“Unde remur, aliquos venerabiles viros aut de Britannia, id est gente Anglorum, qui maxime familiares apostolicae sedis semper existunt,” etc. Gest. Abb. Fontanellens. Pertz, ii. 289. ----- But England nevertheless retained in some sense a national church. Many circumstances combined to ensure a very considerable amount of independence in this country. On the continent of Europe the prelates and clergy whom the invasions of the barbarians found established in the cities were, in fact, Roman provincials; and this character continued for a very long time to modify their relations toward the conquerors: in Britain, either Christianity was never widely and generally spread, or it retreated before the steady advance of the pagan Saxons. It is remarkable that we nowhere hear of the existence of Christian churches before Augustine, except in the territory exclusively British, and in the household of Æðelberht’s Frankish queen, the latter an exception of little moment. But no sooner do the first missionary prelates vanish from the scene, than we find them replaced by Saxons belonging to the noblest and most powerful families, and thus connecting the clergy with the state by that most close and intimate tie which forms the strongest and least objectionable security for both. Berhtwald, the eighth archbishop of Canterbury, was a very near relative of the Mercian king Æðelred; Aldhelm was closely connected with the royal family of Wessex; and even down to the Conquest we find the scions of the royal and noble houses occupying distinguished stations in the ministry of the Church. It is obvious how much this near and intimate association with the national aristocracy must have tended to diminish the evils of a separate institution, having some kind of dependence upon a foreign centre; and when to this it is added that the principal clergy, as ministers of state and members of the Witena gemót, had a clear and distinct interest in the maintenance of good government, and a personal share in its administration, we can easily understand why the clergy were, generally speaking, kept better within bounds in England than in other contemporaneous states[861]. Guilty of extravagancies the clergy were here, no doubt, as elsewhere; but on the whole their position was not unfavourable to the harmonious working of the state; and the history of the Anglosaxons is perhaps as little deformed as any by the ambition and power, and selfish class-interests of the clergy[862]. On the other hand it cannot be denied that in England, as in other countries, the laity are under the greatest obligations to them, partly for rescuing some branches of learning from total neglect, and partly for the counterpoise which their authority presented to the rude and forcible government of a military aristocracy. Ridiculous as it would be to affirm that their influence was never exerted for mischievous purposes, or that this