Three miles on, we come to the furthest outpost of the East Anglian uplands, the little market town of Soham, situated on an almost isolated peninsula of the chalk, which here runs out into the fen, and upon the very borders[129] of the Isle of Ely. The Cathedral is here a conspicuous object, rising high upon its hill over the intervening fen, and only five miles away. But Soham is associated with a yet earlier development of local Christianity than Ely itself. Forty years before St. Etheldreda founded her Abbey, one was here established by St. Felix, "the Apostle of East Anglia." That title does not mean that he was absolutely the first to preach the Gospel to the East English, but the first whose work was permanent. For the introduction of the Faith into these parts met with more than one set-back before it was fairly established. [Footnote 129: These borders are now marked only in the Ordnance maps. The line runs right across the county from west to east, following the West River (the ancient course of the Ouse), to its junction with the Cam, and then almost straight eastward to the boundary of Suffolk, along a water-course known as the "Bishop's Delph" (_i.e._, ditch, from the verb _delve_).] Within two years of the first coming of St. Augustine in 597 A.D., Redwald King of East Anglia, who had succeeded the earliest Christian monarch, Ethelbert of Kent, in the dignity of Bretwalda,[130] followed him also in seeking baptism. His Christianity, however, was of too unconventional a type to be acceptable. Bede tells us how "in the same temple he had an altar for the sacrifice of Christ, and a small one to offer sacrifices unto devils." This attempt (made under the influence of his heathen wife) was foredoomed to failure, and was followed by a period of religious confusion, till Sigebert, his son, succeeded to the throne. He had been an exile in France, where he had become "a most Christian and learned man," under the influence of St. Felix, a holy man of Burgundy, whose help he asked, on becoming King, "to cause all his province to partake" of his religion. [Footnote 130: This title implied a vague Primacy amongst the various Anglo-Saxon monarchs, conferred, by as vague a recognition on their part, upon him who was for the time the most powerful amongst them. But though vague it was far from unreal. We find Ethelbert's protection enabling St. Augustine to preach all over England. Indeed the name (which etymologically signifies merely Broad Wielder) very early got to be regarded as meaning Wielder of Britain.] [Illustration: _Fordham._]