already declared itself; but the policy of Theodore clothed with a sacred form and surrounded with divine sanctions a unity which as yet rested on no basis but the sword.  The single throne of the one Primate at Canterbury accustomed men’s minds to the thought of a single throne for their one temporal overlord.  The regular subordination of priest to bishop, of bishop to primate, in the administration of the Church, supplied a mould on which the civil organization of the state quietly shaped itself.  Above all, the councils gathered by Theodore were the first of our national gatherings for general legislation.  It was at a much later time that the Wise Men of Wessex, or Northumbria, or Mercia learned to come together in the Witenagemot of all England.  The synods which Theodore convened as religiously representative of the whole English nation led the way by their example to our national parliaments.  The canons which these synods enacted led the way to a national system of law.

[Sidenote:  Wulfhere]

The organization of the episcopate was followed by the organization of the parish system.  The mission-station or monastery from which priest or bishop went forth on journey after journey to preach and baptize naturally disappeared as the land became Christian.  The missionaries turned into settled clergy.  As the king’s chaplain became a bishop and the kingdom his diocese, so the chaplain of an English noble became the priest and the manor his parish.  But this parish system is probably later than Theodore, and the system of tithes which has been sometimes coupled with his name dates only from the close of the eighth century.  What was really due to him was the organization of the episcopate, and the impulse which this gave to national unity.  But the movement towards unity found a sudden check in the revived strength of Mercia.  Wulfhere proved a vigorous and active ruler, and the peaceful reign of Oswiu left him free to build up again during fifteen years of rule (659-675) that Mercian overlordship over the tribes of Mid-England which had been lost at Penda’s death.  He had more than his father’s success.  Not only did Essex again own his supremacy, but even London fell into Mercian hands.  The West-Saxons were driven across the Thames, and nearly all their settlements to the north of that river were annexed to the Mercian realm.  Wulfhere’s supremacy soon reached even south of the Thames, for Sussex in its dread of West-Saxons found protection in accepting his overlordship, and its king was rewarded by a gift of the two outlying settlements of the Jutes—­the Isle of Wight and the lands of the Meonwaras along the Southampton water—­which we must suppose had been reduced by Mercian arms.  The industrial progress of the Mercian kingdom went hand in hand with its military advance.  The forests of its western border, the marshes of its eastern coast, were being cleared and drained by monastic colonies, whose success shows the hold which Christianity had now gained over its