Great Britain became the most glorious and precious acquisition of the monks of the great Neapolitan Abbey of Monte Cassino for the Papacy.

Theodore came to Britain with a clearly determined resolution to steer clear of all schisms between the ancient British and Saxon Christians, and to neutralise the prejudices and hatreds of races, and the rivalries of the numerous kings and states. He came with the resolution to establish, and to represent in his person, the unity of the Church and the intellectual life of the clergy, with submission to the Sovereign Pontiff of the Papacy, and to all the rules, forms, and discipline of the Monte Cassino Benedictines; his object being the civilisation of the people, and the political unification of Britain, by the introduction of the arts, the sciences, and the learning, together with the language of the canon and civil laws. of Rome. In all his organisations he was strongly supported by his confrères, the monks Adrian and Biscop, and by his contemporaries, the Venerable Bede and St. Cuthbert.

Theodore travelled through all the Teutonic kingdoms and Celtic states of Britain, and was everywhere accepted as the sole Primate of a unified National Church. He divided Britain into dioceses and parishes, with resident bishops, secular clergy, and parish priests, apart from the Celtic monasteries, to which he caused to be appointed learned Benedictine abbots and Italian monks. He instituted lay guardians and masons, with church-rates and a form of tithes for the architectural structures, and for the introduction of Gregorian music, together with the institution of charities, and the reformation of the village festivities of the people.

He first instituted, in 693, a synod or parliament of bishops, abbots, and other laymen authorities, to meet once a year to represent all the nationalities and peoples of the One United Church. It appears to be impossible to deny that upon these organisations the whole social and political life of the future peoples of the villages and country of England moulded and developed themselves, and originated the union of a British Empire with a National Church. The archæology and records of this time would be the history of the parish church and the local life of the country.

PLANS OF DISCOVERIES LATELY MADE IN THE NAVE OF REPTON CHURCH, DERBYSHIRE.

BY J. T. IRVINE, ESQ.

(Read 21st March 1894.)

SOME years ago I obtained plans and drawings of the

Saxon and Norman work in the undercroft below the choir of this church, which appeared afterwards in the Reports of the Derbyshire Natural History and Antiquarian Society-information that accident has since enabled me largely to extend through the nave and aisles, westwards, throwing much light on other early changes, by which the structure has been brought into its present

state.

The late "restoration", under Sir A. Blomfield's direction, was placed in the careful hands of Mr. John Thompson, of Peterborough, for execution, to whom my thanks are due both for the use of the plan and drawings prepared for him by his clerk (the late Mr. Robert Garwood), and also for permission to place them before the members of our Association. Not fortunate enough myself to see these remains when open, and therefore judging only from these drawings, the following suggestions relative to their order of succession must be taken merely as probable approximations.

The remains presented in these are, first, walls of a central crossing (or tower?) and transepts of late Saxon date, the openings into the last having been increased in width in Norman times. A nave, without aisles, of like date, in later times elongated westwards, receiving aisles, gabled (with the then usual six-sided pillars used in such cases; not an uncommon arrangement hereabout); two angles of each pillar pointing east and west, so that the off-side formed support for the great beam beneath each dividing or cross-gutter. (Of which arrangement, though the roof is now altered, yet gables and gutter exist, and like pillars may still be studied at St. Chad's Church, Lichfield.) These aisles were again replaced by wider ones, undergoing in their turn the