Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 65, No. 402, April, 1849

But the most wanton and persevering brawler of that quarrelsome period was no less a person than Philip, seventh Earl of Pembroke, and fourth of Montgomery. Head-breaking and rib-piercing were his daily diversions: for in those days, when all gentlemen wore swords, the superabundant pugnacity of bloods about town did not exhale itself on such easy terms as in the present pacific age. Now, the utmost excesses of "fast" youths – whether right honourables or linen-shopmen – when, after a superabundance of claret or gin twist, a supper at an opera-dancer's, or a Newgate song at a night-tavern, they patrol the streets, on rollicking intent, never exceed a "round" with a cabman, the abstraction of a few knockers, or a "mill" with the police; and are sufficiently expiated by a night in the station-house, and a lecture and fine from Mr Jardine the next morning. But with the Pembrokes, and Mohuns, and Walters, when the liquor got uppermost, it was out bilbo directly, and a thrust at their neighbours' vitals. And, doubtless, the lenity of the judges encouraged such rapier-practice; for unless malice aforethought was proved beyond possibility of a doubt, the summing-up was usually very merciful for the prisoner, as in the trial of Walters for Sir Charles Pym's death, when Mr Baron Jenner told the jury that "he rather thought there was a little heat of wine amongst them," (the evidence said that nine or ten bottles had been drunk amongst six of them, which, in the case of seasoned topers, as they doubtless were, might hardly be considered an exculpatory dose;) "and this whole action was carried on by nothing else but by a hot and sudden frolic; and he was very sorry that it should fall upon such a worthy gentleman." Between merciful judges and privilege of peerage, Lord Pembroke got scot-free, or nearly so, out of various scrapes which would have been very serious matters a century and a half later. The first note taken of his eccentricities is an entry in the Lords' journals, dated the 28th January 1678, recording that the house was that day informed by the Lord Chancellor, in the name of his majesty, of "the commitment of the Earl of Pembroke to the Tower of London, for uttering such horrid and blasphemous words, and other actions proved upon oath, as are not fit to be repeated in any Christian assembly." After four weeks' imprisonment, his lordship was set free upon his humble petition, in which he asked pardon of God, the King, and the House of Peers, and declared his health "much impaired by the long restraint." His convalescence was rather boisterous, for exactly one week after his release, a complaint was made to the house by Philip Rycaut, Esq., to the effect that, on the evening of the preceding Saturday, "he being to visit a friend in the Strand, whilst he was at the door taking his leave, the Earl of Pembroke, coming by, came up to the door, and with his fist, without any provocation, struck the said Philip Rycaut such a blow upon the eye as almost knocked it out; and afterwards knocked him down, and then fell upon him with such violence that he almost stifled him with his gripes, in the dirt; and likewise his lordship drew his sword, and was in danger of killing him, had he not slipped into the house, and the door been shut upon him." One cannot but admire the sort of ascending scale observable in this assault. The considerate Pembroke evidently shunned proceeding at once to extreme measures; so he first knocked the man's eye out, then punched his head, then tried a little gentle strangulation, and finally drew his sword to put the poor wretch out of his misery. A mere assault and battery, however, was quite insufficient to dispel the steam accumulated during the month passed in the Tower. Twenty-four hours after the attack on Rycaut, and before that ill-used person had time to lodge his complaint, the furious earl had got involved in an