DUNWICH  , a

village in the Eye parliamentary division of Suffolk, England, on the coast between Southwold and Aldeburgh, 5 M . S.S.W. of Southwold . Pop . (1901) 157 . This was in Anglo-Saxon days the most important commercial centre and port of East Anglia . It was probably a Romano-British site . The period of its highest dignity was the Saxon era, when it was called Dommocceaster and Dunwyk . Early in the 7th century, when Sigebert became king of East Anglia, Dunwich was chosen his capital and became the nursery of Christianity in Eastern Britain . A bishopric was founded (according to Bede in 63o, while the Anglo-Saxon chronicle gives 635), the name of the first bishop being Felix . Sigebert's reign was notable for his foundation of a school modelled on those he had seen in France; it was probably at Dunwich, but formed the nucleus of what afterwards became the university of Cambridge . By the middle of the 11th century (temp . Edward the Confessor) Dunwich was declining, as it had already suffered from an evil which later caused its total ruin, namely the inroads of the sea on the unstable coast .

At the

Norman Conquest the manor was granted to Robert Malet; but the history of the place remains blank until the reign of Henry II., when it re-emerged into prosperity . In 1173 the sight of its strength caused Robert earl of Leicester to despair of besieging it . The town received a charter from King John . In the reign of Edward I. it is recorded to have possessed 36 ships and " barks," trading to the North Seas, Iceland and elsewhere, with 24 fishing boats, besides maintaining 1 r ships of war . But early in the reign of Edward III. the attacks of the sea began to make headway again . In 1347 over 400 houses were destroyed . In 1570, after a terrible storm, appeal was made to Elizabeth, who parsimoniously granted money obtained by the sale of lead and other materials from certain neighbouring churches . But the doomed town was gradually engulfed, and now the only outward evidence of the old wealthy port is the ruined fragment of the church of All Saints, overhanging a low cliff, which, as it crumbles, exposes the coffins and bones in the former churchyard, the greater part of which has disappeared . A small white flower growing wild among the ruins is called the Dunwich Rose, and is traditionally said to have been planted and cultivated by monks . Many relics have been discovered by excavation, and even from beneath the waves . Until 1832 Dunwich returned 2 members to parliament .