from the spread of the Faith throughout Britain, at the departure of the Roman Army in A. D. 420,1 they must have been very zealous in this respect. About this time the Christians in Ireland showed their gratitude to their brethren in Britain by sending Piran to Cornwall to carry on the work of Corantinus. Immediately on the death of Piran a church was built over his remains. This church is called S. Piran-in-Sabulo-S. Piran in the Sand-commonly known as Perranzabuloe.

III.

2

We have now reached the period when the British Isles were invaded by the Saxons. Was the Christian Faith annihilated by these barbarians? Let us see. We have already seen that when the Romans evacuated Britain they took with them, in order to protect Roman interests in

other parts of the world, the flower of

A. D. 451-685.

It survived the ravages of Pict and Scot and

Saxon. Strugons to preserve

gles of the Brit

the British Nation. The British were thus left helpless against their powerful neighbours of the North, the Picts and Scots. These were very savage branches of the Celtic race, and wrought fearful destruc

it.

1 The evacuation of Britain by the Romans left the people in a helpless condition, and as they had forgotten how to govern themselves, they were constantly harassed by the Picts of the North and sometimes by the Scots. Gildas says: "The land was despoiled of all its armed soldiery and all its active and flourishing youth."

Vid. Ser. by Abp. Benson at Perranzabuloe, 1878. Also Trelawny's Perranzabuloe, The Lost Church Found, c. i. pp. 1-27, and Appen. ix. Bright, E. Eng. H., cap. i. pp. 30-33.

tion among the British. The people again and again petitioned Rome for aid, but the Romans were too busy defending their mighty fabric of the Empire, now tottering to its base under the onslaught of Northern barbaric hordes, to render them much assistance. So in their despair they invited certain German tribes known as Saxons who had been for some time prowling around their coasts.

2

4

When the northern Picts and Scots were defeated, the Saxons were not satisfied with the reward offered them by the British. War then followed, and the Jutes won Kent. Other of the Saxon tribes now followed, and thus a war of extermination against the Britons began, and lasted for nearly three hundred years. The struggles of the British Christians against these powerful and ferocious heathens were terrible. They contested their fatherland inch by inch. "No land was so stubbornly fought for or so hardly won." " The British fought for their fatherland, their God, their Churches, their Altars; and for every virtue dear to

Bede, c. xii. § 2, A. D. 400; c. xii. § 3, A. D. 412. "Unde rursum mittuntur Roman legati." Cap. xiii. A. D. 446, a letter beginning thus: To Etuis, thrice Consul, the groans of the Britons, gemitus Brit."

Christians which these Saxons ridiculed. It was a terrible contest. It was an awful trial of Faith. Would God, in whom they trusted, deliver them into the hands of these Philistines who ridiculed their God and scoffed at their religion? Every victory gained by the Saxons would give an answer in the affirmative. But in spite of it all, the British would not deny their God. They fought, they struggled to the last for their homes and churches, till driven to the West they found a rest amidst the fastnesses of the magnificent Snowdonian ranges." Fearful was the destruction caused by the Saxons. Man, woman, and child were slaughtered.* Their determination to destroy and annihilate all the Christian Sanctuaries and every thing that appertained to the Christian Faith could not be exceeded. Bede says that all public and private buildings were destroyed; the priests' blood was spilt upon the Altars; prelates and people were destroyed together by fire and sword, no man daring to give them decent burial. For a time the British Bishops of London and York held their Sees, but when London sacrificed to Diana, and Westminster to Apollo, and when all was lost they retired among their fellow Christians to Wales.5

The British Christians have been accused of refusing 1 Drych y Prifoesoedd, cap. iv. pt. i.

2 Hume, His. Eng., cap. i. p. 17, ed. 1848. Vid. also Short, Ch. His. i. § 6.

They spared neither age, nor sex, nor condition... the people were butchered in heaps."-Ibid., p. 17. Vid. also Green, p. 47.

to aid in the conversion of these Saxons. And no doubt the accusation is true to a great extent. But who, having the heart of a patriot, a warm heart of a Celt, can blame them? The wonder is that amidst such a calamity they retained undefiled their Faith." Nothing more pathetic exists in any language than some of the songs composed about this period. They are the wails of a nation faint and broken-hearted under a great disaster :

3

The cry is heard the long loud wail-
O'er flood and plain, o'er hill and dale ;
It is the heart of Cymru bleeds,
For fallen sons and treacherous deeds.
Dismay dwells in Caradoc's halls;
The Royal minstrel, doleful, calls

Forth from his heart a strain his own sad heart appals.4

Let those who blame the British ask themselves whether they would, in the event of a similar calamity to their Fatherland, caused say by half a dozen ferocious tribes from the Kingdom of Uganda, be very enthusiastic, immediately upon such an awful calamity, to convert them to the Christian faith, and whether these victorious barbarians would be in a state of mind to receive it. But enough!

Was Christianity annihilated by the Saxons? In those parts conquered by them, such as Kent, Sussex, Essex, Wessex, East Anglia, and Northumbria it well

1 Bede, cap. xiii. Newell, cap. xviii.

" "One of the most fearful blows that ever fell on any nation." Vid. Freeman, Norman Conquest, i. 13, 20. Vid. also Trelawny, p. 64.

• Vid. Nicholes, Antiq. of Wales; also Parry's Royal Visits. 4 Vid. Poetry Anc. Welsh Bards. Ieuan, Pryd., Hir.

1

nigh was. But in the western parts of the country which were conquered it was not. This part comprised Strathclyde, including the country from the Clyde to the Dee, the Kingdom of Cumbria, North and South Wales, Devon, Cornwall, Somerset, and Avalon."

Furthermore, the preaching of the Gospel by British Christians in Ireland and Scotland had by this time borne wonderful fruit, as is proved by the flourishing condition of the Christian Faith in those parts. Witness the work of Cyndeyrn and others among the Picts; Patrick among the Scots; and the mission of Columba to North Britain. From such centres as these, the whole of North Britain and indeed the whole of Saxon England, with the exception of Wessex, South Saxonia, Kent, and East Anglia, was ultimately converted to Christianity.*

Let us now return to the British Christians. What was their condition? Never had a greater calamity fallen upon any Christian nation. But they never de

1 "The Saxons were Pagans, and it is not likely that [what was left of] the British clergy, during the desperate struggle, would dare to undertake the conversion of their masters. The Saxons would not accept the Gospel from the hands of enemies they so much despised."-Trelawny's Perranzabuloe, ii. pp. 64-65.

2 Newell, An. Br. Ch., cap. xvi. p. 143. The Saxons had many British Christian slaves.

3 Hore, iii. 42.

4 Green, c. i. pp. 57-58.

A

"The new Christian life soon beat too strongly to brook confinement within the bounds of Ireland itself." Hore, pp. 48, 77. Bright, pp. 54, 143. It was not by the action of Rome that the whole of England was converted very large portion of England was converted, not by the action of the Roman missionaries, but from the North."-Speech of Mr. Gladstone in House of Commons, May 24, 1870.