116 The Early History of the Upper Wylye Valley. 
A new religion was not long in finding this people with their 
capacity for colonising and citizenship. Their old Teutonic religion 
had but a weak hold on them, and yielded easily to the Christian 
missionaries. Berin, whose name has been latinised into Birinus, 
the Apostle of the West Saxons, began his preaching in 634, about 
the time at which the Abbey of Malmesbury was founded, while 
Glastonbury was already a Christian foundation before the heathen 
English came, and was “the one great Church of the Briton which 
lived through the storm of English conquest, and passed unhurt 
into the hands of the Englishmen,”? to be revived. 
The first traces that we still have are-those of Aldhelm. Educated 
at Malmesbury, he held the see of Sherborne from 705 to 709. He 
was a missionary bishop, and there is every reason to believe that 
the name Bishopstrow refers to him. This name most probably 
points to the fact that he preached standing under some well-known 
tree, which afterwards became associated with him, just as Augustine 
was said to have preached under a Gospel oak in Hempage Wood, 
near Winchester (Kitchen’s Winchester, p. 57). Such neigh- 
bouring names as Wans-trow, Hallatrow, Waermunds-treow (Birch, 
Chart. Saxon., 756) point to this simple derivation. 
But there is a typically medieval story told by William of 
Malmesbury (Gest. Pont. 384). It is that Aldhelm happened to fix 
his “ashen staff” in the ground as he began to preach, and that 
during his discourse it put forth buds and leaves. He left it in the 
place as an offering to God, and many ash-trees sprang from it and 
hence the place was called “ad Episcopi arbores,” “ Bishop’s-trees.” 
“This story,” says the writer, “I do not maintain as absolutely 
true.”? These details of “ash-staff” and “ash-trees” are worth 
noticing, because ash-trees are still to be found in the parish, and 

1 Freeman, Hnglish Towns and Districts; Glastonbury British and English. 
2 There is no likelihood in the suggestion of Mr. Hamilton, the editor of 
this volume of the Rolls Series, that Stoke Orchard, near Bishop’s Cleeve, 
Gloucestershire, is meant. That part of the world is not associated with 
Aldhelm ; he was connected with the diocese of Sherborne, ‘‘ west of Selwood”’; 
but the see of the Hwiccas, who were settled in Gloucestershire, comprised 
the counties of Worcester and Gloucester, as was arranged by Theodore before 
Aldhelm’s time. (Green’s Making of England, 129.) 

