s, Valleda, a Druidess, was for ages
worshipped as a deity.

It is recorded that St. Bridget planted a monastery for women at Kildare
and entrusted to its inmates the keeping of the sacred fire, and that
in later times the Asiatic missionaries founded there a female monkish
order. After the establishment of Western Christianity, however, no
woman was permitted to enter into the monasteries, and we are assured
that this ridiculous affectation of purity was extended even to the
grave. During the earlier ages of Christianity, in many portions of
Ireland there were cemeteries for men and women distinct from each
other. "It had been a breach of chastity for monks and nuns to be
interred within the same enclosure. They should fly from temptations
which they could not resist."

Although volumes have been written to prove that Christianity was
carried to Britain by Paul, and although the energies of scores of
Romish writers have been employed in attempting to prove that Ireland
was in heathen darkness prior to its conversion by the priests of the
Romish Church, yet these efforts so vigorously put forward seem only
to strengthen the evidence going to show that the Christianity of the
British Isles antedates that of either Paul or Rome.

According to Scripture, Claudia, the wife of the Senator Pudens of
Britain, was a Christian,(151) as was also Graecina, the wife of
Plautus, who was governor of Britain in the first century. The latter,
it is related, was accused before the Roman senate of "practicing some
foreign superstition." Although Lingard, in his History and Antiquities
of the Anglo-Saxon Church, has endeavored to annul the force of the
evidence which places two Christian women from Britain in Rome during
the first century of our era, he is nevertheless constrained to use the
following language: "We are, indeed, told that history has preserved
the names of two British females, Claudia and Pomponia Graecina, both of
them Christians, and both living in the first century of our era."(152)

151) 2 Timothy, iv., 21.

152) Vol. i., p. 1.

According to the Romanists, between the years 177-181 of the Christian
era, a British king named Lucius sent a messenger to the authorities at
Rome, with a request that he with his people be admitted into the bosom
of the "Holy Catholic Church." By those not prejudiced in favor of
the Romish hierarchy, this bit of amusing "evidence" shows the anxiety
manifested lest the