Under the empire of his successor, Constantine Chlorus, persecution was extinguished; churches were re-built, the offices of religion generally resumed, and the people enjoyed a long tranquillity.
The recall of the Romans to the defence of the integral parts of their empire, in conjunction with the laborious teaching of the early Christians, led to the speedy decline of their mythology in Britain, where indeed it appears never to have taken any deep root. The growing power of truth supplanted Pagan superstition, and the zeal of the Christian converts, speedily destroyed the statues and altars of its deities, which yet existed in this Island as memorials of its conquest by Roman arms. “Here had been within the bounds of Britain, saith our stories, before the time of King Lucius, whose reign began about the year 179, flamines and arch-flamines, who were governors over others, the priests of that religion, which the people in their Paganism did profess, as idolatry hath ever made a counterfeit show of the true service of God; and when Lucius was converted to the Christian faith, to enlarge the power of Christian knowledge and settle a government in the Church of Christ, abolishing those seats of heathenish idolators, he took advantage of the temples and other conveniences, wickedly used by them, to turn them to the true service of God and Christ; and therefore ordained in England three Archbishops and twenty-eight Bishops; one of which Archbishops he placed at London, to whom was subject Cornwall, &c., &c., and the third was the Archbishop Caerleon, that is Chester. Thus far I note only to show that when Lucius began the Christian religion, it may appear that both Chester had been a place for the Arch-flamines in the time of Paganism, and was also an Archbishop’s see at the first plantation of the truth.”