r declared that the presence of Christians
caused the failure. Just such scenes were enacted, with at least as much
of tragic earnestness, when Patrick worsted the Druid Lochra in the hall
of Tara, or when Columba baffled the devices of Broichan, the arch-Druid
of Brude, the Pictish king.

While Columba was doing his great work, Christianity was re-established by
a British king in a part of Britain where it had been obliterated by pagan
Britons, that is, in the territory called Cumbria, extending southwards
from Dumbarton on the Clyde and including our Cumberland. The king was a
Christian; and the question whether Cumbria should be Christian or pagan
was brought to the arbitration of battle. The great fight of Ardderyd, a
few miles north of Carlisle, gave it for Christianity in 573, twenty years
before the period to which our attention is mainly drawn. Kentigern, a
native of the territory between the walls, became the apostle of Cumbria.
His mother was Teneu, or Tenoc, and in these railway days she has
re-appeared in a strange guise. From St. Tenoc she has become St. Enoch,
and has given that name to the great railway station in Glasgow, much to
the puzzlement of travellers, who ask when the Old Testament Enoch was
sainted by the Scotch[49]. The establishment of Christianity in this
kingdom of Cumbria is said by the Welsh records to have had a great
result. They claim that the first conversion of the northern section of
the Northumbrian Angles, before their relapse, was due to a missionary who
was of the royal family of Cumbria; indeed they appear to assert that
Edwin of Northumbria himself was baptised by this missionary, Rum, or Run,
son of Urbgen or Urien.

It seems probable that the districts of Britain which we call Wales had in
Romano-British times only one bishopric, that of Caerleon-on-Usk, near
Newport, in Monmouthshire. But as soon as light is seen in the country
again, after the darkness which followed the departure of the Romans, we
find a number of diocesan sees. The influx of bishops and their flocks
from the east of the island no doubt had something to do with this, as had
also the territorial re-arrangements under British princes. The secular
divisions probably decided the ecclesiastical. Bangor, St. Asaph, St.
David's, Llanbadarn, Llandaff, and Llanafanfawr, are the sees of which we
have mention, founded by Daniel, Asaph, David, Paternus, Dubricius, and
Afan. The deaths of these founders date from 584 t