In attempting to give an account of the state of things at Lynn during the period which we are now contemplating, almost all our light must be borrowed from the general history of the kingdom in the mean while, as the paucity of materials, relating particularly to this town, leaves us, for the most part, no other clew for our guidance. The reader must not therefore be displeased with the method here generally pursued, in exhibiting the state or history of Lynn under its East-Anglian and Anglo-Saxon sovereigns.
CHAP. III.
Of the religious profession of the first Anglian inhabitants of Lynn—their renouncing heathenism, and assuming the christian name—account of their conversion, and character of their Christianity.
Section I.
Heathenism the religion of the first inhabitants of this town after its revival, or restoration, under the East-Anglian government—they, and the rest of the East Angles, together with the other branches of the Heptarchy, become professors of Christianity—account of their conversion.
The inhabitants of Lynn, after it had been rebuilt and repeopled by its Anglian masters, appear to have been blind heathens, and gross idolaters; for when the Angles, or Anglo-Saxons seized upon this country, and founded the East-Anglian kingdom, they were a nation of pagans, worshippers of Thor and Woden, and the rest of the miserable objects of northern, or Scandinavian adoration; and so continued till the seventh century. At that period, one of their princes, named Sigebert, having lived sometime in exile among the Francs, was there converted to Christianity. At his restoration to his kingdom, he brought over with him one Felix, a Burgundian priest, who was employed in recommending to the people the religion of their sovereign, in which he appears not to have been unsuccessful. He was consequently appointed the first bishop of the East Angles, and had his see fixed at Soham, [242] in Cambridgeshire, and afterwards at Domnoc, or Dunwich, in Suffolk. He is said to have taken no small pains in promoting the conversion of the inhabitants; and the parts about Lynn seem to have engaged a considerable share of his attention. In these very parts he is reported to have commenced his labours, which issued in the conversion of the whole country. Tradition gives to Babingley, by Lynn, the honour of being the place where he first landed, and where was erected the very first christian chapel, or place of worship among the East Angles. The second edifice of the same description is said to have been erected at Sharnborn, in the same neighbourhood. At what time the first place of that sort was built at Lynn, cannot now be determined; but it seems very probable that it must have been as early, at least, as the middle part of the seventh century. It cannot, however be said, that the Christianity then introduced was of any great value. The national character was not much, if at all, mended by it; and the people still remained grossly ignorant, profligate, and savage. What they wanted in rational piety and real Christianity, they made up in stupid credulity, blind zeal, and miserable superstition; and it had been well if their descendants had always carefully avoided the imitation of their wretched and pernicious example.
It is somewhat remarkable that Christianity, as it was called, was not received among the East-Angles till it had made considerable progress in most of the other kingdoms of the Heptarchy. In Kent it had been received about the year 526, or soon after, by the ministry of Austin the monk: and even before that time, several years, some of the Kentish people had been brought to think favourably of that religion, by the means of Luidhart, a French bishop, who had accompanied the princess Birtha, daughter of Cherebert, king of Paris, upon her marriage with Ethelbert the Kentish king. The conversion of the East Saxons took place about the beginning of the seventh Century under the ministry of Mellitus, their first bishop: and soon after, that of the Northumbrians, where Paulinus appeared as a very active and successful labourer.
Felix did not begin his labours among the East Angles till about the year 630, when that religion had made some progress in all the other kingdoms, perhaps, except that of Mercia, which seems to have been the last of the seven to adhere to the profession of paganism. The Mercians, however, were afterwards converted, and their country, at one time, formed into an archiepiscopal province, whose seat or metropolis was Litchfield. Thus the different branches of the hierarchy were all, by degrees, nominally christianized. Of the nature, character, and value of that Christianity, a just and proper idea may be formed from the following representations.
Section. II.
Effects of the conversion of the East-Angles, and the other sister-kingdoms—character of their Christianity.