[Footnote 64: _De Divinitate_, cap. 46.] [Footnote 65: Though Roman houses, temples, and other buildings of stone and lime abounded in this country in the earlier centuries of the Christian era, yet the first Christian churches erected at Glastonbury in England, and at St. David's in Wales, were--according to the authority, at least, of William of Malmesbury and Giraldus Cambrensis--made of wattles. The first Christian church which is recorded as having been erected in Scotland, namely, the _Candida Casa_, reared at Whithern, towards the beginning of the fifth century, by St. Ninian, was constructed, as mentioned in a well-known passage of Bede, of stone, forming "ecclesiam insignem ... de lapide insolito Britonibus more."--(_Historia Ecclesiast._, lib. iii. cap. 4.) According to the _Irish Annals_, the three churches first erected by Palladius, in Ireland, about the year 420, were of wood, one of them being termed House of the Romans, "Teach-na-Romhan," but not apparently from its Roman mode of building.--(See Dr. O'Donovan's _Annals of the Four Masters_, vol. i. p. 129.) The church of Duleck, one of the earliest, if not the earliest, which St. Patrick erected in Ireland, and the first bishop of which, St. Cianan, died in the year 490, was built of stone, as its original name of Daimhllag (stone house) signifies; and the same word, _damhliag_ or _stone house_, came subsequently to be applied as a generic term to the larger Irish churches.--(See Dr. Petrie's _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Ireland_, p. 142, with a quotation from an old Irish poem of the names of the three masons in the household of St. Patrick, who "made damhliags first in Erin.") When, in the year 652, Finan succeeded to the Bishopric of Lindisfarne, he built there a suitable Episcopal church, constructed of oak planks, and covered with reeds, "more Scotorum non de lapide, sed de robore secto totam composuit, atque arundine texit."--(Bede's _Hist. Eccl._, lib. iii. cap. 25.) When St. Cuthbert erected his anchorite retreat on the island of Farne he made it of two chambers, one an oratory, and the other for domestic purposes; and he finished the walls of these buildings by digging round and cutting away the natural soil within and without, forming the roof out of rough wood and straw, "de lignis informibus et foeno."--(Vita S. Cuthberti, cap. 17.) Planks or "tabulae," also, were employed in building or reconstructing the walls of this oratory on Farne Island, as St. Ethelwald, Cuthbert's successor, finding hay and clay insufficient to fill up the openings that age made between its boards, obtained a calf's skin, and nailed it as a protection against the storms in that corner of the oratory, where, like his predecessor, he used to kneel or stand when praying.--(_Ibid._, cap. 46.) St. Godric's first rude hermitage at Finchale, on the Wear, was made of turf (vili cespite), and afterwards of rough wood and twigs (de lignis