l coins and other Roman
objects have been dug up in Ripon itself. It is not known whether the
Romans imparted to the local tribes of the Brigantes their own
Christianity; but two centuries after the withdrawal of the legions the
greater part of what is now Yorkshire was absorbed by the invading
Angles into their kingdom of Deira, which had itself been united with
the more northern kingdom of Bernicia to form the single realm of
Northumbria. Deira, however, seems to have retained its own
individuality. About the year 627 King Eadwine of Northumbria was
converted to Christianity by Paulinus, and the majority of his Deiran
subjects followed his example.

=The Scottish Monastery.=--It is in the middle of the seventh century that
the recorded history of Ripon begins. Deira was then ruled by Prince
Alchfrith of Northumbria under his father, King Oswiu, nephew of
Eadwine, and Bede, writing not eighty years after the event, relates
that the prince chose Ripon for the site of a monastery. The date may be
fixed in or just before the year 657. This monastery was one of those
numerous religious colonies which were the result not only of the new
Christian fervour, but also of a reaction from war toward social life
and industry. It did not represent the Roman Christianity of Augustine
which Paulinus had introduced into Deira from Canterbury, but the
Christianity which had come from Ireland through St. Columba's
missionary college at Iona, and which was now predominant throughout the
north. The monks of Ripon were brought from Melrose Abbey on the Tweed.
Like most monks of that early period, they probably followed no definite
Rule. Their abbot was Eata, a pupil of St. Aidan, and previously Abbot
of Melrose and Lindisfarne, while the guest-master was no less a person
than Cuthbert, the legend of whose having entertained an angel unawares
at Ripon added, no doubt, to the growing reputation of the house.

Its tranquillity, however, was not to last. The Roman party in the
Northumbrian Church, though inconsiderable, was gaining force, and
Alchfrith, deserting his former convictions, gave the new monastery,
with an endowment of thirty or forty hides of land, as Bede relates, to
one who had visited Rome, and who regarded the Irish (or, as it was
called by that time, the Scottish) Church as schismatical.

The life of =St. Wilfrid of Ripon=--so full of adventure, misfortune, and
lasting achievement--can only be related here in so far as it b