succeed him, by race a South Saxon, a nation not yet converted to the faith, so that we conclude him to have been one of the clergy of the Kentish Church.

In the time of Deusdedit a new minster was founded in the Isle of Thanet. The legend connected with it is that when Earconbert succeeded to the throne of Kent, it was at the expense of the two infant sons of his elder brother Eormenred, and that, to make his seat secure, Thunor, one of his thanes, with his connivance, murdered the hapless children. When Egbert succeeded to the throne, he made atonement for his father's sin to Mildred, the sister of the slain boys, by granting her as much land in Thanet as a hind could run round in a day. Mildred had been sent to Chelles for education; the wicked abbess tried to persecute the princess into marrying one of her relatives; her mother Eormenburga sent ships to bring her home; the stone on which she first stepped in landing at Ebbe's Fleet bore-it was said the impress of her foot, and in after years an oratory was built over the sacred spot. Mildred founded a convent on the land given her by Egbert, and, as its abbess, ruled a great community of seventy nuns. St. Mildred became the most popular of the female saints of Kent. Her book of the Gospels was a famous relic. It was said that once when a man took a false oath upon it his eyes dropped out; no wonder it was ever after in great request. In after years there was a great dispute between St. Mary's Minster in Thanet and St. Augustine's at Canterbury, as to which had the honour to possess her bones. St. Mildred came of a family of saints. Her elder sister, St. Milburga, founded a monastery at Wenlock, and

was its first abbess; her younger sister, St. Milgitha, was a nun at Eastry in Kent.

But if little happened in Kent in the episcopate of Deusdedit, important events happened in the north, which had a considerable influence upon the history of the Church in Kent and in all England.

The difference between the Celtic and the Canterbury customs did not much matter, so long as the Church of Kent followed one and the Church of Northumbria the other; but they did cause practical inconvenience when King Oswy and his men were keeping the great festival of Easter, while Queen Eanflæda and her household were still in the midst of the austerities of Holy Week. It happened that Agilbert, a French bishop, who had been ministering for some years in Wessex, came on a visit to the Northumbrian court, and Wifrid returned from Rome about the same time. Their observations induced Oswy to summon a synod at Hilda's Monastery of Whitby, to consider the question; and there the King determined to adopt the customs which he was assured were universal in Western Christendom (664). Cedd, Bishop of the East Saxons, was present at the synod, and accepted its decision. Colman, the Bishop of Northumbria, with the Scottish monks and a large company of the English monks of Lindisfarne, refused to abandon the customs of their spiritual forefathers, and retired from the kingdom. Tuda was chosen bishop in Colman's place. Thus the English churches of the Celtic school settled for themselves the question of the customs, not at the demand of Rome, and without even asking Canterbury to assist at the decision.

CHAPTER XXVI

ARCHBISHOP THEODORE

IN the summer of the year 664 A.D. occurred one of those plagues which so frequently ravaged mediæval Europe, it was called the Yellow Pest. In the north the recently-appointed Tuda, Bishop of the Northumbrians, seems to have been one of its victims, and Cedd, Bishop of the East Saxons, died at his Monastery of Lestingay. In the south, Earconbert the King of Kent, and Deusdedit the bishop, died on the same day (July 14), and Damian, Bishop of Rochester, probably died a little before Deusdedit. The plague raged in Essex, and occasioned the sub-King Sigehere, and that part of the people whom he governed, to apostatise from the faith.1 Egbert succeeded his father on the throne, and the episcopal See remained long vacant. Wilfrid had been chosen to fill Tuda's place in Northumbria, but must needs go to France for consecration, and stay there so long that Chadd was appointed over his head. Chadd came to Kent to seek consecration (664 A.D.), and found when he arrived there that the bishop was dead, and that there was no prospect of a speedy appointment to the vacancy; he therefore went thence to Wini2 at Winchester,

1 Bede, Eccl. Hist. iii. 30.

2 Wini had been ordained in Gaul.-Bede, Eccl. Hist. iii. 7.

who consecrated him, with the assistance of "two bishops of the British nation,1 who kept Easter after the canonical manner, for at that time there was no other bishop in all Britain canonically ordained besides this Wini." When Wilfrid came back and found his See occupied, Egbert invited him to Kent to do what was required as bishop there during the vacancy.

The affairs of the Church were in confusion; with a double appointment in Northumbria, no bishop at all in Kent, and the East Saxon See vacant; with the Celtic customs still authorised in Mercia, and lingering in Northumbria and Essex, and the South Saxons still unconverted. The Kings of Northumbria and Kent seem to have consulted together on the unsatisfactory state of things. We may with probability credit the older and more experienced, as well as the more powerful, Oswy with the proposal that they should seek the consent of the other kings and churches to choose a man who would be acceptable to all, and send him to Rome to be consecrated there, and, on his return, to exercise the authority of an archbishop over all the churches and bring them into harmony. It was an admirable scheme, and, backed by the influence of the Bretwalda, it met with general acceptance. Wigheard, 'a good man and fit priest," one of Deusdedit's clergy, apparently not a monk, was chosen, and sent with some companions to Rome. But Rome, half in ruins, and with the Campagna falling out of cultivation, and becoming the breeding-place of malaria, was an unhealthy place, and Wigheard, with almost all his com

1 Bede, Eccl. Hist. Perhaps the two bishops of independent West Wales (Devonshire and Cornwall).

panions, died there of pestilence before he could be consecrated, and was buried at the Church of the Apostle St. Peter.

We gather from a letter of Vitalian, then Bishop of Rome, to "Oswy, King of the Saxons," that those who sent Wigheard had agreed not to incur the difficulties and delays of choosing another man of their own, but to ask Vitalian to choose a suitable man, and consecrate and send him; and Vitalian says: "We have not been able yet to find, considering the length of the journey, a man, docile and qualified in all respects to be a bishop, according to the tenor of your letters. But as soon as such a proper person shall be found, we will send him well-instructed to your country, that he may, by word of mouth, and by the divine oracles, with the assistance of God, root out all the enemy's tares throughout your island."

The English kings had sent many vessels of gold and silver as presents to the Roman Bishop; he sends back some relics in return, of the blessed Apostles St. Peter and St. Paul, of the holy martyrs Laurentius, John and Paul, Gregory and Pancratius. Some of these relics would have had a special interest for the disciples of the Italian missionaries in Kent; we have seen that they dedicated one of their churches in Canterbury to St. Pancras and for what reason, the Church of SS. John and Paul, built over the place of their martyrdom, was also on the Cælian Hill. Vitalian possibly supposes that the Northumbrians have inherited the traditions of Canterbury. The Bishop also sends a present to the Queen, a cross, with a gold key, made out of the chains of St. Peter