of their Atchievements we may safely pitch on the same proportion, and, when abatement is made for poeticall embelishments, the remainder will speak them Worthies in their generations."—Such were the three Shirleys.

Wiston church, which shelters under the eastern wall of the house, almost leaning against it, has some interesting tombs.

Walking west from Wiston we come to the tiny hamlet of Buncton, one of the oldest settlements in Sussex, a happy hunting ground for excavators in search of Roman remains, and possessing in Buncton chapel a quaint little Norman edifice. The word Buncton is a sign of modern carelessness for beautiful words: the original Saxon form was "Biohchandoune," which is charming.

Buncton belongs to Ashington, two miles to the north-west on the Worthing road, a quiet village with a fifteenth-century church (a mere child compared with Buncton Chapel) and a famous loss. The loss is tragic, being no less than that of the parish register containing a full and complete account, by Ashington's best scribe, of a visit of Good Queen Bess to the village in 1591. A destroyed church may be built again, but who shall restore the parish register? The book, however, is perhaps still in existence, for it was deliberately stolen, early in the eighteenth century, by a thief who laid his plans as carefully as did Colonel Blood in his attack on the regalia, abstracting the volume from a cupboard in the rectory, through a hole which