Immediately afterwards Edwin begun to build a church of stone, dedicated to St. Peter, on the same site. The baptism of the king was followed by a wholesale conversion of thousands of his subjects, and it is stated that Paulinus was forced to stay over a month in one place to baptise the crowds who flocked to him. Paulinus was confirmed in his appointment to the see by the king, and immediately after received the pall, together with Honorius of Canterbury, which authorised him to assemble councils and to consecrate bishops. The pall was not given to any of his successors until Egbert (732 A.D.). In view of the subsequent struggles for precedence between the sees of Canterbury and York, the following passage in a letter from the Pope to Edwin is of interest:--"We have ordered," the Pope says, "two palls, one for each of the metropolitans, that is for Honorius and Paulinus, that in case one of them is called from this life, the other may, in virtue of this our authority, appoint a bishop in his place." (Bede, "Eccl. Hist.," Smith edit., book ii., cap. 17, p. 98.) [Illustration: St. Mary's Abbey.] This early prosperity of the northern Church did not last long. In 633 Edwin was defeated and killed at a battle near Hatfield, and a period of anarchy and persecution followed. Thereupon Paulinus, with Ethelburga, the queen, fled to Kent, leaving behind him only one evangelist, by name James the Deacon. It is probable that the greater part of Northumbria thereupon fell back into paganism, and by the flight of Paulinus the Catholic Church, or that part of it immediately under the influence and control of the bishops of Rome, lost its hold on the north, which it was not to regain without a struggle. The anarchy came to an end with the accession of Oswald, a Christian, who had been converted, not by Paulinus, but by the Celtic Church of Iona. It was this circumstance which led to the establishment of the influence of that Church in Northumbria. Oswald did not look to Rome or Canterbury for evangelists when he set to work to establish Christianity in his kingdom, but to Iona, whence, in 635 A.D., was dispatched a bishop, Aidan, who settled at Lindisfarne (Holy Island). From this time there were two influences at work among the Christians in Northumbria--that of the older and more national British Church which had survived the flood of heathen invasion; and that of the later Catholic Church, which originated with the mission of Augustine.