here was once a man named Calphurnius, the son of Potitus, a presbyter,
by nation a Briton, living in the village Taburnia (that is, the field of the
tents, for that the Roman army had there pitched their tents), near the town
of Empthor, and his habitation was nigh unto the Irish Sea. This man mar-
ried a French damsel named Conchessa, niece of the blessed Martin, Arch-
bishop of Tours; and the damsel was elegant in her form and in her manners,
for, having been brought from France with her elder sister into the northern
parts of Britain, and there sold at the command of her father, Calphurnius,
being pleased with her manners, charmed with her attentions, and attracted
with her beauty, very much loved her, and, from the state of a serving-maid
in his household, raised her to be his companion in wedlock. And her sister,
having been delivered unto another man, lived in the aforementioned town
of Empthor.
And Calphurnius and his wife were both just before God, walking with-
out offence in the justifications of the Lord; and they were eminent in their
birth, and in their faith, and in their hope, and in their religion. And though
in their outward habit and abiding they seemed to serve under the yoke of
Babylon, yet did they in their acts and in their conversation show themselves
3 UNKNOWN
to be citizens of Jerusalem. Therefore, out of the earth of their flesh, be-
ing freed from the tares of sin and from the noxious weeds of vice by the
ploughshare of evangelic and apostolic learning, and being fruitful in the
growth of all virtues, did they, as the best and richest fruit, bring forth a son,
whom, when he had at the holy font put off the old man, they caused to be
named Patricius, as being the future father and patron of many nations; of
whom, even at his baptism, the God which is three in one was pleased, by the
sign of a threefold miracle, to declare how pure a vessel of election should he
prove, and how devoted a worshipper of the Holy Trinity. But after a little
while, this happy birth being completed, they vowed themselves by mutual
consent unto chastity, and with an holy end rested in the Lord. But Cal-
phurnius first served God a long time in the deaconship, and at length closed
his days in the priesthood.
CHAPTER II.
H
