Of Conishead Priory, two miles south of Ulverston, there are but atoms remaining, and these are concealed by the modern mansion which preserves the name. The memory of good deeds has more vitality than the work of the mason:--the monks of Conishead were entrusted with the safe conveyance of travellers across the treacherous sands at the outlet of the Leven; the Priory was also a hospital for the sick and maimed. Upholland Priory, near Wigan, dates from 1319, though a chantry existed there at a period still earlier. One of the lateral walls still exists, with a row of small windows, all covered with ivy. Some fragments of Penwortham Priory, near Preston, also remain; and lastly, for the curious there is the never-finished building called Lydiate Abbey, four miles south-west of Ormskirk, the date of which appears to be temp. Henry VIII., when the zeal of the Catholic founders received a sudden check. The walls are covered with ivy, "never sere," and the aspect in general is picturesque; so calmly and constantly always arises out of the calamities of the past nutriment for pleasure in the present. X THE OLD CHURCHES AND THE OLD HALLS Christianity in Lancashire--so far, at all events, as concerns the outward expression through the medium of places of worship--had a very early beginning, the period being that of Paulinus, one of the missionaries brought into England by Augustine. In 625 the kingdom of Northumbria, which included the northern portions of the modern county of Lancaster, had for its monarch the celebrated Edwin--he who espoused the Christian princess Edilberga, daughter of the king of Kent--the pious woman to whom the royal conversion was no doubt as largely owing as to the exhortations of the priest who found in her court welcome and protection. The story is told at length by Bede. There is no necessity to recapitulate it. The king was baptized, and Christianity became the state religion of the northern Angles. Paulinus nowhere in his great diocese--that of York--found listeners more willing than the ancestors of the people of East Lancashire; and as nearly as possible twelve and a half centuries ago, the foundations were laid at Whalley of the mother church of the district so legitimately proud to-day of a memorial almost unique. Three stone crosses, much defaced by exposure to the weather, still exist in the graveyard. They are considered by antiquaries to have been erected in the time of Paulinus himself, and possibly by his direction; similar crosses occurring near Burnley Church, and at Dewsbury and Ilkley in Yorkshire. The site is a few yards to the north of that one afterwards chosen for the abbey. The primitive Anglo-Saxon churches, it is scarcely requisite to say, were constructed chiefly, and often entirely, of wood.[41] Hence their extreme perishableness, especially in the humid climate of Lancashire; hence also the long step to the next extant mementoes of ecclesiastical movement in this county; for