Page:Chronicles of the Picts, chronicles of the Scots, and other early memorials of Scottish history.djvu/162

 cliv PEEFACE. prominent points of difference were the proper time for keeping Easter and the tonsure, there can be Httle doubt that much of the antagonism between them lay in the different spii'it and organization of The ciiurcii of ^jjg Churchss. The church founded by St. Ninian Nmiaa and *' Kentigera. originally embraced the whole of the country south of the Firths of Forth and Clyde ; while its popula- tion was entirely British, and extended beyond the former estuary into the regions occupied by the southern Picts ; but the Saxon colonies on the eastern shore, and the Angles who formed the king- dom of Bernicia, within the limits of his church, were pagans ; and the influence of this pagan population, and the decay of the Church naturally caused what is termed by the monastic writers an " a^iostasia." The Church was revived among the Britons of Strathclyde in the sixth centurj^, by Kentigern, who thus re-founded the Church in the same century with the arrival of St. Columba. The earlier part of his acts is probably fabulous ; but this seems certain, that, when the battle of Arderydd, in 573, estabhshed Rederchen as monarch of all the Strathclyde Bri- tons, Kentigern came from Wales with a number of clergy, from the monastery of Llanelwy, which he had founded, and re-established the Church in Strathclyde, of which Glasgow became the chief seat. Although the Northumbrians were converted m the reign of Edwin by Paulinus in the year 625, according to the narrative of Bede, there is reason to conclude that the Church of Kentigern had a