E. 2.--And though in the country districts the agricultural population were swept away pitilessly to make room for the invaders,[385] till the fens of Ely[386] and the caves of Ribblesdale[387] became the only refuge of the vanquished, yet, undoubtedly, many must have been retained as slaves, especially amongst the women, to leaven the language of the conquerors with many a Latin word, and their ferocity with many a recollection of the gentler Roman past. E. 3.--And there was one link with that past which not all the massacres and fire-raisings of the Conquest availed to break. The Romano-British populations might be slaughtered, the Romano-British towns destroyed, but the Romano-British Church lived on; the most precious and most abiding legacy bestowed by Rome upon our island. E. 4.--The origin of that Church has been assigned by tradition to directly Apostolic sources. The often-quoted passage from Theodoret,[388] of St. Paul having "brought help" to "the isles of the sea" [[Greek: tais en to pelagei diakeimenais nêsois]], can scarcely, however, refer to this island. No classical author ever uses the word [Greek: pelagos] of the Oceanic waters; and the epithet [Greek: diakeimenais], coming, as it does, in connection with the Apostle's preaching in Italy and Spain, seems rather to point to the islands between these peninsulas--Sardinia, Corsica, and the Balearic Islands. But the well-known words of St. Clement of Rome,[389] that St. Paul's missionary journeys extended to "the End of the West" [Greek: to terma tês duseôs], were, as early as the 6th century, held to imply a visit to Britain (for our island was popularly supposed by the ancients to lie west of Spain).[390] The lines of Venantius (A.D. 580) even seem to contain a reference to the tradition that he landed at Portsmouth: "Transit et Oceanum, vel qua facit insula portum, Quasque Britannus habet terras atque ultima Thule." ["Yea, through the ocean he passed, where the Port is made by an island, And through each British realm, and where the world endeth at Thule."] E. 5.--The Menology of the Greek Church (6th century) ascribes the organization of the British Church to the visitation, not of St. Paul, but of St. Peter in person. [Greek: O Petros ... ehis Bretannian paraginetai. Entha dô cheirotribôsas [_sic_] kai polla tôn hakatanomatôn hethnôn eis tôn tou Christou pistin epispasamenos ... kai pollous toi logoi photisas tôs charitos, ekklaesias te sustêsamenos, episkopous te kai presbuterous kai diakonous cheipotonhêsas, dôdekatôi etei tou Kaisaros authis eis Rômên paraginetai.][391] ["Peter ... cometh even unto Britain. Yea, there abode he long, and many of the lawless folk did he draw to the Faith of Christ ... and many did he enlighten with the Word of Grace. Churches, too, did he set up, and ordained bishops and priests and deacons. And in the twelfth year of Caesar[392] came he again unto Rome."]