Some further light would doubtless be thrown on the subject if the Camborne registers were searched for the children of the above marriages and for the burial of their parents. It is noteworthy that Carthew marriages were solemnised at Camborne in 1583 and 1588. They may have been, and probably were, those of John Carthowe’s children. Footnote 38: As late, however, as 1599 we meet with Bretons at Redruth, who contributed handsomely to the subsidy of that year. Six may be noted in the St. Ives district in 1571, but none in 1593 or after that date (Lay Subsidies, 87 (218)). Footnote 39: The trève is described by Dom Gougaud as a parochial subdivision still recognised in certain cantons of Brittany (_Chrétientés_, p. 124). Footnote 40: Loth’s _Les Saints bretons_, pp. 92, 93. Footnote 41: Peter, _Old Cornish Drama_, p. 34. Footnote 42: After the above was written, Mr. Thurstan Peter, President of the Royal Institution of Cornwall, announced that under the ægis of that institution the _Beunans Meriasek_ would be performed in the year 1915. The great war has necessarily caused the postponement of the enterprise. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ IV THE CELTIC CHRISTIANITY OF CORNWALL By comparing the development of Christian institutions in the various portions of the Celtic world and observing those elements which were, for three centuries at least, characteristic, common and permanent, it ought to be possible to arrive at some very definite and useful results. It ought to be possible to supplement the evidence, supplied by writers like Gildas and the venerable Bede, and, from the common store of Celtic learning, acquired in Wales, Ireland and Brittany, to remedy our defective knowledge of Cornwall and of Cornish Christianity. Obviously the closer the relations between the four Celtic families the stronger the presumption in favour of an identity of ecclesiastical organisation. Until the Saxon raids, which began in the year 428, Cornwall and Wales were integral portions of Great Britain; the inhabitants, though differentiated into kingdoms, were bound together by a common religion and by a more or less common language. The Roman occupation which in Armorica had changed the vernacular from Gaulish to Latin (which in the fifth century was, in that country, already giving rise to a romance language) achieved no such marked result in Britain. Latin may have been spoken in the centres of population and in places where the Roman influence was exceptionally strong; it may have been spoken, as Professor Haverfield contends, in the eastern counties; but the absence of any trace of a romance language goes to prove that it was never the vernacular.