er offend the saint who holds the keys of heaven," said Oswiu, with
the frank, half-heathendom of a recent convert; and the meeting shortly
decided as the king would have it. The Irish party acquiesced or else
returned to Scotland; and thenceforth the new English Church remained in
close communion with Rome and the Continent. Whatever may be our
ecclesiastical judgment of this decision, there can be little doubt that
its material effects were most excellent. By bringing England into
connection with Rome, it brought her into connection with the centre of
all then-existing civilisation, and endowed her with arts and
manufactures which she could never otherwise have attained. The
connection with Ireland and the north would have been as fatal, from a
purely secular point of view, to early English culture as was the later
connection with half-barbaric Scandinavia. Rome gave England the Roman
letters, arts, and organisation: Ireland could only have given her a
more insular form of Celtic civilisation.

CHAPTER XI.

CHRISTIAN ENGLAND.

The change wrought in England by the introduction of the new faith was
immense and sudden at the moment, as well as deep-reaching in its after
consequences. The isolated heathen barbaric communities became at once
an integral part of the great Roman and Christian civilisation. Even
before the arrival of Augustine, some slight tincture of Roman influence
had filtered through into the English world. The Welsh serfs had
preserved some traditional knowledge of Roman agriculture; Kent had kept
up some intercourse with the Continent; and even in York, Eadwine
affected a certain imitation of Roman pomp. But after the introduction
of Christianity, Roman civilisation began to produce marked results over
the whole country. Writing, before almost unknown, or confined to the
engraving of runic characters on metal objects, grew rapidly into a
common art. The Latin language was introduced, and with it the key to
the Latin literature and Latin science, the heirlooms of Greece and the
East. Roman influences affected the little courts of the English kings;
and the customary laws began to be written down in regular codes. Before
the conversion we have not a single written document upon which to base
our history; from the moment of Augustine's landing we have the
invaluable works of Baeda, and a host of lesser writings (chiefly lives
of saints), besides an immense number of charters or royal grants of
l