History of the Church of England are known to have been present at the Council of Arles (314). Others attended the Council of Serdica in 347 and that of Ariminum in 360. A number of references to the church in Roman Britain are also found in the writings of 4th century Christian fathers. Britain was the home of Pelagius, who opposed Augustine of Hippo's doctrine of original sin. The first recorded Christian martyr in Britain, St Alban, is thought to have lived in the early 4th century, and his prominence in English hagiography is reflected in the number of parish churches of which he is patron.
Christian martyrs easy to the ordinary meaning of the term, as used ever since in Christian literature: a martyr, or witness of Christ, is a person who suffers death rather than denies his faith. St. John, at the end of the first century, employs the word with this meaning. A distinction between martyrs and confessors is traceable to the latter part of the second century: those only were martyrs who had suffered the extreme penalty, whereas the title of confessors was given to Christians who had shown their willingness to die for their belief, by bravely enduring imprisonment or torture, but were