184 



MISS ELEANOR II. HCLL^ ON THE 



equally important in forming a just conclusion. The materials 

 bearing upon the history of the British Church are alas ! not so 

 copious as we could wish ; the devastations of the Saxons swept 

 away alike a great part of the written memorials of the times 

 before their advent as well as of the churches and monasteries 

 themselves over a large part of England. But in Ireland, and 

 in the Irish monasteries abroad, a mass of ecclesiastical 

 manuscripts remain, and though the majority of these are of a 

 later age, written or altered after the formal union of the 

 Celtic with the Roman Church at the close of the seventh and 

 beginning of the eighth centuries, there is sufficient unaltered 

 matter to enable us to discern pretty clearly the thoughts and 

 observances of an earlier time. 



I think I ought to say in starting that the outline that I 

 wish to put before you to-day is not entirely in accordance with 

 any of the views enumerated above ; it is my own opinion, and 

 I do not want to do more than to suggest it for your considera- 

 tion ; but it has pleased me to find that such impartial and 

 original thinkers as Professor Bury, in his recent Life of St. 

 Patrick, and Mr. Hugh Williams, in his studies on the Welsh 

 Church and especially on the works of Gild as, have, in their 

 own special departments of the study, arrived at something the 

 same conclusions as those to which I have myself come. 



Omitting through lack of space the interesting and beautiful 

 Native, Eoman and Biblical traditions which connect the earliest 

 converts with Joseph of Arimathsea and Glastonbury, with St. 

 Paul, with the father of Caractacus and other personages, we 

 pass at once to the better defined and more reliable ground of 

 historic fact. 



The earliest authentic notice which comes to us is from the 

 pen of Tertullian, writing about 208 a.d. He says : " In all 

 parts of Spain, among the various nations of Gaul, in districts 

 of Britain inaccessible to the Romans but subdued to Christ, in 

 all these the kingdom and name of Christ are venerated." {Adv. 

 Jutl. vii.) At the moment that Tertullian was penning these 

 words the Britons and Caledonians were revolting from the 

 Emperor Severus in that district of Northern Britain which he 

 had endeavoured to protect and preserve to Rome by the erection 

 of a rampart across the island, and it is not unnatural to suppose 

 that in speaking of those districts of Ikitain " inaccessible to 

 the Roman arms " he was thinking not of ilie soutliern and more 

 settled portions of the country which, accorcUng to this supposi- 

 tion, were already Cliristian, but of those wild districts which 

 we now call the Highlands and Wales, which the Roman armies 



