RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN OLD ENGLISH VERSE CHAPTER I FROM CÆDMON TO THE CONQUEST THE century and a half which followed the introduction of Christianity into Anglo-Saxon England was a most eventful period, and very fruitful in social advancement. Between the landing of Augustine, in 597, and the death of Bede, in 735, the nation, in embracing Christianity, took quite a new form, passed out of savagery into comparative civilisation, and started firmly on the progressive course that henceforth lay before it. It was in about the middle of this period that Cædmon wrote -the first of our sacred poets, and well worthy to head the long roll which was to follow. He died about 680; and his remarkable poems on the Creation and other biblical subjects were written between the middle of the seventh century and that date. His life carries us back almost to the dawn of Christianity in England. Hilda, a lady of royal blood, the noble-hearted prioress of his convent at Whitby, had been converted to the faith by Paulinus, first bearer of the Gospel to the English of Northumbria. She had remained staunch to her religion through the time of heathen reaction which followed upon Edwin's defeat by Penda. When new missionaries had been called in from Iona, and Cuthbert was winning himself a saintly memory by his apostolical labours in the northern counties, Hilda, no less venerated than he, was a sort of prophetess among her A |