Page:History of the Fylde of Lancashire (IA historyoffyldeof00portiala).pdf/27

 darkness and forgetting or ignoring those true doctrines which, it is said, had been declared and expounded to them at the very commencement of the Christian era. According to Clemens Romanus and Theodoret, the Apostle Paul was one of the earliest preachers of the Gospel in Britain, but whatever amount of truth there may be in this statement, it is certain that at the Council of Arles in A.D. 314, and ten years later at that of Nicene, three British bishops were present. All traces of their former religion quickly vanished from amongst the native population of Lancashire under the pagan influence of their rulers; and it was during that unhallowed age that Gregory, surnamed the Great, and afterwards pontiff, being attracted by the handsome appearance of some youths exposed for sale in the market-place at Rome, and finding, on inquiry, that they came from the kingdom of Deira, in Britain, determined to send over Augustine and Paulinus to Christianise the inhabitants. In 596 Augustine landed with forty missionaries on the coast of Kent, the king became a convert, and the new faith spread rapidly throughout the island. Thousands were baptised by Paulinus in the river Swale, then called the Northumbrian Jordan, and the waters of Ribble were also resorted to for the performance of similar ceremonies.

The advent of the Roman mission initiated a fresh epoch in the ecclesiastical history of the county, monasteries and religious houses sprang up in different parts, and at the consecration of the church and monastery of Ripon, lands bordering on the Ribble, in Hacmundernesse (Amounderness), in Gedene, and in Duninge were presented amongst other gifts to that foundation. Paulinus was created bishop of Northumbria in 627, and it is to his ministrations and pious example that the conversion of the inhabitants of the Fylde and vicinal territory is generally attributed. The Saxon Chronicle records, however, that in 565 Columba "came from Scotia (Ireland) to preach to the Picts." Columba was born at Garten, a village in county Donegal, and according to Selden and other learned writers, the religion professed by him and the Culdees, as the priests of his order were called, was strictly Presbyterian. Bede writes:—"They preached only such works of charity and piety as they could learn from prophetical, evangelical, and apostolic writings." Columba established a monastery at Iona. Dr. Giles states that "the