CHAPTER XXIV

EPISCOPATE OF HONORIUS

AND so our history, in 633 A.D., returns again to Canterbury, and we have, after an absence of eight years, to look round and note what changes have taken place while we have been pursuing the episode of the mission to Northumbria.

We have already seen that Bishop Justus died in 627 A.D., and that, with a delay of eighteen months, Honorius, the boy-pupil of Gregory, was consecrated by Paulinus at Lincoln, and now occupied the See of Canterbury. The See of Rochester was vacant; Romanus, its bishop, having been sent by Justus to Rome on some business, of the nature of which we are not told, had been drowned in "the Italian Sea," i.e. probably in the Mediterranean in his voyage from Marseilles. At the request of Bishop Honorius and King Eadbald, Paulinus undertook the vacant charge, and continued in it till his death twenty years after.

A rather pathetic incident finds its place of record here. It illustrates the occasional intercourse between Kent and Rome, and the slowness of the correspondence between them. Boniface v. had been succeeded in the Roman See by Honorius I. (625 A.D.). News had come to Rome from Britain of the consecration and mission of Paulinus to Northumbria; of the

conversion of King Edwin; and of the other successes of Paulinus, which have been related in the preceding narrative; and of the death of Justus and the succession of Honorius to the See of Canterbury. Honorius of Rome sent back a letter (dated 11th of June, 634 A.D.) of congratulation and exhortation to Edwin, whose body lay on the battlefield at Hatfield, and his head in the porticus of St. Gregory at York. He also sent a pall to Paulinus as Archbishop of York, which found Paulinus a fugitive in Kent, with his northern church in ruins. Whether Paulinus wore it as Bishop of Rochester we are not told, but on his death he bequeathed it to his cathedral. Honorius wrote also to his beloved brother of Canterbury, a letter of congratulation and encouragement.

What specially needs notice in these letters, is that the Bishop of Rome says that it was at the request of the two kings Eadbald and Edwin that he had sent palls to Honorius and Paulinus, in the name of St. Peter the Apostle, granting them authority that when the divine grace shall call either of them to Himself, the survivor shall ordain a bishop in the room of him that is deceased. This is merely a repetition of the original arrangement of Gregory, which we have seen Honorius and Paulinus had already acted upon, without thinking that the gift of the pall was needed for its accomplishment. In his letter to Edwin, the Roman Bishop recommends him to the study of the works of Gregory.

In 630, while Paulinus was still in the north, Eadbald founded a monastery at Dover. Beyond doubt the Monastery of SS. Peter and Paul, at

Canterbury, supplied the nucleus of the new community, which probably, according to the custom of the Middle Ages, consisted of an abbot and twelve brethren; and though the abbot might be one of the Italians, the remainder or the majority of them would, in all likelihood, be Kentish men. We may take this swarm as an evidence that the parent hive was getting overcrowded, and therefore as proof of the continued growth of the Church in Kent.

In the same year an important event had taken place outside the Kingdom of Kent.

Sigebert of East

Anglia had returned from exile in Burgundy, to succeed to his brother's throne.

During his exile

he had become a Christian. Bede calls him a most Christian and learned man, and he was desirous of introducing among his people the institutions which he had seen at work in Gaul. It would appear that his wishes had become known to Honorius; very possibly he had sent to Kent to ask for missioners. Just at that time, Felix, a Burgundian, arrived in Canterbury, seeking some field for missionary enterprise, and Honorius sent him into East Anglia. We conclude, from the way in which Bede speaks of him, that he was already a bishop when he came. He established his See at Dunwich, among the south folk. Shortly after, Fursey, an Irish monk, with four companions, came to East Anglia and founded a monastery at Cnobbesburg (Burgh Castle), among the north folk; from these two centres the gospel gradually spread over that kingdom.

CHAPTER XXV

THE KENTISH MONASTERIES

THE episcopate of Honorius witnessed an interesting and important development of the life of the Kentish Church, in the foundation of religious houses for women. Many English ladies of royal and noble birth, in the early times of the conversion, under the teaching and influence of their monkish guides, manifested a strong predilection for the celibate life.

When there were no nunneries in England, they resorted to French religious houses, especially to those at Brie, Chelles, and Andelys; and many of the girls of royal and noble families seem to have been sent thither for their education.

Brie and Chelles were in the neighbourhood of Paris, Andelys was near Rouen. These were all "double" houses, that is, they consisted of two communities, one of monks the other of nuns, in neighbouring buildings, worshipping in one church, all under the rule of an abbess.

About 630, King Eadbald founded at Folkestone a double monastery, after the pattern of these French houses, for his daughter Eanswitha, who became its first abbess. It was the first nunnery in England.

When Ethelburga arrived a fugitive from Northumberland, the King provided for his widowed sister by

the gift of the royal residence and estate at Lyminge; which Ethelburga turned into another of these double monasteries, of which she retained the rule. The domestic buildings were probably of timber, but the church, probably of stone, was planned on so large a scale, that it was only half built at the time of her death, 10th September, 647 A.D., and its completion was abandoned.

When Oswald, of the rival royal house of Northumbria, defeated Cadwalla, and mounted the throne in 635 A.D., Ethelburga, fearing that he might seek to extinguish the claims of Edwin's heir by his death, sent the boy Yffi, the son of Osfrith, together with her own boy Wuscfrea, to France, to the care of her uncle, King Dagobert; there both the children died in infancy. Her daughter Eanflæda was brought up in the nunnery at Lyminge; and at length the rivalry between the two houses was reconciled by the marriage of Eanflæda to Oswy, the younger brother and successor of Oswald. Once more we have the incident of a royal bride going from Kent to Northumbria, under the care of the priest Romanus as her chaplain; not because Oswy was a pagan, for he was a saintly Christian man, not necessarily because Oswy was of the Celtic school, though, as a matter of fact, Romanus maintained the Kentish customs in the Queen's household, but because, as has been before explained, it belonged to the dignity of a Queen to have her own chaplain.

The Kentish Church, disheartened perhaps by repeated failures, seems to have abandoned the attempt to plant churches in the other kingdoms, and to have limited its labours to its own people.