been baptized, and as soon as he was his own master he revolted from the restraint of Christianity. He was urged thereto by the desire to contract a marriage in a forbidden degree, about which Augustine long ago had consulted Gregory, as if he had found it a common custom among the heathen Kentish men, for on his father's death he took his widowed stepmother in marriage. We thus, for the first time, become acquainted with the fact that Queen Bertha had been sometime dead, and that Ethelbert had married again. Who the new Queen was is quite unknown, the historians appear to have purposely withheld all information about her. The King's example led others who had abandoned unlawful connections to revert to them, and encouraged all who were disinclined to the new religion.

Shortly after, Seberht, King of the East Saxons, died, leaving his three sons as his heirs. They had seemed to conform to Christianity during their father's lifetime, but now they reverted to the old religion, and granted liberty to all their people to follow their evil example. An anecdote which Bede relates proves that these three East Saxon princes had not been baptized; and we are led to the serious inference that if the very sons of the Christian kings were still outside the pale of the Church, it is most likely that many others of their principal men, and great numbers of the common people, were still heathen. The East Saxon princes compelled Mellitus and his followers to depart from their kingdom.

The details of the reaction at Rochester are not recorded. All we know is that Justus abandoned his See, and both Mellitus and Justus retired to

Canterbury. On consultation, "it was unanimously agreed that it was better for them all to return to their own country, where they might serve God in freedom, than to continue without any advantage among those barbarians who had revolted from the faith." The words seem to mean that the apostasy was very general, and that the whole body of the Italians proposed to abandon the work. "Mellitus and Justus accordingly went first, and withdrew into France, designing there to await the event of things. . . Laurentius, being about to follow them, and to quit Britain," ordered his bed to be laid on the last night in the church of the monastery. There, Bede relates, St. Peter appeared to him, scourged him severely, and demanded "why he would forsake the flock which he had committed to him? or to what shepherds would he commit Christ's sheep that were in the midst of wolves?" and other words to the same purpose. We might explain this as the vivid dream of a mind harassed and excited by doubts of the lawfulness of abandoning the work, but that the sequel of the narrative asserts that the stripes were real. What can be said about the supernatural scourging? Is it possible that St. Peter's reproaches, in his dream, awakened his conscience to the sin of deserting the post of duty, and that, in his dream, St. Peter enjoined the penance which the bishop therefore attributes to the apostle, though the stripes were dicted by his own hand? Next morning Laurentius

told his vision.

The preternatural occurrence had so great an effect upon Eadbald, that he abjured the worship of idols, renounced his unlawful marriage, embraced the faith of Christ, was baptized, and promoted the welfare of the Church to the utmost of The nameless Queen ultimately appears to have retired with a daughter, Mildred, to the Monastery of Lyminge. Eadbald soon after sought for a wife, after his father's example, in the house of Clovis, and married Emma, the daughter of Theodebert, King of Austrasia.

his power.

The East Saxon princes were shortly afterwards slain in battle against the West Saxons; but the people "having turned back to their old idolatry, would not be corrected nor return to the unity of faith and charity which is in Christ." For when Eadbald sent over to France and recalled Mellitus and Justus, just a year after their departure, Justus had no difficulty in resuming his See at Rochester; but the Londoners would not receive their bishop back again, choosing rather to be under their idolatrous high-priest. It does not appear that any progress had been made among the East Saxons outside London. The evangelisation of the whole people had to wait till Cedd came from Lindisfarne and set up mission stations at Ithanacester (Bradwell-on-Sea) on the Blackwater, and at East Tilbury on the Thames; his successor Earconwald set up his bishop-stool again in London.

CHAPTER XXII

THE MISSION TO NORTHUMBRIA

It is probable that Bishop Laurentius died soon after the events last mentioned, in the year 619 A.D. He was succeeded in the See of Canterbury by Mellitus, who appears to have been living there since his final expulsion from London. He ruled the Church

We know little about

of Canterbury for five years. him. He was noble by birth, but much nobler in mind," cheerfully passing over all earthly things, and always aspiring to love, seek, and attain to those which are celestial." It gives a touch of human interest to know that he was subject to gout. On one occasion, when an accidental fire was raging among the timber buildings of the city, and a south wind was carrying the conflagration towards the cathedral buildings, the bishop had himself carried to the flames, and a change in the direction of the wind from south to north, which stopped the progress of the flames, was attributed to his prayers. The incidental statement that the Church of the Four Crowned Martyrs stood at the place where the fire raged most, acquaints us with the fact that another church, with that dedication, had been built in the city, probably to afford accommodation to the increasing number of Christians among its population. The unusual dedi

cation of this new church is accounted for in an interesting way. Honorius, Bishop of Rome, built a church in 626 A.D. to the Four Crowned Martyrs (Carporferus, Severus, Severianus, and Victorianus), on the ridge of the Cælian Hill. As the Roman missionaries had dedicated Rochester Cathedral to St. Andrew, the patron saint of their old monastery, and the temple on whose site the monastery was built to St. Pancras, because their old monastery was partly on the site of the estates of the family of the boy martyr, so now they give to their new church the same dedication as that of Honorius's church in the near neighbourhood of their old home at Rome. Ethelbald built a church, dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, eastward of the great Church of St. Augustine's monastery, which was consecrated by Mellitus. Mellitus died in 624 A.D., and was buried with his predecessors in the north porticus of the monastic church.

Justus, Bishop of Rochester, succeeded Mellitus in the archbishopric, and consecrated Romanus as Bishop of Rochester in his own stead. He seems to have thought it necessary to obtain the sanction of the Bishop of Rome for this step. Boniface sent him the pall, which neither of his two latest predecessors had received, together with a verbose letter, of which it is only necessary to give one sentence. "We have also, brother, encouraged by zeal for what is good, sent you, by the bearer of these, the pall, which we have only given leave to use in the celebration of the sacred mysteries; granting you likewise to ordain bishops when there shall be occasion, through the mercy of our Lord; that so the gospel of Christ, by