passed into Christian hands in Constantine's time. We know from Justin Martyr that in earlier days the Eucharist was celebrated in the body of the church, and that there was much of that unseemly crowding about which St. Paul complained.1 The raised space within the apse of the basilica carried its own recommendation for the avoidance of this scandal, and from the cancelli, or rails which stood in front of it, comes our word' chancel.'

The comparison of this building with known specimens attests its ante-conquestal character; boulder stones and flints alone are used, even the arches and angles being formed of them, and there is no trace of ashlar throughout the whole structure. The orientation is true. There are thought to be some rudiments of a tower; in the walls are sundry holes which do not sufficiently correspond to enable us to regard them as used for scaffolding; Roman urns are recorded to have been dug up at no great distance. These fragmentary notices of one of the earliest Christian buildings in Great Britain are meagre enough, but comprise nearly everything that can be said about it.

To Sigebert also we owe the residence of St. Fursey, as well as the coming of St. Felix. That Irish missionary, in his travels, was kindly received at the East Anglian monarch's Court, where he made many converts, and confirmed in the faith those who already believed. After a time, feeling his strength to be failing, he desired to establish a monastery before his death. Sigebert had granted him a site at a place called Cnobheresburg, in a camp surrounded by woods, and pleasant from its nearness to the sea, not hard to identify with Burgh Castle, the Gariannonum of the Counts of the Saxon Shore. Here he had many visions of the other world, which he did not relate publicly, but only to those who sought him out from desire of reformation of life. Afterwards he quitted all the business of this world, and even his monastery, becoming an anchorite. When the irruption of the

1 1 Cor. xi. 17, etc.

pagans appeared to threaten destruction to what was dear to him, he retired to France, built a monastery at Lagny, near Paris (Latiniacum), where his body was said not to have seen corruption.

Attracted by the calm of monastic life, and perhaps by the visions vouchsafed to St. Fursey, Sigebert retired to a monastery of his own founding at Beodricesworth, afterwards Bury St. Edmund's. Egric, his successor, however, became embroiled with that old pagan, Penda, King of Mercia, who, according to William of Malmesbury, hated peace worse than death, and as the East Anglian soldiers would hear of no leader but Sigebert, the peaceful cell had to be abandoned for the camp. Bearing only a wand, the ex-King appeared at the head of his troops, and perished with Egric at the hands of the Mercian idolater in A.D. 642, probably in the bounds of East Anglia, but where is unknown.

By this time the good Felix and his successor, Thomas the Deacon, who seems to have been a Fenman,1 had gone to their rest, and Bregilsus Bonifacius2 was Bishop of Dunwich.

The new King, Ina, or Anna, son of Eni, no less odious to Penda than his predecessors had been, fell in battle at the field of Bulcamp (bellus campus), now in the parish of Blythburgh, in A.D. 654 or 655. It is thought, not unreasonably, that his capital was Norwich; that Conisford (Kingsford) Ward, which stretches down to Trowse, already mentioned, is named from him; that his progress to his last battlefield was mainly along the Roman road, Ant. IX., already mentioned; and it is quite possible that King's Lane in Henham is on the line of march. His tomb, doubted by Kirby, is shown in Blythburgh Church; but the later dates of the monument and of the church which enshrines it are no valid grounds for rejecting the tradition, the stone being renewable in the

1 'Ex Girviorum proximia oriundus.'—William of Malmesbury. 9 A fragment of his name remained in my memory in some fifteenthcentury glass in Blythburgh Church.

Middle Ages in the same spirit in which James I. placed the memorial to Ethelred I. in Wimborne Minster. On the field of battle now stands the partially-filled Union Workhouse of the Blything Hundred. I am not aware that much has been discovered at this spot. Some of the bodies of the slain may have been removed to Blythburgh, for in 1758 and in 1851 great numbers of bones were discovered near the site of that priory. One circumstance in the later discovery, the interment of bodies with their feet eastward and westward alternately, may have been in mockery of the usual custom in Christian burial. The body of Firminus, whom some speak of as Anna's son, and others as his brother, is said to have been removed to Bury St. Edmund's.