affair of a much more serious nature, for which he was brought to trial before the Peers, in Westminster Hall. The Lord High Steward appointed on the occasion was the Lord Chancellor, Lord Finch, afterwards Earl of Nottingham, for whose address to the prisoner we would gladly make room here, for it is a masterpiece, of terse and dignified eloquence, and one of the most striking pages of Mr Peter Burke's compilation. The crime imputed to Lord Pembroke was the murder of one Nathaniel Cony, by striking, kicking, and stamping upon him; and the evidence for the prosecution was so strong that a verdict of guilty was inevitable. But it was brought in manslaughter, not murder; and the earl, claiming his privilege of peerage, was discharged. It is difficult to say what was considered murder at that time; nothing, apparently, short of homicide committed fasting, and after long and clearly established premeditation. A decanter of wine on the table, or the exchange of a few angry words, reduced the capital crime to a slight offence, got over by privilege of peerage or benefit of clergy. The death of Cony was the result of most brutal and unprovoked ill-treatment. "It was on Sunday the 3d of February," said the Attorney-General, Sir William Jones, in his quaint but able address to the peers, "that my Lord of Pembroke and his company were drinking at the house of one Long, in the Haymarket, (I am sorry to hear the day was no better employed by them,) and it was the misfortune of this poor gentleman, together with one Mr Goring, to come into this house to drink a bottle of wine." The said Goring was one of the chief witnesses for the prosecution, but his evidence was not very clear, for he had been excessively drunk at the time of the scuffle, and indeed poor Cony seems to have been the same; and it was his maudlin anxiety to see his friend home, and to take a parting-glass at Long's, "which it seems," said Goring, "was on the way," (he, the said Goring, being anything but confident of what had been on or off the way on the night in question) – that brought him into the dangerous society of Lord Pembroke. Goring got into dispute with the earl, received a glass of wine in his face, had his sword broken, lost his hat and periwig, and was hustled out of the room. "Whilst I was thrusting him out of doors," deponed Mr Richard Savage, one of Lord Pembroke's companions, "I saw my Lord of Pembroke strike Cony with his right hand, who immediately fell down, and then gave him a kick; and so upon that, finding him not stir, I took Mr Cony, being on the ground, (I and my lord together, for I was not strong enough to do it myself,) and laid him on the chairs, and covered him up warm, and so left him." The tender attention of covering him up warm, did not suffice to save the life of Cony, who had evidently, from his account and that of the medical men, received a vast deal more ill-usage than Savage chose to acknowledge. The earl got off, however, as already shown, and was in trouble again before the end of the same year – this time with a man of his own rank, Charles Sackville, Earl of Dorset, the wit and poet, who received a message late one night, to the effect that Lord Pembroke was desirous to speak with him at Locket's tavern. After inquiring whether Pembroke were sober, and receiving an affirmative reply, Dorset went as requested, but only to be insulted by his very drunken lordship of Pembroke, who insisted on his fighting him forthwith for some imaginary affront. The matter came before the House of Peers, and the disputants were put under arrest in their respective dwellings, until Lord Pembroke, declaring himself unconscious of all that had passed on the night in question, tendered apologies, and craved to be allowed to retire to his house at Wilton, whither he accordingly was permitted to go, and where he may possibly have remained – as no other frolics are related of him – until his death, which occurred three or four years afterwards.

