William Heynys signed the Renunciation of the Papal Supremacy in 1534-5.
Eustace Ffrensham became insane.
APPENDIX B
DATE OF THE CHURCH
The revelation of fresh features of interest in the church by the recent explorations has attracted wide attention, and revived the controversy as to the probable date of the building. The whole subject was discussed in the spring of 1896 at a meeting of the Society of Antiquaries in London, after an able paper read by Mr W. H. St. John Hope. The question was also brought prominently forward at the Canterbury meeting of the Royal Archæological Institute in July 1896. What the newspapers called "The Battle of St. Martin's" raged with unabated vigour during the week, and, although many opinions were expressed with that positiveness which is said to mark the true antiquary (a positiveness not always founded on personal knowledge), yet by some well-known experts no pains were spared, and no special and professional attainments were wanting, to determine the issue on a scientific basis. It may be true to the experience of human nature, but yet it seems a feeble conclusion, if we confess that after all this apparently exhaustive debate, the controversy on the main point is as much alive as ever.
Premising that by "the Chancel" is meant the original chancel extending 20 feet eastward from the nave, we may state the following four as the only theories that now hold the field:—
(1) A Roman date for the chancel, and a later Roman date for the nave.
(2) A Roman date for the nave, and a later Roman date for the chancel.
(3) A Roman date for the chancel, and a Saxon date for the nave.
(4) An early Saxon date for the chancel, and a later Saxon date for the nave.
Many of the architectural details bearing on the subject are so minute, and so highly technical, that they are not suitable to the character of this Appendix. We propose, therefore, to confine ourselves chiefly to broad general features, and to narrow the controversy, in the first place, to the question whether there still exists in the church any Roman workmanship, or whether even the most ancient part of it must be assigned to the Saxon period. It is difficult to avoid recapitulation of many points alluded to in the handbook, but we may summarise the principal arguments in favour of the Roman date of portions of the church as follows: (1) History.—It is distinctly mentioned by Bede that there was (in 597) a church dedicated to St. Martin, built while the Romans still occupied Britain. Now this is direct testimony, to which great weight must be assigned, when we consider the character and authority of the writer. He was born in 673—i.e. only seventy-six years after the mission of Augustine, and sixty-nine years after his death, and wrote his "Ecclesiastical History" in the first part of the eighth century, taking the greatest possible pains to make it worthy of his subject. His information with regard to the history of Christianity in Kent was derived from Albinus, Abbot of St. Augustine's, who was himself a pupil of Theodore (Archbishop of Canterbury in 668) the great consolidator of the English Church. We are told that Albinus referred to the records in his keeping, and sent Nothelm, a priest of London, to search the Archives at Rome, where were preserved many valuable letters of Gregory the Great and subsequent Popes. Considering, then, the extreme carefulness of Bede, and the sources from which he derived his materials, we cannot imagine any evidence (short of first-hand) more trustworthy and valuable. That he should have written as he did, making a positive statement that the Church was built during the Roman occupancy of Britain, while all the time it owed its foundation to Queen Bertha or Augustine, is perfectly incredible. The theory as to its foundation by Queen Bertha has nothing whatever to justify it; and were the idea, that it was founded by Augustine, true, would it not in Bede's time have been an easily ascertained fact, capable probably of documentary proof, especially among those who were inmates of Augustine's own monastery, and would have claimed St. Martin's Church as a precious inheritance—the legacy of their founder? No one impugns the general accuracy of Bede's narrative, and the value of such historical evidence cannot be too strongly insisted upon, for it is infinitely more weighty than any a priori arguments or negative criticism.