The king was among their first converts.  Tho principal of his nobility, as usual, followed that example, moved, as it is related, by many signal miracles, but undoubtedly by the extraordinary zeal of the missionaries, and the pious austerity of their lives.  The new religion, by the protection of so respected a prince, who held under his dominion or influence all the countries to the southward of the Humber, spread itself with great rapidity.  Paganism, after a faint resistance, everywhere gave way.  And, indeed, the chief difficulties which Christianity had to encounter did not arise so much from the struggles of opposite religious prejudices as from the gross and licentious manners of a barbarous people.  One of the Saxon princes expelled the Christians from his territory because the priest refused to give him some of that white bread which he saw distributed to his congregation.

It is probable that the order of Druids either did not at all subsist amongst the Anglo-Saxons, or that at this time it had declined not a little from its ancient authority and reputation; else it is not easy to conceive how they admitted so readily a new system, which at one stroke cut off from their character its whole importance.  We even find some chiefs of the Pagan priesthood amongst the foremost in submitting to the new doctrine.  On the first preaching of the Gospel in Northumberland, the heathen pontiff of that territory immediately mounted a horse, which to those of his order was unlawful, and, breaking into the sacred inclosure, hewed to pieces the idol he had so long served.[29]

If the order of the Druids did not subsist amongst the Saxons, yet the chief objects of their religion appear to have been derived from that fountain.  They, indeed, worshipped several idols under various forms of men and beasts; and those gods to whom they dedicated the days of the week bore in their attributes, and in the particular days that were consecrated to them, though not in their names, a near resemblance to the divinities of ancient Rome.  But still the great and capital objects of their worship were taken from Druidism,—­trees, stones, the elements, and the heavenly bodies.[30] These were their principal devotions, laid the strongest hold upon their minds, and resisted the progress of the Christian religion with the greatest obstinacy:  for we find these superstitions forbidden amongst the latest Saxon laws.  A worship which stands in need of the memorial of images or books to support it may perish when these are destroyed; but when a superstition is established upon those great objects of Nature which continually solicit the senses, it is extremely difficult to turn the mind from things that in themselves are striking, and that are always present.  Amongst the objects of this class must be reckoned the goddess Eostre, who, from the etymology of the name, as well as from the season sacred to her, was probably that beautiful planet which the Greeks