Few of the remarkable trials given in the Anecdotes of the Aristocracy will obtain much attention from persons who have read Mr Peter Burke's book, whence most of them are borrowed and condensed, with here and there a slight alteration or addition. In a note towards the close of his second volume, Mr Bernard Burke somewhat tardily acknowledges his obligations to his brother. Considering the recent publication of the Celebrated Trials, &c., it would perhaps have been judicious of him to have altogether omitted the criminal cases in question. As told by him, they do not constitute the best portion of his book, whose most interesting chapters, to our mind, are those including such wild old fragments as A Curious Tradition, The Mysterious Story of Littlecot, An Irish Waterfiend, and others of a similar kind. The short anecdotes are generally better than those that have been worked up into a sort of tale. Many of the stories have of course been already thrice told; but by persons who have not met with them, and who are not likely to take the trouble of hunting them up in old memoirs and magazines, they will be read with pleasure, and duly prized. And whilst Mr Craik's book may fairly claim to rank as history, and Mr Peter Burke's as a well-arranged and interesting compilation, it were hardly fair to refuse brother Bernard the modicum of praise usually awarded to a painstaking and amusing gossip.

THE LIFE OF THE SEA

BY B. SIMMONS

"A very intelligent young lady, born and bred in the Orkney islands, who lately came to spend a season in this neighbourhood, told me nothing in the mainland scenery had so much disappointed her as woods and trees. She found them so dead and lifeless, that she never could help pining after the eternal motion and variety of the ocean. And so back she has gone; and I believe nothing will ever tempt her from the wind-swept Orcades again." – Sir Walter Scott. Lockhart's Life, vol. ii. – [Although it is of a female this striking anecdote is related, it has been thought more suitable to give the amplified expression of the sentiment in the stanzas a masculine application.]

I

 
These grassy vales are warm and deep,
Where apple-orchards wave and glow;
Upon soft uplands whitening sheep
Drift in long wreaths. – Below,
Sun-fronting beds of garden-thyme, alive
With the small humming merchants of the hive,
And cottage-homes in every shady nook
Where willows dip and kiss the dimples of the brook.
 

II

 
But all too close against my face
My thick breath feels these crowding trees,
They crush me in their green embrace. —
I miss the Life of Seas;
The wild free life that round the flinty shores
Of my bleak isles expanded Ocean pours —
So free, so far, that, in the lull of even,
Naught but the rising moon stands on your path to heaven.
 

III

 
In summer's smile, in winter's strife,
Unstirr'd, those hills are walls to me;
I want the vast, all-various life
Of the broad, circling Sea, —
Each hour in morn, or noon, or midnight's range,
That heaves or slumbers with exhaustless change,
Dash'd to the skies – steep'd in blue morning's rays —
Or back resparkling far Orion's lovely blaze.
 

IV

 
I miss the madd'ning Life of Seas,
When the red, angry sunset dies,
And to the storm-lash'd Orcades
Resound the Seaman's cries:
Mid thick'ning night and fresh'ning gale, upon
The stretch'd ear bursts Despair's appealing gun,
O'er the low Reef that on the lee-beam raves
With its down-crashing hills of wild, devouring waves.
 

V

 
How then, at dim, exciting morn,
Suspense will question – as the Dark
Is clearing seaward – "Has she worn
The tempest through, that Bark?"
And, 'mid the Breakers, bulwarks parting fast,
And wretches clinging to a shiver'd mast,
Give funeral answer. Quick with ropes and yawl!
Launch! and for life stretch out! they shall not perish all!
 

VI

 
These inland love-bowers sweetly bloom,
White with the hawthorn's summer snows;
Along soft turf a purple gloom
The elm at sunset throws:
There the fond lover, listening for the sweet
Half-soundless coming of his Maiden's feet,
Thrills if the linnet's rustling pinions pass,
Or some light leaf is blown rippling along the grass.
 

VII

 
But Love his pain as sweetly tells
Beneath some cavern beetling hoar,
Where silver sands and rosy shells
Pave the smooth glistening shore —
When all the winds are low, and to thy tender
Accents, the wavelets, stealing in, make slender
And tinkling cadence, wafting, every one,
A golden smile to thee from the fast-sinking sun.
 

VIII

 
Calm through the heavenly sea on high
Comes out each white and quiet star —
So calm up Ocean's floating sky
Come, one by one, afar,
White quiet sails from the grim icy coasts
That hear the battles of the Whaleing hosts,
Whose homeward crews with feet and flutes in tune
And spirits roughly blithe, make music to the moon.
 

IX

 
Or if (like some) thou'st loved in vain,
Or madly wooed the already Won,
– Go when the Passion and the Pain
Their havoc have begun,
And dare the Thunder, rolling up behind
The Deep, to match that hurricane of mind:
Or to the sea-winds, raging on thy pale
Grief-wasted cheek, pour forth as bitter-keen a tale.
 

X

 
For in that sleepless, tumbling tide —
When most thy fever'd spirits reel,
Sick with desires unsatisfied,
– Dwell life and balm to heal.
Raise thy free Sail, and seek o'er ocean's breast
– It boots not what – those rose-clouds in the West,
And deem that thus thy spirit freed shall be,
Ploughing the stars through seas of blue Eternity.
 

