Right Rev. the Lord Bishop of Bristol. 277 
call Welsh, that is, the Britonsin Wales. It is a very unhistorical 
supposition. When Aldhelm, in Bede’s life time, addressed the 
Britons, he addressed the Britons of the south-west of our modern 
England, the very Britons who still occupied considerable parts of 
that “nearest province of the Britons,” whose ecclesiastics Augustine 
invited to a conference. It was probably not till the first conference 
had taken place that the Britons of the further or west-central 
province were called into council by the Britons of the south-west. 
The Welsh Britons are not referred to in connection with the first 
of the two conferences, and the reference to them in connection 
with the second conference seems to me to suggest that they were 
only then called in. The Britons at the first conference pleaded 
that they must not come to terms with Augustine without the 
special license and consent of their people, and they begged for a 
second conference at which more might be present. Accordingly, 
there came seven British bishops aud a large number of most 
learned men, chiefly from that very noble monastery called by the 
English Bancornaburgh, Bangor in Flintshire. My impression is 
clearly that these had not been present on the former occasion, 
and that the great point of the second conference was that the 
Britons of the south-west called in the help and counsel of the 
Britons of the west, whom we call the Welsh. This is emphasised 
by the fact that this new body did not know what manner of man 
Augustine was, and the advice given to them was that they should 
watch him, to see if he was haughty to them; whereas it is certain 
that those who were present at the first interview had taken his 
measure and formed an estimate of his character. 
T am not at all anxious to tie down the place of the conference 
to any known locality. It took place at “ Augustine’s Oak,” Bede 
tells us, a clear indication that it was an open air conference, and 
not at what we should call a town or village: it was a place 
without a previous name, just as we should have expected under 
the conditions. 
_ As we are in these parts, and as I have endeavoured to bring 
home to you a sense of the close interest Malmesbury has in the 
meeting at Augustine’s Oak, it is as well to ask if there are still 
