Now the Bishoprick of the Sumorsætas was not one of the oldest Bishopricks, one of those which were founded at the first preaching of the Gospel in England. When Augustine came to Britain in 597, only a very small part of Somersetshire was English at all; the Welsh of Cornwall still held all the land from the Land's End to the Axe. Thus Wells, if Wells existed, was within the Welsh border, though Wookey was within the English border. When the West-Saxons became Christians in 635, a Bishop was, as usual, appointed for the whole kingdom. He was called Bishop of the West-Saxons, and his _bishopstool_ was placed, after some changes, in the royal city of Winchester.[4] After a while, as Christianity spread and as the West-Saxon Kingdom grew by conquests from the Welsh, this great diocese was divided in the year 705.[5] One Bishop remained at Winchester; the other had his _bishopstool_ at Sherborne, and his diocese took in the shires of the Dorsætas, the Wilsætas, and the Sumorsætas, and Berkshire, a shire which, unlike the other three, was not called after a people. In the time of Eadward the Elder, in 909, this diocese was divided again; the Sumorsætas now got a Bishop to themselves, and his _bishopstool_ was placed where it still is, in the church of Saint Andrew at Wells.[6] Now we come at once to the question, why was Wells chosen to be the seat of the Bishoprick? I think you will easily see that there is not now, nor was there then, any diocese in England where the Bishop was more thoroughly driven to be the Bishop of the whole diocese and not merely the Bishop of one city. Somersetshire had not then, and it has not now, any one town at once larger than any of its neighbours and placed conveniently in the middle of the shire. Then, as now, the two greatest towns in the shire must have been the old Roman city of Bath at one end and the purely English town of Taunton at the other. Taunton was founded by King Ine between 710 and 722 as a border fortress against the Welsh, after he had carried the English frontier as far west as the boundary of Somersetshire goes now.[7] Neither of these places was well suited to be the centre of the diocese. Bridgewater, which is more central, was not built till some ages later. Glastonbury, which is more central still, could not well be made the Bishoprick, because it was the seat of the greatest monastery of the West. Also Glastonbury was in those days a singularly inaccessible place. It stood on an island, and could be reached only by boats; so that unless the Bishop was to be altogether a hermit, he would have been a good deal out of place there. Some Bishops had fixed their sees in places of this kind, but it is clear that such an arrangement was in every way inconvenient, and so wise a King as Eadward the Elder was not likely to sanction it. And we may be sure that the monks of Glastonbury would be then, as they were long after, altogether set against having