XI

 
This mainland life I could not live,
Nor die beneath a rookery's leaves, —
But I my parting breath would give
Where chainless Ocean heaves;
In some gray turret, where my fading sight
Could see the Lighthouse flame into the night,
Emblem of guidance and of hope, to save;
Type of the Rescuer bright who walked the howling wave.
 

XII

 
Nor, dead, amid the charnel's breath
Shall rise my tomb with lies befool'd,
But, like the Greek who faced in death
The sea in life he ruled,¹³
High on some peak, wave-girded, will I sleep,
My dirge sung ever by the choral deep;
There, sullen mourner! oft at midnight lone
Shall my familiar friend, the Thunder, come to groan.
 

XIII

 
Soft Vales and sunny hills, farewell!
Long shall the friendship of your bowers
Be sweet to me as is the smell
Of their strange lovely flowers;
And each kind face, like every pleasant star
Be bright to me though ever bright afar:
True as the sea-bird's wing, I seek my home,
And its glad Life, once more, by boundless Ocean's foam!
 

LONDON CRIES

BY B. SIMMONS

I

 
What trifles mere are more than treasure,
To curious, eager-hearted boys!
I yet can single out the pleasure,
From memory's store of childish joys,
That thrill'd me when some gracious guest
First spread before my dazzled eyes,
In covers, crimson as the West,
A glorious book of London Cries.
 

II

 
For days that gift was not resign'd,
As stumbling on I spelt and read;
It shared my cushion while I dined, —
I took it up at night to bed;
At noon I conn'd it half-awake,
Nor thought, while poring o'er the prize,
How oft my head and heart should ache
In listening yet to London Cries.
 

III

 
Imprinted was the precious book
By great John Harris, of St Paul's,
(The Aldus of the nursery-nook;)
I still revere the shop's gray walls,
Whose wealth of story-books had power
To wake my longing boyhood's sighs: —
But Fairy-land lost every flower
Beneath your tempests-London Cries!
 

IV

 
I learn'd by rote each bawling word —
And with a rapture turn'd the broad,
Great staring woodcuts, dark and blurr'd,
I never since derived from Claude.
– That Cherry-seller's balanced scale,
Poised nicely o'er his wares' rich dyes,
Gave useful hints, of slight avail,
To riper years 'mid London Cries.
 

V

 
The Newsman wound his noisy horn,
And told how slaughter'd friends and foes
Lay heap'd, five thousand men, one morn,
In thy red trenches, Badajoz.
'Twas Fame, and had its fond abettors;
Though some folk now would think it wise
To change that F for other letters,
And hear no more such London Cries.
 

VI

 
Here chimed the tiny Sweep; – since then
I've loved to drop that trifling balm,
Prescribed, lost Elia, by thy pen,
Within his small half-perish'd palm.¹⁴
And there the Milkmaid tripp'd and splash'd,
– All milks that pump or pail supplies,
(Save that with human kindness dash'd,)
'Twas mine to quaff 'mid London Cries.
 

VII

 
That Dustman – how he rang his bell,
And yawn'd, and bellow'd "dust below!"
I knew the very fellow's yell
When first I heard it years ago.
What fruits of toil, and tears, and trust,
Of cunning hands, and studious eyes,
Like Death, he daily sacks to dust,
(Here goes my mite) 'mid London Cries!
 

VIII

 
The most vociferous of the prints
Was He who chaunted Savoys sweet,
The same who stunn'd, a century since,
That proud, poor room in Rider Street:
When morning now awakes his note,
Like bitter Swift, I often rise,
And wish his wares were in that throat
To stop at least his London Cries.¹⁵
 

IX

 
That Orange-girl – far different powers
Were hers from those that once could win
His worthless heart whose arid hours
Were fed with dew and light by Gwynn;
The dew of feelings fresh as day —
The light of those surpassing eyes —
The darkest raindrop has a ray,
And Nell had hers 'mid London Cries.¹⁶
 

X

 
Here sued the Violet-vender bland —
It fills me now-a-days with gloom
To meet, amid the swarming Strand,
Her basket's magical perfume:
– The close street spreads to woodland dells,
Where early lost Affection's ties
Are round me gathering violet-bells,
– I'll rhyme no more of London Cries.
 

