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it being much tolerated by the Teutonic and Catholic super-strata 

 as exempt from the imputation of barbarism or nationality.* 

 Besides this, the heights which it affected are likely to have con- 

 tinued "Welsh until later and Christian times. St. Michael is 

 usually a short expression of "St. Michael and All Angels," 

 and Welsh places so dedicated are often called " Llanvihangel. " 

 St. Gabriel is very uncommon, and St. Raphael almost absent, 

 in the old dedications of England and Wales. 



St. Mary, with her precedence of the others in the dedication 

 of Milton, is of course the crowning expression of the later 

 Catholic and monastic supremacy over those of tribal or local 

 origin. 



It can hardly be doubted tha,t Athelstan found the Celtic 

 dedications already associated with the spot which he chose. 

 But it is not the mere survival of the two Celtic dedications of 

 Milton that is its most notable circumstance. This it shares 

 with many other outlying Celtic remains of the like nature, in 

 those various parts of English England, that may also therefore 

 be suspected to have been insulated nationalities. To this is to 

 be added the well authenticated fact, that the same Athelstan, to 

 whom is credited the policy of finally driving his British sub- 

 jects from among his own Anglian and Saxon people, to beyond 

 certain assigned frontiers ; at this place he is observed to have 

 actively encouraged the British nationality. It is recorded by 

 various ancient authorities, and with variations that bespeak a 

 certain amount of independence among them, that when he 

 founded the Abbey upon what we have assumed to have been a 

 pre-existent sanctuary of some kind, he bought and placed there 

 many reliques of the Damnonian saints from transmarine Britain 

 or Armorica; among which the most distinguished were the bones 



* A place on the Wiltshire Avon, about three miles north-east of Stone- 

 henge, has the dedication St. Michael, and is called Fighelden. It would 

 be a brilliant triumph of Professor Rbys's consonant mutation test of chro- 

 nology, if the change of " Michael " into " Fighel " would shew us, how 

 late must have been the time when the people at this place in the midst of 

 Salisbury Plain changed themselves from Welshmen "to Englishmen. It 

 sounds in neighbouring mouths something like " Foyle," and " Foyle " 

 is a surname there. 



