Holy Communion may be received, appears indispensable. But, probably, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, the churches of old time were built originally in open districts, population having subsequently increased and crowded round them.

St. Paul's Cathedral, in London, was originally the site of a Roman temple. In clearing the foundation of the old Christian church destroyed by the Great Fire, Sir Christopher Wren discovered at the north side a large burying-place-one of great antiquity: for underneath the graves of later centuries he found a row of Saxon graves; beneath these were Roman coins and potsherds, and also many relics, as ivory and wooden pins, which gave testimony of ancient British appropriation.

The ancient parochial churches dependent on abbeys had commonly a cemetery near them, and the dead were buried there, in the parvis or atrium of the church, whence it has been supposed that atrium came to signify a cemetery.1 .

It was, we are told, for the sake of the protection which would be afforded them by consecrated ground, baptized bells and relics, that bodies were interred

1 Before many of the churches of Ravenna, as at the cathedral, and before the basilica of St. John the Baptist, stand vast sarcophaguses, in which great personages were buried, before it was permitted to entomb any one within the church.

round about the church at first, the evil of intramural interment in its normal state having been, not interment within churches, but the erection of churches (Martyria, Propheteia, Apostolica) over the remains of honoured and venerated persons, or by the translation of such remains from their original restingplace.

For it had become usual to build churches either around the very grave of martyred persons, or very eminent saints; or to build an oratory or chapel, under their invocation, to which some relic of their bodies, or possibly a garment which had touched their tomb, was brought. Scores of churches were built about the tombs of early saints and martyrs. Indeed, so general became this custom, that Eusebius and other writers of that age use the term martyrium' almost indifferently with that of church.

And close, as close to these as the law would permit, as devotion could earn, as interest could achieve, did persons earnestly and emphatically seek interment. Hence the zealous desire for interment in a church, the supposed holiness of the place.

When the first wooden minster was raised in Thorney Island, this now royal city of Westminster was a swamp overgrown with briers; but Sebert, the founder, placed within the humble walls precious

relics which drew thither the devout of those days from distant parts of the country.

When the monks removed the body of St. Cuthbert from Lindisfarne, they built over it, in a thickly wooded hirsute wilderness, a little church of wands and branches, called afterwards Bough Church; and lo now the lordly pile of Durham.

In the days of Cenred, King of Mercia, a young man of high family and great military renown renounced the world, and lived a hermit's life, in a little wooden hut erected by himself, amid the fens and marshes of Lincolnshire. Here for ten years he abode 'in piety and painfulness' (to borrow Fuller's words), while the fame of his sanctity reached far and wide; and here, over the very wattled hut where he lived, died, and was buried,1 arose in stately proportions, through the royal bounty of King Ethelred, a pupil of the hermit, the magnificent and far-famed Abbey of Croyland.

The church of St. Alban, in Hertfordshire, was built over the death-place of this, our first martyr ; and it was standing in the time of the Venerable Bede, three hundred years after.

The beautiful Cathedral of Canterbury owed its

1 It was very usual for hermits to be buried in the cells which their own hands had fashioned. The name of this recluse was Guthlac.

fame and magnificence entirely to the astute device of Cuthbert, the eleventh archbishop. He was a bold and successful innovator on the custom theretofore scrupulously observed of interring the deceased archbishops in St. Augustine's Monastery, and his device effected a marvellous change in the circumstances of this church.

This device was no other than causing himself to be interred within the walls of the cathedral. The superstitious reverence for shrines and relics was then great crowds of devotees thronged to them, innumerable offerings were made to them, and great wealth flowed in by these means on the fortunate possessors of relics, or of the bodies of persons eminent for sanctity. St. Augustine's Monastery was rich in property of this description. He had himself, on its foundation, presented some valuable relics to it; his own remains were interred there; and round the high altar were arranged no fewer than fifteen (or seventeen) smaller altars or shrines, in which reposed the ashes of holy men of note. On these smaller altars it was customary to administer the private masses of the Church. Hence, possibly, might in some degree arise mistaken saint-worship. It is by no means improbable that ignorant, uneducated people, assembling round the shrine of a particular saint for devotion, might in mere ignorance transfer

to the saint whose name the altar bore that worship

The atrium of church of the

which belonged only to the Deity. this monastery, or rather of the Apostles Peter and Paul, had been from the earliest times the burial-place of the kings of Kent, and the archbishops and monks of Christ Church, as well as of the people of the city of Canterbury.

The Archbishop Cuthbert, jealous for the honour and prosperity of his own church, yet well aware that effectual rivalship of St. Augustine's was only to be compassed by some equality of attraction, broke the spell which had so long enchained all hearts to that monastery. Having, on the occasion of receiving the pallium at Rome, obtained the pope's sanction that all future archbishops might be buried in the church of Canterbury, in a cemetery which he proposed to make there, he enlarged the cathedral church, and for the purpose of sepulture built a chapel and porch, dedicated to St. John the Baptist. Finding his end approaching, he gave especial directions, which were strictly obeyed, that he should be privately buried before his death was announced. This was done; but his purposes and preparations had not been so secretly carried on but that suspicion of his intentions got afloat; and scarcely had the deep bell announcing his death clanged out its dismal warning, ere the fraternity of St. Augustine's came in great

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