Their method was political and systematic.

But the Pictish and Irish preachers were men of more Britannic feelings, and they went to work with true missionary earnestness to convert the half Celtic people of Northumbria, man by man, in their own homes.

Aidan, the apostle of the north, carried the Pictish faith into the Lothians and Northumberland.

He placed his bishop-stool not far from the royal town of Bamborough, at Lindisfarne, the Holy Island of the Northumbrian coast.

Other Celtic missionaries penetrated further south, even into the heathen realm of Penda and his tributary princes.