he had lived, a heathen.  His son, Poppa, succeeding to the nominal sovereignty, did not actively oppose the introduction of Christianity among his people, but himself refused to be converted.  Rebelling against the Frank dominion, he was totally routed by Charles Martell in a great battle (A.D.750) and perished with a vast number of Frisians.  The Christian dispensation, thus enforced, was now accepted by these northern pagans.  The commencement of their conversion had been mainly the work of their brethren from Britain.  The monk Wilfred was followed in a few years by the Anglo-Saxon Willibrod.  It was he who destroyed the images of Woden in Walcheren, abolished his worship, and founded churches in North Holland.  Charles Martell rewarded him with extensive domains about Utrecht, together with many slaves and other chattels.  Soon afterwards he was consecrated Bishop of all the Frisians.  Thus rose the famous episcopate of Utrecht.  Another Anglo-Saxon, Winfred, or Bonifacius, had been equally active among his Frisian cousins.  His crozier had gone hand in hand with the battle-axe.  Bonifacius followed close upon the track of his orthodox coadjutor Charles.  By the middle of the eighth century, some hundred thousand Frisians had been slaughtered, and as many more converted.  The hammer which smote the Saracens at Tours was at last successful in beating the Netherlanders into Christianity.  The labors of Bonifacius through Upper and Lower Germany were immense; but he, too, received great material rewards.  He was created Archbishop of Mayence, and, upon the death of Willibrod, Bishop of Utrecht.  Faithful to his mission, however, he met, heroically, a martyr’s death at the hands of the refractory pagans at Dokkum.  Thus was Christianity established in the Netherlands.

Under Charlemagne, the Frisians often rebelled, making common cause with the Saxons.  In 785, A.D., they were, however, completely subjugated, and never rose again until the epoch of their entire separation from the Frank empire.  Charlemagne left them their name of free Frisians, and the property in their own land.  The feudal system never took root in their soil.  “The Frisians,” says their statute book; “shall be free, as long as the wind blows out of the clouds and the world stands.”  They agreed, however, to obey the chiefs whom the Frank monarch should appoint to govern them, according to their own laws.  Those laws were collected, and are still extant.  The vernacular version of their Asega book contains their ancient customs, together with the Frank additions.  The general statutes of Charlemagne were, of course, in vigor also; but that great legislator knew too well the importance attached by all mankind to local customs, to allow his imperial capitulara to interfere, unnecessarily, with the Frisian laws.

VI.