CHRONICLES OF CORNISH SAINTS. IV. — S. SAMSON. 97 



intimates, that he went to Brittany to preach the gosjjel to his 

 own countrymen, who had settled there in great numbers as 

 refugees, and that he exercised episcopal functions amongst them 

 whilst he lived in his monastery at Dole. The story too of his 

 carrying with him the pall from Menevia, and so depriving sub- 

 sequent prelates of that see of their Archiepiscopal dignity, is 

 utterly groundless ; though it has been repeated by one "writer 

 after another for hundreds of years past, and is in modern books 

 almost the only thing commonly stated in connection with Samson's 

 name. In no ancient Life of the Saint is there any allusion to the 

 story ; nor can it be shown that any British bishop before the 

 time of Augustine ever received a pall from Rome, or that the 

 symbol was even known in the British Church. Moreover, if 

 Samson had been invested with it, and had abstracted it from 

 Menevia, it would not have lessened the dignity of his successor, 

 because every Archbishop had a new pall sent to him by the Pope 

 on his consecration, and the old pall did not pass from bishop to 

 bishop in succession.'" The fiction may be traced to the twelfth 

 century, and seems to have been invented to account for the dis- 

 appearance of the metropolitan title from S. David's, and to make 

 it appear that the early British Church was subject to that of 

 Eome. Welsh authorities tell us that Samson returned from 

 Brittany to Wales at the close of his life, and was buried at 

 Lantwitjt and there is still in existence a remarkable monument 

 which lends plausibility to this tradition. It consists of the stone 

 shaft of a cross, nine feet in height, which Avas disinterred in the 

 church yard of LantMdt, in the year 1789, and has on' it this 

 inscription in Latin : — " In the name of GoD Most High, here 

 begins the cross of the Saviour, which Samson the Abbot pre- 

 pared for his own soul and the soul of King Juthael and of 

 Artmal the Dean."| "The first of those names, I am satisfied," 



* History and Antiqiiities of St. David's, by Jones and Freeman, page 

 264. 



•f Acliau Saint ynys Prydain. — lolo MSS., page 105. The Book of 

 Llandaff, hoAvever, represents him as closing his life in his monastery at 

 Dole. 



I A full account of this monumental stone may he found in Tarnefs 

 Vindication of the Ancient British Poems, and in a note to the lolo MSS., 

 page 263. 



