et with foreign traders. It is
more probable that the name of Tin Islands was applied by the ancients
to the British Isles in general, whose number and extent were little
known in those days. Rome seems to have used the isles as a place of
banishment and penal settlement, and in days of early Christianity two
heretical bishops were exiled here. Early in the tenth century
Athelstan made a progress through Cornwall, ostensibly to conquer it
as a part of Wessex; and when he reached the high land near the
present St. Buryan it is said that he sighted these islands in the
distance and was not content till he had visited them. He vowed to
build a church on the spot where he then stood if he returned safely
from the expedition. The church of St. Buryan stands as a memorial of
his fulfilled vow. On the isles themselves he is said to have founded
Tresco Abbey, dedicated to St. Nicholas, which became a wealthy
religious establishment, though now only a few fragments remain. Later
in the same century King Olaf of Norway came hither during one of the
marauding cruises that made him a terror of the British shores. It is
related that a hermit living at St. Mary's gave him timely warning of
a mutiny among his seamen; Olaf crushed the mutiny, but received a
severe wound. He was carried to the monastery at Tresco, and consented
to be baptized; after which he became a saint himself, and churches
were dedicated to him--there is one such at Exeter. Longfellow has
told us of

"His cruisings o'er the seas,
Westward to the Hebrides,
And to Scilly's rocky shore;"

and he was probably not the only Norse Viking whose keel touched here.
Other saints have left their mark on Scilly: Samson of Glamorgan came
hither, about the middle of the sixth century, after founding a church
near Fowey; he is the same Samson that we find at Guernsey, who
afterwards became Bishop of Dol. The island that bears his name,
rendered familiar to many delighted readers by Besant's _Armorel of
Lyonesse_, is no longer inhabited, but bears many marks of its former
population. Traces of old habitation abound; there are many barrows
and one perfect kistvaen. Among other saints, Teilo seems to have been
at St. Helen's. St. Agnes, like the parish so named on the mainland,
is almost certainly a dedication to the Celtic Ann. It was natural
that Tresco should become the ecclesiastical centre of Scilly. The
abbey and all the churches of the islands were granted by He