XI

 
Yet ere I shut from Memory's sight
That cherish'd book, those pictures rare —
Be it recorded with delight
The Organ-fiend was wanting there.
Not till the Peace had closed our quarrels
Could slaughter that machine devise
(Made from his useless musket-barrels)
To slay us 'mid our London Cries.
 

XII

 
Why did not Martin in his Act
Insert some punishment to suit
This crime of being hourly rack'd
To death by some melodious Brute?
From ten at morn to twelve at night
His instrument the Savage plies,
From him alone there's no respite,
Since 'tis the Victim, here, that cries.
 

XIII

 
Macaulay! Talfourd! Smythe! Lord John!
If ever yet your studies brown
This pest has broken in upon,
Arise and put the Monster down.
By all distracted students feel
When sense crash'd into nonsense dies
Beneath that ruthless Organ's wheel,
We call! O hear our London Cries!
 

CLAUDIA AND PUDENS.¹⁷

We gladly welcome this essay from the hand of an old friend, to whom Scotland is under great obligations. To Archdeacon Williams, so many years the esteemed and efficient head of our Edinburgh Academy, we are indebted for a large part of that increased energy and success with which our countrymen have latterly prosecuted the study of the classics; and he is more especially entitled to share with Professor Sandford, and a few others, the high praise of having awakened, in our native schools, an ardent love, and an accurate knowledge, of the higher Greek literature. We do not grudge to see, as the first fruits of Mr Williams's dignified retirement and well-earned leisure, a book devoted to an interesting passage in the antiquities of his own land.

The students of British history, particularly in its ecclesiastical branch, have long been familiar with the conjecture that Claudia, who is mentioned by St Paul, in his Second Epistle to Timothy, in the same verse with Pudens, and along with other Christian friends and brethren, may be identified in the epigrams of Martial as a lady of British birth or descent. The coincidences, even on the surface of the documents, are strong enough to justify the supposition. Claudia and Pudens are mentioned together by St Paul. Martial lived at Rome at the same time with the apostle; and Martial mentions first the marriage of a Pudens to Claudia, a foreigner, and next the amiable character of a matron Claudia, whom he describes as of British blood, and as the worthy wife of a holy husband. These obvious resemblances, with some other scattered rays of illustration, had been early observed by historians, and may be met with in all the common books on the subject, such as Thackeray and Giles. But the Archdeacon has entered deeper into the matter, and with the aid of local discoveries long ago made, but hitherto not fully used, and his own critical comparison of circumstances lying far apart, but mutually bearing on each other, he has brought the case, as we think, to a satisfactory and successful result; and has, at the same time, thrown important light on the position and character of the British people of that early period.

It seems remarkable that neither Thackeray nor Giles has noticed the argument derived from the singular lapidary inscription found at Chichester in 1723, and described in Horsley's Britannia Romana. According to the probable reading of that monument it was erected by Pudens, the son of Pudentinus, under the authority of Cogidunus, a British king, who seems, according to a known custom, to have assumed the name of Claudius when admitted to participate in the rights of Roman citizenship, and who may be fairly identified with the Cogidunus of Tacitus, who received the command of some states in Britain, as part of a province of the empire, and whom the historian states that he remembered "as a most faithful ally of the Romans." The inscription is to be found in Dr Giles's appendix, but he seems ignorant of the inference which Dr Stukeley drew from it when it was first brought to light. From Dr Giles's plan, perhaps, we were wrong in expecting anything else than a compilation of the materials which were readiest at hand; but, even with our experience of his occasional love of paradox, we were not prepared for his attempt to cushion the question as to the conversion of the early Britons, by assuming the improbability "that the first teachers and the first converts to Christianity adopted the preposterous conduct of our modern missionaries, who, neglecting vice and misery of the deepest dye at home, expend their own overflowing feelings, and exhaust the treasures of the benevolent, in carrying their deeds of charity to the Negro and the Hindoo." Differences of opinion may be entertained as to the mode in which some modern missions have been conducted; and those who think there should be no missions at all, are at liberty to say so. But, as a matter of fact, it seems strange that any one should be found to lay it down that either St Paul or his brethren, or their disciples, could confine themselves merely to vice and misery at home, or could have reconciled their consciences to so narrow a sphere of exertion, while the last words of their Master were still echoing in their ears, "Go ye, therefore, and teach ALL nations." The argument seems peculiarly absurd in the mouth of one who has edited, and with some success, the works of the venerable Bede – the worthy historian of those great changes which flowed from the Roman pontiff's resolution to look beyond vice and misery at home, and convey Christianity to the British shores; and who has also edited, we will not say so well, the remains of the excellent Boniface, whose undying fame rests on his self-devotion, in leaving his native land to seek the conversion of the German pagans.

