Page:The Story of London.djvu/28

The Story of London Canterbury, and London again relapsed into heathenism. In this, the earliest period of Saxon London recorded for us, there appears to be no relic left of the Christianity of the Britons which at one time was well in evidence. Godwin recorded a list of sixteen ecclesiastics, styled by him Archbishops of London, and Le Neve adopted the list in his Fasti Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ, on the authority of Godwin.

The list begins with Theanus during the reign of Lucius, King of the Britons in the latter half of the second century. The second is Eluanus, who was said to have been sent on an embassy to Eleutherius, Pope from A.D. 171 to 185. The twelfth on the list is Restitutus, whose name is found on the list of prelates present at the Council of Arles in the year 314.

Perhaps the answer to the question as to the extinction of British Christianity in London is to be found in Geoffrey of Monmouth's statement that when the Saxons drove the British fugitives into Wales and Cornwall, Theon, the sixteenth and last on this list of British bishops, fled into Wales with the Archbishop of Caerleon, the Bishop Thadiac of York, and their surviving clergy. The traditional date of this flight is A.D. 586, not many years before the appearance of Mellitus. Geoffrey of Monmouth is not a very trustworthy authority, but there is no reason to doubt his belief in his own story, and it is interesting to note that he specially mentions Theonus. At all events, we know from other sources that there were Bishops of London during the Roman period.

The bold statement that King Lucius founded the Church of St. Peter, Cornhill, can scarcely be said to find any credence among historians of the present day, but a reference to the doings of this ancient King will be found imbedded in the Statute Book of St. Paul's Cathedral:—'In the year from the Incarnation of the Lord one hundred and eighty-five, at the request of Lucius, the 6