The Britons had churches of their own; built after a fashion of their own; their own saints; their own hierarchy,--the British bishops attending a council as such; and holding no intercourse with the Angles even in Bede’s time, but looking on them as Samaritans.[19] Moreover, the jealousy with which the Welsh long afterwards regarded all ecclesiastical interference on the part of England, their resolute assertion of their right to a metropolitan of their own at St. Davids, and their actual exercise of that right till the time of Henry I, argues the same difference in the rock from which the English and British churches were originally hewn.[20] Let, however, tribute be paid to whom tribute is due: Augustin was the founder of the English church as distinguished from the British, for the Britons made a conscience of leaving the Pagan invaders to die in their ignorance and their sins: and it is probable that both in doctrine and discipline the religion of this country owed to the great Apostle of England (as he has been called) its revival, extension, and permanent establishment. But Gregory was no pope in the more modern sense of the word; it was his desire that the church of Rome should be followed by the church of England when there was reason for it, not otherwise; he would have some errors reproved; some he would have tolerated; some he would not have seen, that all might be done away; ecclesiastical property he would have recovered where it had been plundered; but that more should be exacted than had been taken away, or that a merchandise should be made of the loss, that was to be far from the church.[21] No wonder that the Gospel, mixed though it certainly was even then with some alloy, should have made its way in England, recommended by a spirit like this, and that kings should have been found its nursing fathers;[22] accordingly they erected crosses; built and endowed churches and monasteries, and the fierce superstitions of the Saxons made way for the religion of Jesus. But the mystery of iniquity had begun to work even in Bede’s time.[23] His portrait of Aidanus or Madoc, a missionary from Ikolmkill to the Angles near a century before, is clearly meant to contrast with the ecclesiastics of his own day. He might have been the prototype of Chaucer’s “poore parson of a towne.” He was chaste; he lived as he taught others to live; he travelled through the villages teaching the word, not on horseback, but on foot. Those whom he met, if believers, he confirmed in the faith; if unbelievers, he initiated in it; unlike the idlers of these times (says Bede), all who were in his company, whether priests or people, were busied in reading the Scriptures, or learning the Psalms by rote. There was a stirring amongst the dry bones through his exertions; the people flocked to hear the word of God; churches were built in many places, and monasteries were enriched by the bounty of the king. Such is the picture drawn by Bede, coloured