If the only objection to the Britannic nativity of the Christian Claudia rested on the supposed indisposition of the apostles and their converts to diffuse the gospel over the remoter parts of the Roman empire, the case would be a clear one. But, even taking all difficulties into view, the probabilities in its favour are of a very decided character. The connexion between a Claudia and Pudens in Britain and a Pudens and Claudia in Rome, with the improbability that these names should be brought together in Paul's epistle in reference to other parties, goes far to support the conclusion; and it is aided by the collateral fact, that the name of Rufus – the friend of Martial's married Pair – has a connexion with the suspected Christianity of Pomponia, the wife of one of the Roman governors of Britain. But, without ourselves entering into details, we shall submit the summary which Mr Williams has made of the argument. The latter part of it relates to traditions or conjectures as to other parties, and as to ulterior consequences from the preceding theory, in reference to the early conversion of the Britons, which are deserving of serious attention, but in the accuracy of which we do not place equal confidence, though we think there is a general probability that a Christian matron of high rank and British birth would not forget the religious interests of her countrymen.

"We know, on certain evidence, that, in the year A.D. 67, there were at Rome two Christians named Claudia and Pudens. That a Roman, illustrious by birth and position, married a Claudia, a "stranger" or "foreigner," who was also a British maiden; that an inscription was found in the year 1723, at Chichester, testifying that the supreme ruler of that place was a Tib. Claud. Cogidunus; that a Roman, by name "Pudens, the son of Pudentinus, was a landholder under this ruler;" that it is impossible to account for such facts, without supposing a very close connexion between this British chief and his Roman subject; that the supposition that the Claudia of Martial, a British maiden, married to a Roman Pudens, was a daughter of this British chief, would clear all difficulties; that there was a British chief to whom, about the year A.D. 52, some states, either in or closely adjacent to the Roman Province, were given to be held by him in subjection to the Roman authority; that these states occupied, partly at least, the ground covered by the counties of Surrey and Sussex; that the capital of these states was "Regnum," the modern Chichester; that it is very probable that the Emperor Claudius, in accordance with his known practice and principles, gave also his own name to this British chief, called by Tacitus, Cogidunus; that, after the termination of the Claudian dynasty, it was impossible that any British chief adopted into the Roman community could have received the names "Tib. Claudius;" that during the same period there, lived at Rome a Pomponia, a matron of high family, the wife of Aulus Plautius, who was the Roman governor of Britain, from the year A.D. 43 until the year 52; that this lady was accused of being a votary of a foreign superstition; that this foreign superstition was supposed by all the commentators of Tacitus, both British and Continental, to be the Christian religion; that a flourishing branch of the Gens Pomponia, bore in that age the cognomen of Rufus; that the Christianity of Pomponia being once allowed, taken in connexion with the fact that she was the wife of A. Plautius, renders it highly probable that the daughter of Tib. Claudius Cogidunus, the friend of A. Plautius, if she went to Rome, would be placed under the protection of this Pomponia, would be educated like a Roman lady, and be thus made an eligible match for a Roman senator; and that, when fully adopted into the social system of Rome, she should take the cognomen Rufina, in honour of the cognomen of her patroness; and that, as her patroness was a Christian, she also, from the privileges annexed to her location in such a family, would herself become a Christian; that the British Claudia, married to the Roman Pudens, had a family, three sons and daughters certainly, perhaps six according to some commentators; that there are traditions in the Roman Church, that a Timotheus, a presbyter, a holy man and saint, was a son of Pudens the Roman senator; that he was an important instrument in converting the Britons to the faith in Christ; that, intimately connected with the narrow circle of Christians then living at Rome, was an Aristobulus, to whom the Christian Claudia and Pudens of St Paul must have been well known; that the traditions of the Greek Church of the very earliest period record, that this Aristobulus was a successful preacher of Christianity in Britain; that there are British traditions that the return of the family of Caractacus into Britain was rendered famous by the fact that it brought with it into our island a band of Christian missionaries, of which an Aristobulus was a leader; that we may suppose that, upon Christian principles, the Christianised families of both Cogidunus and Caractacus should have forgotten, in their common faith, their provincial animosities, and have united in sending to their common countrymen the word of life, the gospel of love and peace."

