As to the British Bishops of London being styled archbishops, there is no evidence for it. Our famous Dean Ralph (A. D. 1181), no mean historian, left on record his view that there were three archbishoprics[34] in Britain--London, York, and Caerleon--which last, he said, corresponded to St. David's. Whether Gregory had some information that has since been lost, respecting the ecclesiastical arrangements which had existed here, we cannot say; but it is a curious coincidence, explicable perhaps by the mere importance of the two places, that he directed Augustine to make arrangements for a metropolitan at London, with twelve suffragans, and a metropolitan at York with twelve suffragans. The complete arrangements, as set out by Gregory when he sent an additional supply of missionaries to Augustine, of whom Mellitus was one, were as follows. Augustine was told to ordain in various places twelve bishops, to be subject to his control, so that London should for the future be a metropolitan see; and it appears that Gregory contemplated Augustine's occupying as a matter of course the position of Bishop of London[35]. He was to ordain and send to York a suitable bishop, who should in like manner ordain twelve bishops and become the metropolitan. The northern metropolitan was to be under Augustine's jurisdiction; but after Augustine's death he was to be independent of London, and for the future the metropolitan who was senior in consecration was to have precedence[36]. This takes no account of the bishops existing in what we call Wales and Cornwall. Gregory specially declared that those bishops, then at least seven in number, were subject to Augustine. It is impossible that these seven were to be included among the twelve suffragans of London, for with Rochester and Canterbury that would leave only three bishops for the whole of the rest of the south of England. That the tradition of British times, and a part of the scheme actually laid down by Gregory, should be carried out in our time, would be I think an excellent thing. An Archbishop of London, with some half-dozen suffragans, with dioceses and diocesan rank, in districts of this great wilderness of houses, would be a solution of some very difficult problems.