Before the coming of the Anglo-Saxons the church seems to have established a firm hold on the people, who held tenaciously to their possessions, both secular and religious, which were only wrested from them after a severe struggle. Their enthusiastic love of Christianity led them to make a heroic defence of the churches, rather than see them fall into the hands of the heathen Anglo-Saxons. The historian Bede tells us that all their buildings were destroyed, the priests' blood was spilt upon the altars, prelates and people were slain with the sword, and all the cities and churches were burnt to the ground. When all was lost and there was no longer a church or home to defend, the Britons retired to the country of their fellow-Christians, the secluded and almost impenetrable hills and forests of the west. The Anglo-Saxon love of gold was quickly recognised by the people of West Wales who saved their property and bought the right of worshipping after the manner of their fathers by the payment of an annual tribute to their conquerors. [Side note: Church of S. Piran, Perranporth.] So ruthlessly indeed did the Anglo-Saxons rase to the ground the early churches, that, until a few years ago, but few traces of these early buildings were thought to exist. An accidental discovery, however, in the year 1835, brought to light an undoubted relic of an early British church in the west, this being the remains of a little church which had been until the date above mentioned completely buried in the sand on the sea coast near Perranporth in Cornwall. They are thought by ecclesiologists to be the remains of the original church erected to the memory of S. Piran, a Cornish missionary and a friend of S. Patrick, who was buried within its walls before the year 500 A.D. On removing the sand, the accumulated deposit of centuries, the church was found to have consisted of a nave and chancel containing a stone altar. [Illustration: The Church of S. Martin, Canterbury.] The building measured 29 feet in length, 16-1/3 feet in width and 19 feet from the floor to the roof, and probably shares with S. Mary's Church in Dover Castle, and S. Martin's, Canterbury, the honour of being one of the earliest links we possess with the ancient British Church. S. Mary's, Dover, appears to have been built of Roman bricks and cement, a combination which antiquaries consider is found only in those buildings which were erected during the Roman occupation. [Side note: S. Martin's Canterbury.]