Britain and laid
the foundation of the Christian faith. We are also told by eminent
church historians that the father and grandfather of S. Patrick were
Christians, in which case S. Patrick himself would from a very early age
have been brought up in the tenets of their faith. He is said to have
been seized by pirates in the Clyde and taken to the north of Ireland,
and eventually to Gaul. He was subsequently restored to his friends,
whom he wished to convert to the Christian faith, and for this purpose
his father sent him to be taught in the schools of Tours, Auxerre and
Lerins. Eventually he was consecrated Bishop of the Irish and organized
an efficient ecclesiastical system in Ireland.

[Illustration: A Rood Screen with a Restoration of the Rood.
Kenn, Devon. _Photograph by Chapman._]

Before the coming of the Anglo-Saxons the church seems to have
established a firm hold on the people, who held tenaciously to their
possessions, both secular and religious, which were only wrested from
them after a severe struggle. Their enthusiastic love of Christianity
led them to make a heroic defence of the churches, rather than see them
fall into the hands of the heathen Anglo-Saxons. The historian Bede
tells us that all their buildings were destroyed, the priests' blood was
spilt upon the altars, prelates and people were slain with the sword,
and all the cities and churches were burnt to the ground. When all was
lost and there was no longer a church or home to defend, the Britons
retired to the country of their fellow-Christians, the secluded and
almost impenetrable hills and forests of the west. The Anglo-Saxon love
of gold was quickly recognised by the people of West Wales who saved
their property and bought the right of worshipping after the manner of
their fathers by the payment of an annual tribute to their conquerors.

[Side note: Church of S. Piran, Perranporth.]

So ruthlessly indeed did the Anglo-Saxons rase to the ground the early
churches, that, until a few years ago, but few traces of these early
buildings were thought to exist. An accidental discovery, however, in
the year 1835, brought to light an undoubted relic of an early British
church in the west, this being the remains of a little church which had
been until the date above mentioned completely buried in the sand
on the sea coast near Perranporth in Cornwall. They are thought by
ecclesiologists to be the remains of the original church erected to the
memor