Of Wilfrid’s wonderful churches no trace now remains above ground. We are told that the church of Hexham was “supported by various columns” (perhaps taken from Roman temples) “and many porches, adorned with walls of wondrous length and height, and with variously winding passages, leading now up, now down, by stately staircases”. Both at Ripon and Hexham the crypt “carried deep down into the earth with marvellously smoothed stones” still remains; and at Hexham inscriptions, bas-reliefs and the shape of the stones employed show us all too plainly that the Roman camps along the line of the wall were the quarry from whence Wilfrid’s marvellously smoothed stones were obtained. But the great bishop was not giving all his time to his architectural labours. He rode from end to end of his diocese, ordaining priests and deacons in great numbers, and attracting to himself the love and devotion of the powerful abbots and abbesses, who very generally, either by present transfer or by testamentary disposition, arranged that he should become lord of the lands of their monasteries. Many Anglian nobles also sent their sons to be brought up in the bishop’s house, in order that they might either by his introduction enter the life of religion, or if they preferred the profession of arms, might by him be recommended to the king. In everything that Wilfrid touched the same note of sumptuous magnificence might be discerned. Thus, on the day of the dedication of the church at Ripon, he presented to it “the four illuminated Gospels traced in purest gold on purple parchment, which he had caused to be transcribed for the welfare of his soul, also a bookcase for these books, all made of the purest gold and adorned with the most precious jewels”. But all this pomp and splendour (though coupled with personal abstinence and the practice of monastic austerities) was rearing up for Wilfrid a host of lifelong enemies; at their head Queen Ermenburga, who ceased not to remind her husband of “all the worldly pomp of Bishop Wilfrid, his riches, the multitude of his abbeys, the grandeur of his buildings, and the numberless host of his followers adorned with royal raiment and equipped with arms”.