ritish among the barbarian Saxons so late as 540, I am
not clear. There was a little Irish monastery at Bosham, among the pagan
South-Saxons, a hundred and forty years later. It is easy, I think, to
overrate the hostility of the early English to Christianity. Penda of
Mercia has the character of being murderously hostile; but it was land,
not creed, that he cared for. He was quite broad and undenominational in
his slaughters.

About A. D. 545, a great plague raged at Soissons, and the people begged
for the return of their bishop. He went back to his old charge, and there
is no suggestion that he ever left it again. This legend of a Bishop of
Soissons coming to our island, may well have given rise to the tradition
that Bishop Luidhard, who certainly was living in the time of Bandaridus,
had been Bishop of Soissons. In any case, the incidental hint the story
gives us of the skill of our neighbours on the continent in the
cultivation of vegetables, even at that early time, makes the story worth
reproduction. The Bishop of Soissons, at the time of which we are
speaking, was Droctigisilus (variously spelled, as might perhaps be
expected). Of him Gregory of Tours tells that he lost his senses through
over-drinking. Gregory adds a moral reflection--if we can so describe
it--which does not give us a very high idea of the practical Christianity
of the times. It is this:--"Though he was a voracious eater, and drank
immoderately, exceeding the bounds which priestly caution should impose,
no one ever accused him of adultery[4]." If we must choose a bishop of
Soissons to be represented by Luidhard, we may fairly prefer the
vegetable-gardener to the immoderate drinker.

We read, again, in fairly early times, that our first Christian bishop in
England had been bishop of Senlis. The authors and compilers of _Gallia
Christiana_ insert the name of Lethardus, or Letaldus, among the bishops
of Senlis, quoting Sprot and Thorn. He was said to have come over with
Bertha as early as 566, and they insert him accordingly after a bishop who
subscribed at the third Council of Paris in 557. Jacques du Perron, bishop
of Angouleme, almoner to Queen Henrietta Maria, took this view of his
predecessor, the almoner of Queen Bertha, that he had been Bishop of
Senlis. The parallel which he drew between the two cases of the first
Christian queen and her almoner, and the first Romanist queen after the
final rupture and her almoner, was much in point. "Gaul i