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 HE beginnings of the Church in Buckinghamshire are almost as difficult to trace as they were found to be in the neigh- bouring county of Bedford, mainly because there was no local chronicler and the political conditions of the county were of a most unsettled kind until after the end of the tenth century. Somewhere in the neighbourhood of the present county of Buckingham the Britons of the Midlands made their last stand against the invading Saxons, when in the year 570 ' the royal town of Ægles- burh ' fell into the hands of Kenwulf, and Celtic Christianity shared the fate of Celtic independence ; again in the eighth century the conquests of Offa added Buckinghamshire to the Mercian kingdom ; and later on, in the tenth and eleventh centuries, the county was ravaged at least four times by the Danes.

There seems, however, to be little doubt that the final conversion of Buckinghamshire to Christianity was accomplished by monks con- nected with the mission of St. Birinus at Dorchester, while it was still a part of the West Saxon kingdom. Nothing, however, is certainly known of the details of this conversion. There are legends connecting some of the royal saints of the seventh century with this county : the infant Saint Rumwald, represented as a grandson of Penda, is said to have made arrangements for his own burial at Buckingham ; and St. Osyth was by some accounts born at Quarrendon, and translated for a short time to Aylesbury in the tenth century when her monastery in Essex was ravaged by the Danes. But none of this can be called history. Nothing which has even an approximate claim to the title can be found until after the county had become a part of Mercia. The same some- what doubtful charter, which recounts the gifts of Offa to St. Alban's