Christianity. This fact
is indicated by an eloquent void on our alabaster tablets of bishops of
London in the south aisle of this church. At the time of which I am
speaking, 594 or thereabouts, the Gauls of Boulogne were having the
experience which the English of London were so soon to have. In London we
turned out our first Italian bishop, our first bishop, that is, of the
second series of bishops of London, after the restoration of Christianity
on this site. In Boulogne and Terouenne, where the first bishop they ever
had was sent to them after the year 500, they relapsed into paganism in
about fifty years' time, and in 594 they had been pagans for many years.
Pagans they remained till 630, when Dagobert got St. Omer to win them
back. St. Omer died in 667, the year after Cedd died, who won us back. It
is clear, then, that the appeals from the English to the Gauls for
conversion, at any date consistent with the facts, must have gone beyond
Boulogne.

It has been thought that the appeal was made to the British priests, who
had retired to the mountainous parts of the island, beyond the reach of
the slaying Saxon; but there would be no point in Gregory's remarks to his
Gallican correspondents if that were so. And how Gregory was to know that
appeals had been made by the English to the Britons for instruction in
Christianity, appeals most improbable from the nature of the case, no one
can say. On the other hand, he was distinctly in a position to know of
such application to the Gauls, for his presbyter Candidus had gone to
Gaul, and there was to purchase some pagan English boys of seventeen or
eighteen to be brought up in monasteries. This had taken place a very
short time before the mission set out, as is clear from Gregory's letter
to the Patrician of Gaul.

The facts suggest that Luidhard was now quite an old man, and had failed
to get any Gallican bishop to take up the work he could no longer carry
on. And accordingly, tradition makes him die a month or two after
Augustine's arrival. If we look to the language of Bede, we shall see, I
think, that Luidhard had become incapable of carrying on his work when
Augustine and his companions arrived. For they at once entered upon the
use of his church. "There was on the east side of the city a church
erected of old in honour of St. Martin[9], when the Romans were still
inhabiting Britain, where the queen used to pray. In this church they met
at first, to sing, pray, celebrate m