From the above representation of the original christianity of the English nation, and of the Lynn people among the rest, one cannot be very much biassed in its favour. But we shall cease to wonder at its being no better, when we consider whence it proceeded, and under what sort of rules or maxims it was introduced. It was first brought hither and promulgated by _Austin_, a monk of the convent of St. Andrew’s at Rome, accompanied by forty other Romish monks, all sent by the then Pope, whose name was _Gregory_, commonly called Gregory the first, and _Saint_ Gregory, who was advanced to the papal chair in 590. Austin and his companions arrived here in 596. Among the instruction which pope Gregory gave Austin for the regulation of his conduct and ministry, the following are not the least remarkable.— “He was not to destroy the heathen temples of the English, but only to remove the images of their gods, to wash the wails with holy water, to erect altars, and deposit relics in them, and so convert them into christian churches; not only to save the expence of building new ones, but that the people might more easily be prevailed upon to frequent those places of worship, to which they had been accustomed. He directs him further, to accommodate the ceremonies of the christian worship as much as possible to those of the heathen, that the people might not be much startled at the change; and in particular he advises him to allow the christian converts, on certain festivals, to kill and eat a great number of oxen, to the glory of God, as they had done formerly to the honour of the devil.” {252} These admonitions, (says Dr. Henry) which were but too well observed, introduced the grossest corruption into the christian worship, and shew how much the apostles of the sixth and seventh centuries had departed from the simplicity and sincerity of those of the first. CHAP. IV. Miscellaneous observations, on the social distinctions, and the general state of the community among the Anglo-Saxons. SECTION I. _State of society at Lynn_, _and in this country_, _before the Conquest_.