'Cast down, but not destroyed,' are words which may well be applied to Christianity at this time. Penda and Ethelhere, Anna's successor, fell the next year at ' Winwidfield,' near Leeds, fighting against Oswy of Northumbria. Penda's son Peada brought his people over to the Faith. Of Ethelwald, Ethelhere's and Anna's brother, Bede1 relates that he received from the font Swithelm, King of Essex, after his baptism by St. Chad, at Rendlesham. When Aldulf became King of the East Angles in A.D. 664, the Metropolitan See of Canterbury had just fallen vacant, nor did it receive its head for four years, when the great Theodore of Tarsus was promoted to the Primacy by Pope Vitalianus. Even then the arrival of the new Archbishop was delayed for eighteen months, but it was worth the delay. A vigorous administrator, a great patron of learning, his tenure of office for twenty years and more was marked by consolidation and progress. Parishes were now organized, landowners stimulated to church-building, provision for the clergy recognised, and their characters simultaneously improved. In all these and other good works he found in Aldulf of East Anglia a cordial coadjutor. The Synod of Hertford, in A.D. 673, with much other matter on hand, under1 'Eccl. Hist.,' iii. 22.

took the division of the East Anglian see into two. Bisi, the old Bishop, remained at Dunwich, a second see being formed at Elmham. And now the question arises, Which Elmham, North in Norfolk, or South in Suffolk? Something is to be said on each side. The North folk were obviously important enough to have a bishop to themselves. There had been flourishing settlements all over the county, from Walpole to Caister-next-Yarmouth, from Baconsthorpe to Brettenham, in the Roman period; nor is it likely that so fair a territory should have fallen entirely out of shape. Roman remains have been found at North Elmham, and the entrenched mound there has been episcopal property from time immemorial. Hither retired John de Grey in the troubles of King John's reign, and the remains of the palace of the fighting Bishop Spencer, formerly well known, have of late been brought more extensively to light. On the other side it must be borne in mind that the progress of Christianity was far too variable for us to expect any symmetrical ordering of sees. Lichfield, only seventeen years old, was then the sole cathedral of the midlands from the German Ocean to Wales, for Dorchester in Oxfordshire had been abandoned, and Sidnacester not yet formed; while, on the contrary, Wales was well manned, and London, Canterbury, and Rochester were within easy distance of each other. If Bishop Spencer lived at North Elmham, so we shall also find him at South Elmham. It may be that the establishment of a see at the latter place was all that was at the time possible, while the tide of paganism, so late at the flood, was slowly ebbing from the borderland of the Waveney Valley. Adhuc sub judice lis est. It is hardly for us to determine so vexed a question. The change from darkness to light, as the great law of love took the place of the merciless worship of the gods of war and conquest, must have been of a most startling nature. What was destroyed needs not to be recapitulated, and what took its place, thank God! we still have. Yet one point in the old worship, the

reverence in which the ash was held, may receive a brief notice, emphasized as it is by some of our existing names of villages. Though the detail of the Yggdrasil, or mystic ash, comes to us from a Scandinavian source, yet it is so intermingled with the myth of Odin, the great god common to the Teutonic race, and the ash is of such frequent occurrence in Angle and Saxon names and words, that it claims an earlier notice than would be accorded to it by Danish invasions. Yggdrasil is at

once the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge, with roots reaching to the abode of the Old Dragon, to the Fountain of Wisdom and to the Seat of Judgment. With regard to Odin, as he, Hæner and Loder were walking by the sea, they found an ash and an elm, whereof they made the first man and woman, Ask and Embla.1 With this double importance attached to Fraxinus excelsior, which successive bands of Teuton rovers must have been delighted to find indigenous to British soil, it is not surprising to find the name attached to localities in a way peculiar to itself. Ashfield, indeed, is of itself no more noteworthy than Oakley or Elmsett; but Campsey Ash, known simply as Ash, is very near Route IX. in Antonine's Itinerary, and Badwell Ash seems to accord with that part of Route V. which has been spoken of as lying between Stoke Ash and Ixworth. With these may be compared Ash-next-Sandwich, close by Route II., which ends at Richborough. The suggestion is that near these great roads the sacred tree was planted, and there would courts, first tribal and then local, be held. Ash Bocking, which also was called simply Ash, is possibly another instance. Other detail of Teutonic worship may be sought for in the many treatises on the subject.

After King Aldulf's death in A.D. 683, there followed in succession Elfwulf, Beornred, Ethelred, and Ethelbert. There is little to be said about any but the last, who was

1 See the article 'Scandinavian Mythology,' by Professor Rasmus Andersen, in Chambers'' Cyclopædia,' 1892.