ht
be converted from idolatry. Dagan, who had refused to sit at table with
Laurentius and Mellitus, reposed along with them on the Holy Table for
many centuries in this forgiving list.

Of a similar feeling on the part of the Britons, when isolated in Wales,
Aldhelm of Malmesbury had a piteous tale to tell, soon after 700. "The
people on the other side the Severn had such a horror of communication
with the West Saxon Christians that they would not pray in the same church
with them or sit at the same table. If a Saxon left anything at a meal,
the Briton threw it to dogs and swine. Before a Briton would condescend to
use a dish or a bottle that had been used by a Saxon, it must be rubbed
with sand or purified with fire. The Briton would not give the Saxon the
salutation or the kiss of peace. If a Saxon went to live across the
Severn, the Britons would hold no communication with him till he had been
made to endure a penance of forty days." There is quite a modern air about
this pitiful tale of love lost between the Celt and the Saxon[46]. Matthew
of Westminster, writing in the fourteenth century, carries the hostility
down to his time, in words which leave us in no doubt as to their
sincerity. "Those who fled to Wales have never to this day ceased their
hatred of the Angles. They sally forth from their mountains like mice from
caverns, and will take no ransom from a captive save his head."

Another result of the consideration, which I have suggested, of the date
and manner of the Christianising of Ireland, is the probability that the
Irish Church and the remains of the British Church had some not
inconsiderable differences of practice. This is a point which it would be
well worth while to examine closely, but we cannot do it now. Laurentius
and Mellitus at first supposed that the Britons and the Scots were the
same in their habits; then they supposed that they must be different; then
they found they were the same. But this was the habit of hostility to the
Italian mission in England, and that can scarcely be classed among
religious practices. It is too much assumed that the British Church and
the Celtic Church were the same in their differences from the Church of
the continent. To take one most important point, while they differed from
the Church Catholic in their computation of Easter, they differed from
each other in the basis of their computation. The British Church used the
cycle of years[47] arranged by Sulpicius Seve