For the next three hundred years the Church was almost wholly free from the direct control of legatine visits. Appeals to the judgment of the Roman see had for the first time been made by Wilfrith, and the Church, as we have seen, cordially upheld the resistance offered by kings and nobles to the Pope's attempts to set aside the decision of national councils. The compromise that was at last effected was not a papal triumph. Nevertheless the authority of the Pope was generally acknowledged, and the most powerful kings thought it needful to obtain the sanction of Rome for ecclesiastical changes, such as the erection and suppression of the Mercian archbishopric. Moreover, Englishmen venerated Rome as the Apostolic See and the mother of Catholic Christendom, and made frequent pilgrimages thither. First, ecclesiastics journeyed to Rome either for purposes of business or devotion. Then, towards the end of the seventh century, Ceadwalla, a West Saxon king, went thither to receive baptism, praying that he might die as soon as he was cleansed from his sins, and his prayer was granted. His example was followed by other kings, and among them by his successor, Ini. Crowds of persons of both sexes and every condition now went on pilgrimage. In Offa's time there were special buildings at Rome called the "Saxon School" for the accommodation of English pilgrims, and the Mercian king obtained a promise from Charles the Great that they should be free of toll in passing through his dominions. [Sidenote: The Church and Western Christendom.] The missionary labours of Willibrord, of Winfrith or Boniface, and other Englishmen brought our Church into close relationship with other Churches of Western Europe, for a constant correspondence was kept up between the missionaries and their brethren at home. The connexion between the English and Frankish Churches was strengthened by the residence of Alcuin at the court of Charles the Great, and by the desire of Offa to establish friendly relations with the Frankish monarch. Alcuin obtained a letter from the kings and bishops of England, agreeing with the condemnation which Charles pronounced against the decree of the Second Council of Nice, re-establishing the worship of images in the Eastern Church, and English bishops attended the council Charles held at Frankfort, where the action of the Greeks and the opinions of certain Adoptionist heretics were condemned. At the close of the eighth century our Church was highly esteemed throughout Western Christendom, and this was due both to the noble work accomplished by English missionaries and to the literary greatness of Northumbria, the home of Alcuin. CHAPTER III. _RUIN AND REVIVAL._