Page:County Churches of Cornwall.djvu/23

 THE CHURCHES OF
 * , CORNWALL

INTRODUCTION CORNWALL never thoroughly submitted to either the Roman or the Saxon yoke. It was and still remains emphatically Celtic; in fact, Professor Huxley proclaimed it to be more Celtic than Ire- land. Nevertheless, the evidence of the inscribed monumental stones sanctions the belief that there were here and there in "Western Wales" isolated Christians or Christian families in the days of the Roman occupation. But Cornwall knew little of the Faith until the latter half of the 5 th cent, and the dawn of the 6th cent., when the invasion of the saints, as it may not irreverently be termed, took place. British Christianity doubtless, as a whole, took root from Gaul; yet the missionaries who landed in considerable numbers on the Cor- nish coasts came chiefly from Ireland and Wales, rather than directly from the Continent. A