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26 YORK..
CHAPTER III.
The withdrawal of Paulinus from the scene of his
labours, and the persecuting tyranny of the fierce
conqueror who now dominated Northumbria, checked
for a time the further progress of Christianity in that
province, and not a few probably of those who had
enrolled themselves under the standard of the Cross,
in the time of persecution fell away. Yet the Christians
were not altogether left as sheep without a
shepherd. When Paulinus went his rounds teaching
and baptising on the banks of the Swale and in the
far-off glens over which Cheviot casts its shadow, he
had been accompanied by his deacon, James, often
designated as James the Chantor, from his skill in
that ecclesiastical music or church-song which is associated
with the name of Gregory the Great. To
James the Deacon he left the care of the infant
church. With unshrinking courage and calm fidelity
he stood his ground, cheering, encouraging, emboldening
the converts in those sad and trying days.
And he pursued the mission which Paulinus had
begun. His teaching and baptising, says Bede,
gathered in a vast spoil, snatched out of the hands
of man's arch-enemy. His chief abode was on the
banks of the Swale, near Catterick, where a little vill
was, when Bede wrote, still known by his name.
Under a corrupted form it probably still survives in