Page:The Church of England, its catholicity and continuity.djvu/52

 the secular clergy—because they often were married men, and sometimes followed a secular craft to gain a livelihood—were very frequently engaged in disgraceful feuds. The secular and the regular clergy of Canterbury were notorious for their disagreements especially when the subject of dispute was the election of an Archbishop to their See. All this, of course, helped to weaken the Church.

But another catastrophe awaited it. That was the incursion of the Danes. They began to come in the year 787. A section of them settled in East Anglia in 866, another section at York in 868. They followed the customs of the Saxons in their treatment of the Church. Scores of Churches were destroyed, and many of the clergy were butchered. The monks of Lindisfarne, which was one of the Bishoprics of the North, had to fly to save their lives, carrying with them the bones of S. Cuthbert, a former Bishop. The famous Monasteries of Wearmouth and Jarrow were destroyed. But I cannot stay to dwell upon these ravages. I will only mention further that a noble champion arose against them, the famous Alfred. He became a king in the year 871. One of his first acts was to defeat the Danes in a great battle. He could not succeed in driving them out of England. He therefore did what he could to make them his friends. By his means many of them were converted to the Faith and became members of the Church of England. Alfred's chief work of life was to elevate the Church of England to what it was in years gone by. He became a Christian legislator. In disposing of his money, only one-third of it did he keep for his private needs, another third he gave to the Church, and one-third he devoted to the wants of the poor. He