And so for 200 years our Winchester history remains a blank, till the Saxon invader had in turn made his way hither, by the same natural channel which Celt and Roman before him had followed, and a kingdom of Wessex had grown up, rude and barbarous, but firmly planted, with the Hame-tun (Southampton) as its first capital, till, with the growth of institutions, the natural advantages of Winchester made it in turn the centre of rule of the West Saxon kingdom.
How Jute and Angle warred in turn with Saxon and with one another: how order was gradually evolved, and Christianity planted in Britain by Augustine and his band of monks, we cannot here pursue in detail. It is the coming of Christianity to Hampshire that immediately concerns us, and with this a new chapter of great interest opens in our Winchester story.
Augustine had landed in Kent in 597, and it is a noteworthy fact that while Christianity had spread gradually thence to the East Saxons, to Northumbria, and to East Anglia, the stream of influence from Canterbury had, as it were, flowed by and left Wessex, Sussex, and Mercia entirely untouched, so effectually had the natural barriers of the forest belt isolated the south-west of England from Kent and even London; and when at length Christianity was brought to Wessex it was by a special mission from Italy and not from Canterbury at all that the message came. Thus the founding of the Church in Wessex was an act independent entirely of Augustinian influence; not for many years after did the diocese acknowledge the supremacy of Canterbury, and when Bishop Henry of Blois in the twelfth century was scheming to convert Winchester into a separate province, with himself as Archbishop, he had at least a historical basis on which to rest his claim. Sussex and Mercia were evangelized later still, and the Isle of Wight last of all.
There is indeed a local tradition which connects the name of Augustine with Winchester. In Avington Park, some five miles from the city, a moribund oak still stands, known as the Gospel Oak, from the tradition that Augustine himself preached the Gospel under it. But the tradition is entirely unsupported, and certain it is that, even if it were true, the preaching had no permanent result.
The story of the conversion of the Gewissas is told by Bede, and deserves to be translated in full.
At that time (A.D. 634, English Chronicle), during the reign of King Kynegils, the race of the West Saxons, anciently termed Gewissas, received the faith of Christ, which was preached to them by Birinus, who had come to Britain at the instance of Pope Honorius. His intention had indeed been to proceed direct into the heart of the land of the Angles, where as yet no teacher had penetrated, in order there to sow the seeds of the faith. For which purpose, and by direction of the Pope himself, he was consecrated Bishop by Asterius, Bishop of Genoa. But on his arrival in Britain, and coming in contact first of all with the Gewissas, he found them everywhere to be in a state of the grossest heathenism, and so he considered it to be more profitable to preach the Word to them, rather than to go farther to seek a field to labour in.
The actual conversion of King Kynegils took place the year after, not at Winchester, but at Dorchester, near Oxford, on the river Thames. Here Birinus first placed his bishop’s stool; but Bede’s narrative directly implies that he visited Winchester and dedicated a Christian church there, which only a bishop could do; for he goes on to say that
having erected and dedicated many churches, and having by his pious ministrations called many unto the Lord, he departed himself to Him and was buried in that city (Dorchester), and many years after, by the instrumentality of Bishop Hædda (bishop from 676 to 703 A.D.), his body was translated thence to the city of Venta and placed in the church of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul,
which he himself had dedicated.
We learn from the English Chronicle that this Christian church was erected not by Kynegils, who died in 643, but by Kenwalh or Kenulphus his son. Here then we have the beginning in a sense of the Winchester Cathedral of to-day. True, successive and more glorious buildings have been erected on the same site, but they have been but the successors in direct line of that primitive church of St. Peter and St. Paul, rudely constructed, and possibly roofed with thatch, which Birinus dedicates; and the bones of its two founders, father and son—for so we are entitled to regard them—are traditionally preserved in the Cathedral to-day, in two of the beautiful mortuary chests above the side screens of the choir.