ECCLESIASTICAL 

 HISTORY 



I 



beginnings of the Church in Buckinghamshire are almost 

 as difficult to trace as they were found to be in the neigh- 

 bouring county of Bedford, mainly because there was 

 no local chronicler and the political conditions of the 

 county were of a most unsettled kind until after the end of the tenth 

 century. Somewhere in the neighbourhood of the present county of 

 Buckingham the Britons of the Midlands made their last stand against 

 the invading Saxons, when in the year 570 ' the royal town of ^Egles- 

 burh ' fell into the hands of Kenwulf, and Celtic Christianity shared the 

 fate of Celtic independence l ; again in the eighth century the conquests 

 of Offa added Buckinghamshire to the Mercian kingdom 2 ; and later 

 on, in the tenth and eleventh centuries, the county was ravaged at least 

 four times by the Danes. 8 



There seems, however, to be little doubt that the final conversion 

 of Buckinghamshire to Christianity was accomplished by monks con- 

 nected with the mission of St. Birinus at Dorchester, while it was still a 

 part of the West Saxon kingdom. 4 Nothing, however, is certainly known 

 of the details of this conversion. There are legends connecting some of 

 the royal saints of the seventh century with this county : the infant 

 Saint Rumwald, represented as a grandson of Penda, is said to have 

 made arrangements for his own burial at Buckingham 5 ; and St. Osyth 

 was by some accounts born at Quarrendon, and translated for a short 

 time to Aylesbury in the tenth century when her monastery in Essex was 

 ravaged by the Danes.' But none of this can be called history. 

 Nothing which has even an approximate claim to the title can be found 

 until after the county had become a part of Mercia. The same some- 

 what doubtful charter, 7 which recounts the gifts of Offa to St. Alban's 



1 Anglo-Saxon Chron. (Rolls Series), ii. 17. 



After the battle of Bensington in 777 ; ibid. ii. 45 ; and Florence of Worcester, Chron. (Engl. Hist. 

 Soc.), i. 59. 



8 In 914, 917, 1010 and 1016 ; Florence of Worcester (Engl. Hist. Soc.), i. 122, 125, 163, 172. 



Bright, Early English Church History, 148. 



John of Tynemouth, Nova Legenda Angliae (ed. Horstman), ii. 349-50. 



Leland, Itin. viii. 41-4, from a life of St. Osyth written by Aubrey de Vere, a canon of her house 

 in the fourteenth century. 



' Kemble, Cod. Dipl. clri. 



279 



