ficence of the late Mr. A. J. B. Beresford Hope, been recovered to the church, and converted, with the necessary new buildings, to the purposes of a Missionary College, which has been sending its students through all the world, to extend the English Church which Augustine planted.

It was not only religion which the Italian monks introduced into Kent, but the civilisation of the ancient Empire. There is one important passage in Bede (ii. 5) which bears upon this subject. He says that among other benefits which Ethelbert conferred upon the nation was this, that, " with the counsel of his wise men, he introduced judicial decrees after the Roman model, which, being written in English, were still (in Bede's time) observed by them. Among these, in the first place, he set down what satisfaction should be given by those who should steal anything belonging to the Church, the bishop, or the other clergy— resolving to give protection to those whose doctrine he had embraced." The wise men by whose counsel Ethelbert introduced a code of laws were no doubt the constitutional Witenagemot. We can hardly doubt that the laws after the Roman model which the King introduced, with the consent of his Witan, were suggested by Augustine, and perhaps through Augustine by Gregory himself, who, we remember, had studied the Roman law in his youth, and administered it as Prætor of Rome.

The circumstances of the case make it highly probable, and the probability is increased by the fact that, among the questions which Augustine put to Gregory 1 was was one as to the punishment

1 P. 68.

to be inflicted upon anyone who should steal from the Church, and that the first of Ethelbert's laws relates to the satisfaction which should be given by those who steal anything belonging to the Church and its ministers.

These "Dooms of Ethelbert seem to have been issued between 597 and 605; they are the first written code of laws of the English race; they indicate that if the King of Kent did not, like Edwin of Northumbria, consult his Witan before he embraced Christianity and allowed the missionaries to convert such of his subjects as chose to listen to them, he did at an early period seek the sanction of that body for the consequent legislation.

One of the first duties of the monks was to teach learning to such of their converts as, by their social station or exceptional abilities, were fit subjects for it. The new monastery would be a model of architecture to the people, its church probably the first and certainly the finest building of stone erected in Kent since the Roman times. In many ways the cultured Italians would introduce the arts and manners of a refined civilisation among the rude Kentish men.

THE NEGOTIATION WITH THE BRITISH CHURCH

We have seen that, when Gregory assumed to place the British bishops under the Metropolitan jurisdiction of Augustine, as Archbishop of the English, he probably supposed that, as was the case in Italy and Gaul, they were the bishops of surviving towns of the old Roman province, standing like islands amidst the English population which had flowed around them; so that, when the English were converted, it would be highly desirable that the bishops of the two races should be united in one ecclesiastical organisation of the whole country. Augustine found the actual condition of things very different from that which Gregory had contemplated, but still he thought it right to enter into communication with the British bishops, and to invite them to accept the plan which Gregory had sketched out, so far as it was possible in the circumstances. We should hardly have expected that the King of Kent would possess sufficient influence among the British to induce their ecclesiastical leaders to consent to entertain the question and to come to confer with Augustine upon it. The chronic war between the two races, the British and the English, was still in progress. In 577 the West Saxons had won a great battle at Deorham,

which had given them possession of Bath, Gloucester, Cirencester, and the country round about those towns, and had thus severed the native inhabitants of the peninsula of Cornwall and Devon from their countrymen in Wales. The Saxons were still pressing the rest of the native population westward, but had not yet extended their conquests to the line which they ultimately attained: Cumbria was still independent, and was disputing the advance of the Northumbrian kingdom with varying fortunes; the continuity of the independent country, from the Firth of Solway to the Bristol Channel, was not severed until, in 613, the result of a great battle at Chester drove in a wedge of Mercia between Wales and Cumbria.

The Church of Wales had lately reorganised itself on the lines which have lasted to the present day. Out of the confusion which followed the break-up of the Roman province, the inhabitants of Wales had grouped themselves into four independent kingdomsGwynedd, Powys, Menevia, and Gwent-and in each a separate bishopric had been established; Bangor for Gwynedd, Llanelwy (or St. Asaph) for Powys, St. David's for Menevia, and Llandaff for Gwent. The date of the actual foundation of the Sees is not known; but Daniel, the first Bishop of Bangor, died 584 a.d.; St. David died in 601 A.D.; St. Kentigern, the probable founder of St. Asaph, in 612 A.D.; and in the same year also died Dubricius, the founder of Llandaff.

In spite of the political confusion, learning and religion still flourished in Wales. St. David's monastery especially was a great centre, to which not only native Britons, but the Irish also, were coming for

instruction and training in the religious life. From his monastery went forth Finian with several companions, whom legendary story calls the Twelve Apostles of Ireland, to effect a great revival of religion in that island.

This was the condition of the Welsh Church, and some of the great men above mentioned were bishops in it, at the time that Ethelbert invited them to conference with Augustine.

If we try to put ourselves in the position of the British ecclesiastical leaders, when the invitation came to them, we shall perhaps be able to conjecture how the proposal would present itself to their minds. They were the present representatives of the Church which had lately spread over the whole province of Britannia ; the withdrawal of the imperial authority from the island, the conquest of half their country by Barbarian and heathen tribes, had made no difference in their ecclesiastical relations with, or in their personal feelings towards, the Churches of the Continent in general and of Rome in particular.

They now learnt officially that the Bishop of Rome, the illustrious Gregory, had sent a mission to convert their barbarous enemies; that this mission had succeeded in converting Kent, or at least in securing a firm footing in that kingdom; and they were asked to meet the chief of this mission, who had been consecrated as Bishop of the English, in friendly conference. Why not?

It may help us to further enter into the thoughts and feelings of the British Church, if we call to mind that after the retirement of the Empire from the island, while the people were harassed by the invasions of