Now it came to pass whilst Finnian was at Noendrum, under the care of St. Mochae, that "ships" came from Britain into Strangford Lough, and cast anchor in front of the island. On board these vessels was a certain bishop called Nennio, who, with several of his disciples, had come from the famous monastery called Candida Casa, on the opposite shores of Galloway, to pay a visit to the religious family of Noendrum. We know from the lives of our early saints that this was no unusual occurrence. In those early days religious men were inspired with a spirit of spiritual enterprise, and several of them made it a point to visit the most renowned saints both in Ireland and Britain, in order to benefit by their instruction and example. As we have seen, Candida Casa, or the White House was a stone church built on the extremity of a promontory in Galloway, about the year A.D. 397, by the great St. Ninian, the first apostle of the Northern Britons, at least after the departure of the Romans. It is true Christianity had been previously known in the district, for St. Patrick himself was in all probability a native of the valley of the Clyde, and was a captive in Ireland about the very time that St. Ninian first came to Galloway. But after the withdrawal of the Roman troops from the northern province the district was overrun by the Picts and Scots, so that the remnants of the faithful were almost all driven out from the Lowlands of Scotland. Ninian, who was a native of the district, had been educated in Rome during the pontificate of Pope Damasus, and later on returned to preach the Gospel anew in his native land. On his way he stopped for a short time at Tours, to pay a visit to St. Martin, the most prominent figure at the time in Christendom. It was from St. Martin, as Bede informs us, that he got the masons through whose means he was able to build the first stone church in Britain. The people had never before seen anything of the kind--they had no stone houses and no masons able to build them--hence in their admiration they called the new building the White House, to signify, just as the Americans do, that it was the grandest building in the kingdom. We are enabled to fix the date of its erection, because it is distinctly stated that during the progress of the work Ninian heard of the death of St. Martin of Tours, and dedicated the new church to him, which could only be done after his death, that is, about the year A.D. 397--some thirty-five years before St. Patrick began to preach in Ireland.