This thesis is intended to form one of a series of investigations into the early history of Canterbury. Scientific historical method and comprehensiveness have been lacking in most of the attempts hitherto made to depict our local provincial history. This has necessarily been so for various reasons, not the least being that the object of the majority of the writers has been mainly to cull interesting incidents and record more or less amusing and interesting reminiscences for popular reading, rather than to present a true view of the community functioning as a whole. A great amount of original material still awaits collection, sitting, and correlating, and to clear the way for that future historian who shall unite literary skill with the true historical sense and give us the classical History of Canterbury in its provincial period, is necessarily a slow work, that will require the co-operation of many investigators. It was with the hope of providing one stone in the foundation on which to build the ultimate edifice that this research was under-taken.