E. 9.—­That the original church of Glaston was really of wattle is more than probable, for the remains of British buildings thus constructed have been found abundantly in the neighbouring peat.  The Arimathaean theory of its consecration became so generally accepted that at the Council of Constance (1419) precedence was actually accorded to our Bishops as representing the senior Church of Christendom.  But the oldest variant of the legend says nothing about Arimathaea, but speaks only of an undetermined “Joseph” as the leader [decurio][398] of twelve missionary comrades who with him settled down at Glastonbury.  And this may well be true.  Such bands (as we see in the Life of Columba) were the regular system in Celtic mission work, and survived in that of the Preaching Friars: 

    “For thirteen is a Covent, as I guess."[399]

E. 10.—­And though such high authorities as Mr. Haddan have come to the conclusion that Christianity in Britain was confined to a small minority even amongst the Roman inhabitants of the island, and almost vanished with them, yet the catena of references to British converts can scarcely be thus set aside.  They begin in Apostolic times and in special connection with St. Paul.  Martial tells us of a British princess named Claudia Rufina[400] (very probably the daughter of that Claudius Cogidubnus whom we meet in Tacitus as at once a British King and an Imperial Legate),[2] whose beauty and wit made no little sensation in Rome; whither she had doubtless been sent at once for education and as a hostage for her father’s fidelity.  And one of the most beautiful of his Epigrams speaks of the marriage of this foreigner to a Roman of high family named Pudens, belonging to the Gens Aemilia (of which the Pauline family formed a part): 

    “Claudia, Rufe, meo nubet peregrina Pudenti,
    Macte esto taedis, O Hymenaee, suis. 
    Diligat illa senem quondam; sed et ipsa marito,
    Tunc quoque cum fuerit, non videatur anus."[401]

[To RUFUS.  Claudia, from far-off climes, my Pudens weds:  With choicest bliss, O Hymen, crown their heads!  May she still love her spouse when gray and old, He in her age unfaded charms behold.]

It may have been in consequence of this marriage that Pudens joined with Claudius Cogidubnus in setting up the Imperial Temple at Chichester.[402] And the fact that Claudia was an adopted member of the Rufine family shows that she was connected with the Gens Pomponia to which this family belonged.

E. 11.—­Now Aulus Plautius, the conqueror of Britain, had married a Pomponia, who in A.D. 57 was accused of practising an illicit religion, and, though pronounced guiltless by her husband (to whose domestic tribunal she was left, as Roman Law permitted), passed the rest of her life in retirement.[403] When we read of an illicit religion in connection with Britain, our first thought is, naturally, that Druidism is intended.[404] But there are strong reasons for supposing that Pomponia was actually a Christian.  The names of her family are found in one of the earliest Christian catacombs in Rome, that of Calixtus; and that Christianity had its converts in very high quarters we know from the case of Clemens and Domitilla, closely related to the Imperial throne.