The present organisation of the Church of England dates from the Council of Hertford, A.D. 673. Before that time the Saxon people were the object of missionary operations, carried on by two independent bodies, the Italian mission, having its centre at Canterbury, and the Celtic mission, in Iona. The bishops who had been sent from one or other of these sources into the several kingdoms of the Heptarchy, gathered a body of clergy about them, with whom they lived in common at the cathedral town; thence they made missionary progresses through the towns and villages of the Saxon "bush;" returning always to the cathedral as their head-quarters and home. The national churches which sprang from these two sources were kept asunder by some differences of discipline and ceremonial rather than of doctrine. These differences were reconciled at the Council of Hertford, and all the churches there and then recognised Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury, as the Metropolitan of all England. To the same archbishop we owe the establishment of the parochial organisation of the Church of England, which has ever since continued. He pointed out to the people the advantage of having the constant ministrations of a regular pastor, instead of the occasional visits of a missionary. He encouraged the thanes to provide a dwelling-house and a parcel of glebe for the clergyman's residence; and permitted that the tithe of each manor--which the thane had hitherto paid into the common church-fund of the bishop--should henceforth be paid to the resident pastor, for his own maintenance and the support of his local hospitalities and charities; and lastly, he permitted each thane to select the pastor for his own manor out of the general body of the clergy. Thus naturally grew the whole establishment of the Church of England; thus each kingdom of the Heptarchy became, in ecclesiastical language, a diocese, each manor a parish; and thus the patronage of the benefices of England became vested in the lords of the manors.