Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 137.pdf/391

  as an apostle of truth. If, pandering to popular prejudice, he substitutes sensational fiction for inexorable fact, though he may achieve distinction among the ephemeridæ of his time, posterity will refuse him the title of historian.

 

 From Fraser's Magazine.

has been no systematic research or connected relation of the touching history of loss and stirring event, that belts our island below the waves that encircle its coasts. We frequently hear of encroachment of the sea in one place; of land hardly fought for and hardly regained in another; yet few people trouble themselves to recall the circumstances under which the sea stole in and the soil crumbled and fell. Many a time-worn cliff and shifting sand-beach could testify to histories as strange and tragic as any fiction could invent.

It was with an attempt to unveil the oblivion that has covered one of the most interesting spots in the England of former years that the present paper was begun. Keble's bequest of a lifeboat drew momentary attention to a place known best to lovers of ecclesiastical history, and led us to investigate a history of its growth and decline, which an antiquary of the last century, Gardner, made it his work to record, leaving a history as strange and touching as any in our annals.

On the edge of a cliff, on a desolate part of the Suffolk coast, stands in solitude a grey, ruined tower, looming grimly over the yellow sandstone rock which the sea has eaten and furrowed with wavelines down to the bar of white sand which stretches below. That ruin is almost all that remains of a considerable city, one of England’s principal towns and seaports, a flourishing place that was member of the Cinque Ports at one time; while now the white-tipped waves and pale blue sea roll heavily over tower and spire, streets and houses, which for six miles to seaward lie buried beneath, to the border of the horizon where we see the breakers lashing over the bar, and where the waste cliff was washed up and piled to the destruction of many a good ship.

Dunwich (or Don Wyc), now represented by a small fishing village, was, as Gardner tells us, a royal residence, and the first episcopal see in the kingdom of East An- glia; and not merely from his record, but from other sources, it is easy to trace its history as it was torn away bit by bit, and street by street fell into the merciless sea. An account of Dunwich is given by Bede. It was first distinguished through Sige-bert's establishing his court there with his favorite, Bishop Felix, who founded the see, and he "graced it with many royal palaces." If chroniclers be trustworthy, this king must have been an able ruler and reformer to have so quickly established "civility, morality, and Christianity throughout his domains." Stow relates of him that "his great desire was to suppress idolatry, and in this he was assisted by Felix, a pious priest from Burgundy, who was consecrated first bishop of East Anglia by Honorius, Archbishop Cantuar, who sent him to preach the gospel in 636." Many famous men then resorted to Dunwich to be coadjutors in promoting the grand design of conversion, which by their zeal was effected. Seminaries vrere established there, "and the sable cloud of paganism dispelled." We find in Speed's chronicle this curious rhyme:—

The fourth bishop—Bisus, or Bosa — in his old age divided the see into Dunwich for Suffolk, and Elmham for Norfolk. Goodwin mentions nine bishops of Dunwich and eleven of Elmham. Humbert, the last of Elmham, was consecrated about 826. He crowned Edmund king of East Anglia, and with him was martyred by the Danes in 870, Nov. 20. Wibred, Bishop of Dunwich, succeeded him, and again united both sees at Elmham.

There can be no doubt that Dunwich was a town of considerable size. Suckling gives a tradition "that the tailors of Dunwich would formerly fit in their shops and see the shipping at anchor in Yarmouth roads." To do that, the coast must have been convex on the south, and Dunwich six miles to eastward.

In Edward the Confessor's survey, Edin de Laspuld held Dunwich for one manor, two carves of land besides one in the demesne, twelve bordari, and one hundred and twenty burgesses, one church.

When Robert Malet held it, only one carve of land remained, for the sea had already commenced its destructive work.

The town has been fully described by more than one historian. It was built on a cliff forty feet high, with a rampart of earth east and west, fortified with 