Canterbury to his correspondent in England as a place of meeting. Thus
Canterbury increased. There in the Roman times doubtless a church
arose which, doubtless, too, perished in the Diocletian persecution.
That it re-arose we know, for Venerable Bede describes it as still
existing when, nearly two hundred years after the departure of the
Roman legions, St Augustine came into England, sent by St Gregory to
make us Christians. He came, as we know, first into Kent to find
Canterbury the royal capital of King Ethelbert, and when, says Bede,
"an episcopal see had been given to Augustine in the king's own city
he _regained possession (re_cuperavit) with the king's help, _of a
church there which he was informed had been built in the city long
before by Roman believers_. This he consecrated in the name of the
Holy Saviour Jesus Christ, our Lord and God, and fixed there a home
for himself and all his successors." [Footnote: Bede, _Hist. Eccl._, I.
xxviii.] This church, rudely repaired, added to and rebuilt, stood
until Lanfranc's day, when it was pulled down and destroyed to make
way for the great Norman building out of which the church we have has
grown.

The little church which Lanfranc destroyed and which had seen so many
vicissitudes, was probably a work of the end of the fourth century, at
any rate in its foundations. Eadmer indeed who tells us all we know of
it says that it was built on the plan of St Peter's in Rome. "This
was that very church," he writes, "which had been built by Romans as
Bede witnesses in his history, and which was duly arranged in some
parts in imitation of the church of the blessed Prince of the Apostles,
Peter, in which his holy relics are exalted by the veneration of the
whole world." We shall never know much more than Eadmer tells us, for
if the foundations still exist they lie within the present church. It
is recorded, however, that in the time of St Elphege the church was