The next is an author of a very different calibre, the venerable Beda; concerning whom we must remember that he stands in contrast to Gildas from being Anglo-Saxon rather than British. Now, his history is Ecclesiastical and not Civil; so that ethnological questions make no part of his inquiries, and, as far as they are treated at all, they are treated incidentally. Whatever may have been the records of the Romano-British Church, or the compositions of Romano-British writers, they form no part of the materials of Beda. The most he says that, from _writings and traditions_ along with the information derived from the monks of the Abbey of Lestingham, he wrote that part of his work which gives an account of the Christianity of the kingdom of Mercia. For the other parts of the kingdom he chiefly applied to the Bishop of the Diocese; to Albinus for the antiquities of Kent and Essex; and to Daniel for those of Wessex, the Isle of Wight, and Sussex. For Lincolnshire he had _viva voce_ information from Cynebert, and the monks of the Abbey of Partney; and for Northumberland he made his inquiries himself. Now as Christianity was first introduced into Anglo-Saxon England by Augustine, A.D. 597, the era of the Germanic invasions lies beyond the evidence of either Beda or his authorities. Gildas, and the sources of Gildas he knew; but of access to native records of the fifth century--the century for which they are most wanted--or of the existence of such, no trace occurs in the Historia Ecclesiastica, except in the two doubtful cases which will appear in the sequel.[13] In Nennius, more than in any other writer, do we find it necessary to assume the existence of any previous historians, upon whose authority the facts of the times between the cessation of the Roman supremacy, and the consolidation of the Anglo-Saxon power may be received; and in Nennius we must, for many reasons, admit it. In the first place, he mentions more than one circumstance which he could not well have got from any other source; in the next, the preface says that what has been done has been done "partim majorum traditionibus; partem scriptis; partim etiam monumentis veterum Britanniæ incolarum; partim et de annalibus Romanorum. Insuper et de chronicis sanctorum Patrum, Ysidori, scilicet Hieronymi, Prosperi, Eusebii, necnon et de historiis Scotorum Saxonumque, inimicorum licet, non ut volui, sed ut potui, meorum obtemperans jussionibus seniorum, unam hanc historiunculam undecunque collectam balbutiendo coacervari." But, it should be added that the authenticity of the preface is doubtful.