The ancient kingdom of Mercia was converted to Christianity, like the rest of England north of the Thames, by missionaries of the Irish Church from Lindisfarne, _c._ 653; and the first two Mercian bishops were Irishmen. Of the early bishops, by far the most famous was St. Chad (669-672). St. Chad, or Ceadda, was a good and saintly man. He is first heard of as Abbot of Lastingham, a sequestered abbey hidden away in a fold of the Cleveland moors. Then Abbot Chad became Bishop of York; and he set to work on a visitation of his vast, wild diocese—not in a carriage and pair, but on foot. Plainly these early bishops were what we should now call Missionary Bishops, such as that Missionary of the South Seas who lies in Lichfield’s Lady chapel, his face irradiated by the southern light. Archbishop Chad visited town and country, village and hamlet, cottage and castle; and preached everywhere. It was another Progress of St. Paul. But in 669 the famous Greek Archbishop of Canterbury, Theodore, pronounced his consecration faulty, and deposed him from York. Soon afterwards, however, finding him a saintly man and an excellent preacher, he appointed him to the bishopric of Mercia, to the see of Lichfield. What was York’s loss was Lichfield’s gain. At Lichfield he lived, tradition says, in a cell with his missioners, at the upper end of the Pool, where now stands St. Chad’s Church. It behoves all who come to Lichfield to visit St. Chad’s Church and to drink the water of St. Chad’s Well—water which still retains somewhat of efficacy and repute, for a line of pipes has been laid from the Stowe Pool to Burton, and an immense volume of Lichfield’s hallowed water is annually converted into beer. Two years and a half only Bishop Chad had left of life; but that was enough for him to win the reverence of his own and many successive generations. Beautiful stories are told of him by Bede. One of the eight monks who lived with him declared that he one day heard a joyful melody of some persons sweetly singing, which descended from heaven into the Bishop’s oratory, and filled the same for about half an hour, and then rose again to heaven; and that on the seventh day thereafter, having received the Body and Blood of our Lord, he departed unto Bliss, to which he was invited by the happy soul of his brother, St. Cedd, and a company of angels with heavenly music. [Illustration: NAVE.]