We believe that the Archdeacon is perfectly correct in his assertion that the British were not then either so barbarous, or so lightly esteemed by the Romans, as has been sometimes supposed. The undoubted alliance between Pudens and Claudia, celebrated by Martial as a subject of joyous congratulation, and the analogous case of the kindred Gauls, who were cheerfully acknowledged to deserve all the privileges of imperial naturalisation, seem to leave no room for doubt upon this question. Britain, therefore, we may assume, was, in the first century, both worthy and well prepared to receive any valuable boon of spiritual illumination which her friends at Rome might be ready to communicate.

But, while we so far go along with Mr Williams in his historical conjectures, we are not so much inclined to sympathise with him in some of the uses to which he wishes to put them. We rejoice to think that Christianity was largely diffused through Britain before the Saxon invasion. But we know too little of the British Church, except in the time of Pelagius, to have much confidence in her doctrine or discipline, or to regret deeply that the English people – for such is undoubtedly the fact – were for the most part Christianised, not by the British clergy, but by the missionaries of Rome. We question if the historians of the sister isle will admit, or if impartial critics will unhesitatingly adopt the Archdeacon's assertion, that "this British church sent forth her missionaries into Ireland, and conveyed into that most interesting island both the faith of Christ and the learning of ancient Rome." With every disposition to acknowledge the services of the Irish in the conversion of the Picts, and partially also of the Angles, we must have more evidence before we can allow to the British Church even the indirect merit of those exertions.

But the material point in this question is, whether it be true that the British clergy refused or declined to exert themselves in the conversion of their conquerors. That they did so, is indicated by the absence of any evidence of such an attempt; and it was expressly made a subject of reproach to them, in the conference with Augustine, that they would not preach "the way of life to the Angles." If this be the case, – and it is half admitted by Mr Williams, when he says, that "the Irish Church, the members of which were less hostile to the Saxon invaders than were the Christian Britons, sent back into Britain the true faith," – then such a course, so directly at variance with the spirit of Christianity, however humanly excusable, was sufficient to seal the doom of the church that practised it. It forms a remarkable contrast to the conduct of the Saxons themselves, who, when they in their turn were a prey to invasion, became the teachers of the very tyrants under whom they groaned, and even sent their missionaries into Scandinavia, to convert the countries which were the source of their sufferings. Nor were they in this respect without their reward. Their successful labours softened the oppression of their lot, and the sons of heathen and ruthless pirates became the beneficent and refined occupants of a Christian throne. If the British Church refused the opportunity afforded her, of at once converting and civilising her oppressors, she deserved her lot, and her advocates cannot now complain that the glory of founding Saxon Christianity must be awarded, not at all to her, but mainly to the Roman Gregory, who, whether from policy or piety, or both, entertained and perfected that missionary enterprise which influenced so beneficially the destiny of England and of Europe.