Pope Gregory, apostle of the English, was famed for sending St Augustine to evangelise the Anglo-Saxons in 597. This might never have happened but for Pope Gregory’s encounter with golden-haired Deiran slaves in the Roman market place, as recounted by Bede. Paulinus was sent in a second wave of missionaries in 601, and became the apostle of Northumbria and York’s first bishop. He baptised King Edwin (panel 1c) in 627. St Wilfrid, abbot of Ripon and Hexham, and bishop of York, was the powerful advocate of the Roman observance of Easter at the Synod of Whitby in (663/4).
