
After his second banishment from Northumbria, St. Wilfrid found refuge in Sussex under the protection of king Eathelwealh of the South Saxons and became the very first bishop of Selsey (Church Norton) in 681 and established a monastic cathedral there. Later king Eathelwealh was deposed by Caedwaller of Wessex and c 683 Caedwaller granted further lands to St. Wilfrid to support a monastery at Pagham (known as the Pagham 100). In 687 Wilfrid made his peace with Archbishop Theodore and king Aldfrith of Northumbria and was reinstated to his Episcopal see in Northumbria. Before leaving, ‘he granted the villa called Pagham, which he had received with all its associated goods by royal gift, to that church at Canterbury for possession by perpetual right prior to returning to his own lands’. To this day this makes the parish of Bognor a peculiar of Canterbury.
After the Norman Conquest there was a requirement to move cathedrals into city centres and in 1075 construction started on a new cathedral in the centre of the former Roman town of Chichester sunder bishop Stigand, the last Bishop of Selsey. The cathedral was consecrated in 1108.