having preached in this island need not be unduly pressed, because Britain was at that time an obscure and unimportant province at the extremity of the Roman empire. But the critical historian cannot accept what is, after all, a mere conjecture, unsupported by long tradition or any positive evidence--any more than he can lay stress upon what is only a curious coincidence, between the mention by Martial of Claudia, a British lady in Rome newly married to Pudens--and the salutation of "Claudia and Pudens" in St. Paul's Second Epistle to Timothy, written from Rome. The theory as to this identification, is based on a string of hypotheses, called by Dean Farrar "an elaborate rope of sand." Similar remarks would also apply to the legend that the father of Caractacus, King of the Silures, called Bran the Blessed, was converted to Christianity when captive at Rome (A.D. 51-58) and introduced the Gospel into his native country on his return, though there is a tradition to that effect incorporated into the Welsh Triads, which are probably none of them earlier than the fourteenth century. Tacitus (Ann. xii. 35) only mention the "wife, daughter and brothers" of Caractacus as having surrendered with him, and he would scarcely have omitted the "father," if he had shared their captivity. There is, indeed, one story which we are very loath to surrender--viz. the story that St. Joseph of Arimathea was sent, with twelve companions, to Britain by the Apostle St. Philip (about 63 A.D.) settled in the Isle of Avalon or Glastonbury, and founded there a monastery, striking his staff into the earth, and making it burst, like Aaron's rod, into leaf, and bloom with the blossom of the Holy Thorn. This legend, indeed, is not actually recorded in writing before William of Malmesbury in the twelfth century, but it may have rested on earlier local tradition. We know that Glastonbury was a Christian sanctuary before the Saxons conquered the district, and Bishop Browne (of Bristol) reminds us that Domesday Book speaks of the "twelve _hides_ (the portions of land said to have been granted to St. Joseph's companions) which never have been taxed," and that at the Council of Basle in 1431 the English Church claimed and received precedence as founded by St. Joseph of Arimathea in Apostolic times. The tradition, too, that the first British Christians erected at Glastonbury a church made of twigs or wattlework (called afterwards the _Vetusta Ecclesia_, and only destroyed by fire in 1184) has been illustrated, if not confirmed, by recent discoveries at Glastonbury (among the ruins of British houses burned with fire) of baked clay showing the impress of wattlework. There is no known fact connected with the life of St. Joseph of Arimathea that would negative the conclusion that he might have been sent to Britain as a missionary.