The English were early drawn into this ardent missionary impulse. More missionaries were sent to Europe in the seventh and eighth centuries from England than go to-day to foreign fields.[243:3] Willibrord,[243:4] a native of Northumberland, educated in Ireland, embarked in 690 with seven assistants for Frisia at the mouth of the Rhine. The native prince was Radbod, an uncompromising pagan. Acting on the advice of Pepin of France he went to Rome and was invested with the bishopric of Utrecht. He then evangelised parts of Frankish Frisia, after which he visited Denmark. After a zealous career of half a century he died in 740. Other Englishmen followed in his wake. Adelbert laboured in the north of Holland, Werenfrid near Elste, and Wiro among the natives of Guldres. The Ewald brothers were slain by the savage Saxons.[244:1] Wulfram, the Bishop of Sens, made excellent headway among Radbod's Frisians.[244:2] Indeed the zeal of these northern missionaries might have planted the Celtic Church firmly on the continent, had they not been so sadly deficient in capacity for organisation and had the Pope of Rome not been so zealously watchful. Roman colonies on the Rhine in the third and fourth centuries first carried Christianity into Germany. In the Council of Arles (314) there were present a bishop and a deacon from Cologne, and a bishop from Treves. By the fifth century Christianity had been spread by Severinus,[244:3] an Italian monk, into Bavaria along the Danube. It was really left to St. Boniface,[244:4] the "Apostle of Germany," to organise and unify the work already done, and to subject the Christian Church in Germany planted by his predecessors, to Rome. He was a most remarkable character and played an important part in the Christianisation of the Teutonic peoples. Born in 680 in Devonshire, England, of noble Saxon family, he early entered the monastery at Exeter, where he received an excellent education for that day. He soon evinced a longing for the life of a monk. His father gave his consent reluctantly, and he assumed monastic vows in a monastery near Winchester. He became a famous preacher and expounder of Scripture, and at the age of thirty was ordained priest. He now felt called upon to carry the Gospel to the land of his ancestors. Consequently in 716, with two or three fellow-monks as companions, he crossed from London to Frisia to begin his missionary labours as the successor of Willibrord, whose successes had been largely reversed. Radbod, the baptised Frisian king, had backslid when he learned that his pagan forefathers were among the damned. He declared that he preferred "to be there with his ancestors rather than in heaven with a handful of beggars."[245:1] Hence he had devastated the Christian churches and monasteries, and was now at war with Charles Martel. King Radbod met Boniface, but refused to permit him to preach, so Boniface returned to England without having accomplished anything.