Rochester and London, next to Canterbury, are the oldest of all the English bishoprics, unless, indeed, we are prepared to accept a pre-Augustine bishopric of Hereford. St. Augustine, soon after his landing in 597, came to preach at Rochester. His reception was not encouraging; the rude people hung fish-tails to his coat. Wherefore in anger the saint prayed “that the Lord would smite them _in posteriora_ to their everlasting ignominy. So that not only on their own but on their successors’ persons similar tails grew ever after.” The worst of it was that the story spread, and not only Rochester people but all English folk were believed on the Continent to be _caudati_ (tailed). So that even in the sixteenth century “an Englishman now cannot travel in another land by way of merchandise or any other honest occupying, but it is most contumeliously thrown in his teeth that all Englishmen have tails.” Among St. Augustine’s Italian missioners were St. Justus and St. Paulinus. St. Justus became first bishop of Rochester in 604. St. Paulinus, after eight years of mission work in Northumbria, became bishop of Rochester in 633. The first English bishop was St. Ythamar (644-655). These three were the chief local saints of Rochester in early days. St. Augustine and his missioners had come from the monastery of St. Andrew, Rome. To St. Andrew, therefore, they dedicated the first Saxon cathedral. In 1542 the cathedral was re-dedicated to Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary of Rochester. Till 1077 the cathedral was served by secular canons; Gundulph replaced them by Benedictine monks. I. In 1888 the foundations of an early church were found. It had an apse, but neither aisles nor transepts; walls only 2 feet 4 inches thick; 42 feet long, 28 feet broad. From the resemblance of its plan to that of St. Pancras, Canterbury, and the presence of Roman brick in the walls, it seems as likely to be a Romano-British as an Anglo Saxon church.