CHICHELY, or Chichele, Henry (1362-1443), an English primate, was born at Higham Ferrers, in Northamptonshire, in 1362. After studying at Oxford, he was sent on various embassies to the Papal and French courts; in 1409, he was representative of England in the Council of Pisa, which deposed Gregory and Benedict, and elevated Alexander V. to the papacy; and, in 1414, he became archbishop of Canterbury. He was distinguished for his zeal in the cause of the English Church, which he defended against the pretension of the Pope to dispose of ecclesiastical preferments. He was also, on the other hand, a determined opponent of Wycliffe. He spent much of his wealth in the establishment of All Soul’s College, Oxford, and in adorning Canterbury Cathedral and Lambeth Palace.
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CHICHESTER, a municipal and parliamentary borough, episcopal city, and market-town of England, in Sussex, situated at the foot of a small spur of the South Down Hills, on the widest part of the plain to which it gives name. It is distant about 60 miles S.W. from London, and 14 N.E. from Portsmouth. Chichester still retains its ancient walls, which have a circuit of about a mile and a half, and probably follow the line of the Roman fortifications. The town is well-built, and consists of four principal streets, which meet at right angles at a central octagonal cross, fifty feet high, erected by Bishop Story, and reputed to be one of the finest structures of the kind in Great Britain. Of the public buildings the most remarkable are the cathedral, which is 407 feet in length and 150 in breadth, and is note-worthy as having double side-aisles, the church of St Paul—a modern Gothic edifice, the guild-hall, the corn-exchange, the market-house, the infirmary, and the museum of the Chichester Literary Society and Mechanics’ Institute. There is also a large cattle-market at the east of the city capable of accommodating several thousand head of cattle. It is one of the principal cattle-markets in the south of England, and was erected in 1871 by the corporation of the city at a cost of £15,000. In the cathedral are a number of ancient and curious monuments, besides nine by Flaxman, one of which is in memory of the poet Collins, who was a native of the city, and is buried in the church of St Andrew’s. The diocese of Chichester includes the whole county of Sussex except a few parishes which are peculiars, and comprises nearly 300 benefices. The palace of the bishop is in the city of Chichester....
There is a grammar-school, founded by Bishop Story in 1497, and the bluecoat school boards and educates about 30 boys. Chichester communicates with the sea by means of a short canal. The borough, which returns one member to parliament, had a population of 9054 in 1871.
Chichester, as already mentioned, is undoubtedly built on an ancient Roman site, near a line of road now known as the Stane Street; and it is usually, though hardly with absolute certainty, identified with Regnum,, a town of the Belgae mentioned in the Itinerary of Antonine. A slab of grey Sussex marble, now preserved at Good wood, was discovered in 1713 on the site of the present council chamber, bearing an inscription which has given rise to an ingenious hypothesis, which represents Chichester as the seat of the native king Cogidubnus, mentioned by Tacitus as possessing independent authority, and this king as the father of the Claudia to whom reference is made in the Second Epistle to Timothy. The inscription proves at least that the town was the abode of a considerable body of craftsmen, and that they erected a temple to Neptune and Minerva under the patronage of a certain Pudens. With the conjectural restoration of a few letters it reads as follows :—“A r eptuni et Minervae templum ^ro salute dowιws divinae ex auctoritate Tib. Claud. Cogidubni r. leg. aug. in Brit. (7oZZegium fabror. et qui in eo a sacris sunt d. s. d. donante aream 7Wente Pudentini fil.” In the early Saxon period the town seems to have been destroyed by Aella, and soon afterwards restored by Cissa, whose memory is preserved in the modern name, equivalent to Cissa’s Caster, or Castrum. In 967 it was chosen by King Edgar as the seat of a mint, and specimens of the pennies are still extant. At the time of the Conquest it had only 283 houses and a church; but in 1083 the bishopric was removed thither from Selsey, and a cathedral was consecrated in 1108. This building having been destroyed by fire, a new one was erected in the end of the 12th century by Bishops Ralph and Seffrid, and this may be regarded as the basis of the present edifice. In 1213 the city was formally incorporated. During the civil war it was captured from the Royalists by Sir William Waller, whose soldiers did great damage to the cathedral. In spite of all attempts to preserve it, the tower and spire came to the ground in 1861; but a restoration has since been effected under the direction of Sir G. Gilbert Scott. Besides the poet Collins, Chichester numbers among its worthies Bishop Juxon, Hayley the friend of Cowper, and three artists of the 18th century, generally known as the
Three Smiths of Chichester.” See Lower’s Sussex, s,v.; Quarterly Review, vol. xcvii.
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