Right Rev. the Lord Bishop of Bristol. 275 
There was clearly no ravaging of these Malmesbury parts, such as 
marked the Saxon progress, for instance, at Glastonbury. The 
Trish teachers went steadily on, and the conquering king, he and 
his all now Christian, sent his own relative, Aldhelm, to learn of 
them. Aldhelm, as you know, succeeded Maildubh in unbroken 
order. He greatly enlarged the school, and built, in addition to 
the basilica, a great Church, so excellent that even the Norman 
builders spared it after the Norman conquest, and it only gave way 
to the present Church in the middle of the twelfth century. Of 
how much importance Malmesbury was held to be in the later 
Saxon times you may form some idea from another historical fact. 
When Hermann, the Bishop of Sherborne and also of Ramsbury, 
desired to unite the Wilts and Dorset sees in one, he selected 
Malmesbury as the site for the joint bishop-stool. Edward the 
Confessor approved ; but Godwine and his sons opposed the scheme, 
and Hermann took Old Sarum as the second-best place. We are 
rather proud of that in North Wilts. 
These considerations justify in my opinion the contention that 
nowhere in England have we so unbroken a connection between 
the British and the Saxon Church and life and teaching as here ; 
while the presence and the influence of the Irish teacher, continuing 
to hold his office under the new Saxon régime, adds an element of 
exceeding interest, probably unique in Saxon history, though a 
parallel may be found among the Angles. 
With all this in our memory, let us look at my second 
problem. 
_ When Augustine, at Canterbury, turned his thoughts westward, 
about the year 600, it was only some two or three and twenty years 
after the battle of Deorham, and eight or nine after the battle of 
-Wanborough ; it was more than fifty years before the breaking up 
of the Selwood Britons. He was in search of a place at which he 
could meet a representative body of members of the British Church. 
Where would his glance rest geographically ? Would he desire 
to meet the most distant Britons, at the most distant spot in the 
‘possession of the Saxons which the Britons could visit in safety ; 
or would he look for the nearest Britons and the nearest place ? 
