t was that sent
to the English their first Christian queen. The clergy of Gaul it was that
sent them their first bishop, her almoner." But the sacramentary of
Senlis, the calendar of commemorations, and the list of bishops, all are
silent as to this Bishop Lethardus. Let me note for future use that these
places, Soissons and Senlis, were in Belgic Gaul, that part of the
continent which was directly opposite to the south-eastern parts of
Britain.

I have said more about the diocese to which Luidhard may have belonged
than I think the question deserves. This is done out of respect to my
predecessors in the enquiry. The idea that a bishop must have had a see is
natural enough to us, but is not according to knowledge. A hundred and
fifty years later than this, there were so many wandering bishops in Gaul,
that a synod held in this very diocese of Soissons declared that wandering
bishops must not ordain priests; but that if any priests thus ordained
were good priests, they should be reordained. And a great Council of all
the bishops of Gaul, held at Verneuil in 755, declared that wandering
bishops, who had not dioceses, should be incapable of performing any
function without permission of the diocesan bishop. There is no suggestion
that these were foreign bishops; and it was before the time when the
invasions of Ireland by the Danes drove into England and on to the
continent a perfect plague of Irish ecclesiastics calling themselves
bishops. I think it is on the whole fair to say that the more you study
the early history of episcopacy in these parts of Europe, the less need
you feel to find a see for Bishop Luidhard.

There is one very interesting fact, which deserves to be noted in
connection with this mysterious Gallican bishop. The Italian Mission paid
very special honour to his memory and his remains. There is in the first
volume of Dugdale's _Monasticon_[5] a copy of an ancient drawing of St.
Augustine's, Canterbury. This is not, of course, the Cathedral Church,
which was an old church of the British times restored by Augustine and
dedicated to the Saviour; "Christ Church" it still remains. St.
Augustine's was the church and monastery begun in Augustine's lifetime,
and dedicated soon after his death to St. Peter and St. Paul, as Bede (i.
33) and various documents tell us precisely. This fact, that the church
was dedicated to St. Peter and St. Paul, was represented last June, when
"the renewal of the dedication of Englan