accompanied Æthelbert’s daughter Æthelberga to the Court of Ædwin King of Deira, who ruled from the Forth to the Thames and who had sought her hand, promising that she should be free to worship as she liked and that if on inquiry he found her religion better than his own he would also become a Christian. He discussed the matter with Paulinus, and after many months’ delay summoned a Witenagemote and asked each counsellor what he thought of the new teaching, which at present had no hold except in Kent. Coifi, the Chief Priest of the old religion, was the first to speak; he said he had not got any good from his own religion though none had served the gods more faithfully—so if the new doctrine held out better hopes he would advise the king to adopt it without further delay. Coifi was followed by another of the king’s Ealdormen. His speech was a very remarkable one, and is accurately rendered by the poet Wordsworth in his Sonnet called _Persuasion_, which runs thus:— “Man’s life is like a sparrow, mighty King! That—while at banquet with your Chiefs you sit Housed near a blazing fire—is seen to flit Safe from the wintry tempest. Fluttering, Here did it enter; there, on hasty wing, Flies out, and passes on from cold to cold; But whence it came we know not, nor behold Whither it goes. Even such that transient thing, The human Soul; not utterly unknown While in the Body lodged, her warm abode; But from what world she came, what use or weal On her departure waits, no tongue hath shown; This mystery if the Stranger can reveal, His be a welcome cordially bestowed!” [Sidenote: THE FIRST ENGLISH BISHOP] After this the king gave Paulinus permission to preach the Gospel openly, and he himself renounced idolatry, and in April 627, with a large number of his people, he was baptized at York in the little church which was the first to be built on the site of York Minster. After this Paulinus baptized in the river Swale, and later he came to the province of “Lindissi,” and spent some time in Lincoln, converting Blaecca the “Reeve” of the city, and baptizing in the presence of the king a great number of people in the Trent either at Littleborough or Torksey. He appears to have spent some time in Lincoln, and to have come back to it after 633, for early in 635 he consecrated Honorius the successor to Justus, and fifth Archbishop of Canterbury. The ceremony taking place probably in the little “church of stone” that he had built, possibly where St. Paul’s Church now stands. It was probably thatched with reeds, for eighty years later Bede speaks of it as being unroofed. If St. Paul’s church really was originally the church of Paulinus, it helps to remove the stigma that though Paulinus preached and baptised with effect, unlike Wilfrith, he founded nothing.