12 
In his ‘‘Confession,” the Saint distinctly implies that, before 
being made captive, he was dwelling amongst a /arge and settled 
Christian population. He alludes to congregations of Christians 
enjoying the full exercise of their religion, with priests, churches, 
etc.;—and apparently by no means in the first fervour of conversion. 
He blames them for having fallen off in their piety ; expressing his 
conviction that it was because of their sins that God had permitted 
them to become a prey to their enemies. ‘These are his words :— 
“‘T was carried captive into Ireland with many thousands of men— 
as indeed we deserved, because we had not kept the command- 
ments, nor obeyed our priests who taught us the way of salvation.” 
Now if we are to verify these plain words, we shall have to 
localize St. Patrick’s birth in some part of Britain,—it must be on 
the sea, and near some exposed frontier,—where there could be 
at the time a numerous population of Christians. He speaks of 
“many thousands of men who were not obeying their priests,” etc. 
But to account for such a Christian population in Britain, before 
the close of the 4th century, we must suppose a comparatively 
settled colony. There were no Christians in those days beyond 
the frontiers of the Roman world ; and I can find no reason for 
believing that such a population as St. Patrick speaks of was to be 
found at this time along the wall of Antonine, or indeed anywhere 
in the province of Valentia. There are of course extensive Roman 
remains in that region. It had been the battlefield of Britain for 
three hundred years. Dumbarton itself was a strong Roman 
fortress, and the termination of the rampart of Antonine. But all 
the known circumstances of the district tell against the likelihood 
of its having any large Christian population, or indeed of its being 
well populated at all. The country between the two Walls,—what 
we may roughly indicate as the modern Lowlands,—was the latest 
of Roman conquests in the Island, and the least settled. Its very 
name—Valentia—was only derived from the Emperor who died in 
367, just a few years before St. Patrick was born. It was little 
more than an outpost of Roman Britain, which really ended at the 
Wall of Hadrian ; and it remained to the end a province only held 
by military force and especially exposed to barbarian inroads. It had 
