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THE ANCIENT SEE OF GLASGOW,

A.D. 560-1560.

Abridged fro}n a Paper read at the Meeting of the British Archieological Association in Glasgow, August iS

THE history of the ancient See of Glasgow must be mainly the history of the Cathedral, and of those who have sat in the chair of St. Kentigern. The fomider of the See of Glasgow was St. Kentigern, known also as St. Mungo, the apostle of Cumbria, as St. Columba was the founder of the Christian Chuixli among the Picts. He was bom in the year 518 (or, according to some, in 527), and, as Jocelin states that he was consecrated Bishop at the affe of 25, the date of his consecration would be in the year 552. Kentigern took up his abode on the banks of the then beautiful rivulet 'vocabulo Melin- donor.' Beneath the venerable trees which then overshadowed it, a little oratory and a very humble wooden cell were erected, and from this, as from the chief seat of his mission, St. Kentigern spread Chris- tianity tliroughout the whole extent of what formed, four centuries later, the British kingdom of Cumbria, .e. the territory from Loch Lomond and Stirling on the north to Windermere and Appleby. Glasgow became the ecclesiastical capital of this extensive region, the spiritual mother of the Welsh tribes and ' fair Stratliclyde.' On this spot St. Kentigern was buried after his labours of half a century, A.D. 603; and here for ages the kings and warriors, the saints and sages of Cumbria, cliose their rest beside the remains of the renowned apostle of their nation. St. Kentigern's oratory or church was most probably constructed of wood, and his hospice of twigs or basket-work, thatched with reeds ; the one a log-house, and the other a wigwam, or a group of