Saint Augustine, however, does not deserve quite all the honour that has been paid him for his work. He undertook his mission against his will and only by the peremptory orders of Pope Gregory the First; orders which he feared to disobey even more than he had dreaded coming over the sea from sunny Italy to convert the pagan Saxons. As first Archbishop of Canterbury he died in A.D. 605; and when he died he left the first Cathedral already built on the site of an ancient Romano-British Church where the present great Minster stands. But that was not by any means the first Christian Church in England. To the little village church of Saint Martin belongs that honour, and to this day the hoary walls of that building show the traveller unmistakable Roman tiles which, having been originally built into a pagan temple, remain to prove the humble beginnings of the Word that has spread throughout the world. Saint Augustine's Cathedral was small, but, patched and tinkered by generation after generation, it lasted nearly five hundred years; until, in fact, the troubles of the Conquest practically ruined it. Lanfranc, the first Norman Archbishop, rebuilt the Cathedral Church, and now one rebuilding speedily followed another, each one growing more elaborate than before. Lanfranc's work was superseded in 1130 by a magnificent building approaching the present bulk of the Cathedral. Henry the First was present at its consecration, with David, King of Scotland; and all the ecclesiastical dignitaries of the realm, together with a great concourse of nobles, assisted. Conrad and Ernulf, Priors of Christ Church, were the architects of the work, and so grand was it, and so great was the occasion, that an old chronicler described the ceremony of consecration as "the most famous that had ever been heard of on earth since that of the temple of Solomon." But, four years later, the "glorious choir of Conrad" was burned down, and all the pious fervour and exaltation that had raised these sculptured stones and tall towers was wasted. People and clergy alike "were astonished that the Almighty should suffer such things, and, maddened with grief and perplexity, they tore their hair and beat the walls and pavement of the church with their heads and hands, blaspheming the Lord and His saints, the patrons of the church."