Many of the architectural details bearing on the subject are so minute, and so highly technical, that they are not suitable to the character of this Appendix. We propose, therefore, to confine ourselves chiefly to broad general features, and to narrow the controversy, in the first place, to the question whether there still exists in the church any _Roman_ workmanship, or whether even the most ancient part of it must be assigned to the _Saxon_ period. It is difficult to avoid recapitulation of many points alluded to in the handbook, but we may summarise the principal arguments in favour of the _Roman_ date of portions of the church as follows: (1) =History.=--It is distinctly mentioned by Bede that there was (in 597) a church dedicated to St. Martin, built while the Romans still occupied Britain. Now this is direct testimony, to which great weight must be assigned, when we consider the character and authority of the writer. He was born in 673--_i.e._ only seventy-six years after the mission of Augustine, and sixty-nine years after his death, and wrote his "Ecclesiastical History" in the first part of the eighth century, taking the greatest possible pains to make it worthy of his subject. His information with regard to the history of Christianity in Kent was derived from Albinus, Abbot of St. Augustine's, who was himself a pupil of Theodore (Archbishop of Canterbury in 668) the great consolidator of the English Church. We are told that Albinus referred to the records in his keeping, and sent Nothelm, a priest of London, to search the Archives at Rome, where were preserved many valuable letters of Gregory the Great and subsequent Popes. Considering, then, the extreme carefulness of Bede, and the sources from which he derived his materials, we cannot imagine any evidence (short of first-hand) more trustworthy and valuable. That he should have written as he did, making a positive statement that the Church was built during the Roman occupancy of Britain, while all the time it owed its foundation to Queen Bertha or Augustine, is perfectly incredible. The theory as to its foundation by Queen Bertha has nothing whatever to justify it; and were the idea, that it was founded by Augustine, true, would it not in Bede's time have been an easily ascertained fact, capable probably of documentary proof, especially among those who were inmates of Augustine's own monastery, and would have claimed St. Martin's Church as a precious inheritance--the legacy of their founder? No one impugns the general accuracy of Bede's narrative, and the value of such historical evidence cannot be too strongly insisted upon, for it is infinitely more weighty than any _a priori_ arguments or negative criticism.