Excerpt from Richard of Wyche: Labourer, Scholar, Bishop, and Saint (1197-1253)

A few months before she was attacked by her last illness, the late Mother Francis Raphael Drane began to collect materials for a life of St Richard of Chichester, to whom she bore a great devotion. Unhappily, she was unable to proceed far in her task, and left merely some notes and references, sufficient, however, to indicate roughly the lines on which she had intended to work.

The present volume has been compiled, as far as was possible, according to the idea suggested by these notes, which show that Mother Francis Raphael had planned not only to describe the life of St Richard as Bishop of Chichester, but also to give a picture of his early and later surroundings, bringing out what she believed to have been their influence upon him, and their share in the formation of his character. She wished, in fact, to present the story of her hero as a living portrait within a living frame.

To do this successfully required gifts of a high order, and the present writer is fully conscious how inadequately the design has been carried out.

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