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memorable interview, but the sight of those fair-haired boys was never forgotten by Gregory.He himself immediately afterwards went fromthe market-place to the Pope, and requested per-mission to go and win over the English people tothe Christian faith. He set out from the citywith all secrecy, and hid advanced three days’journey toward the Alps when he was overtakenby messengers. The Abbot of the monastery ofSt. Andrew was so generally beloved that thepopulace had burst in upon the Pope in theChurch of St. Peter and clamoured for hisrecall. e
3. Mission of St. Augustine. Gregory wasobliged, therefore, to return. But in the yeara.d. 590 he himself succeeded to the PontificalChair, and five years afterwards an opportunityoccurred of carrying out the desire of his heart.Twenty-two years before, or a.d. 568, Ethelbertbecame King of Kent, and soon took up a highposition among the English princes. Two yearsafterwards he married a Christian princess,Bertha, a daughter of Charibert, King of Paris.It had been agreed, as a condition of the marriage,that the queen should be allowed to enjoy thefree exercise of her religion, f and she had beenattended to the Kentish court by a French bishopnamed Liudhard.
It is a proof of Ethelbert’s tolerant spiritthat he allowed the bishop to celebrate the wor-ship of the God of the Christians in the littlechurch of St. Martin, a relic of Roman-Britishtimes outside the walls of Canterbury, and it isonly probable that Bertha, who must have heardwhat a Clotilda had been able to effect with aRemigius by her side, should have endeavoured,during a union of twenty years, to influence herhusband in favour of the Christian creed. Whensuch was the feeling of their queen, it is notsurprising that many of the people of Kent wouldbe anxious to receive instruction in the faith sheprofessed. That they made application to theFrankish bishops for missionaries is a fact we learnfrom one of Gregory’s letters, s and it was pro-bably intelligence of this which induced him towrite to the presbyter Candidus, administratorof the patrimony of St. Peter in Gaul, directinghim to bring up English youths of seventeen ortwenty years of age, that they might be trainedin different monasteries, and become missionariesin their native land. h At length, in the sixthyear of his pontificate, he resolved to send fortha band of forty monks from his own monasteryon the Caelian Hill, headed by their prior Augus-tine, to commence a direct mission in England.
4. The Journey to England. Literally nothingappears to be known of the future Archbishop ofCanterbury previous to his selection to head themission. But we can hardly doubt that he musthave evinced special gifts which recommendedhim to Gregory. Whatever zeal, however, hemay have possessed himself, did not animate the
* Milman’s Latin Christianity , ii. 106.f Bede, H. E. i. 25. “ Quam ea conditione a parentibusacceperat, ut ritum fidei ac Teligionis suae cum episcopoquem ei adjutorem fidei dederanfc, nomine Liudhardo,inviolatam servare licentiam haberet.”
8 “ Pervenit ad nos Anglorum gentem ad fidem Chris-tianara Deo miserante desideranter veUe converti, sedeacerdotes e vicinio negligere, et desideria eorum cessaresua adhortatione succendere ” (Greg. Epp. vi. 58).h Greg. Epp. vi. 7.
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breasts of his companions. In the summer cfA.d. 596 they set out, traversed rapidly thenorth of Italy, and, crossing the Gallic Alps,reached the neighbourhood of Aix, in Provence.But here their courage began rapidly to fail.The accounts they received of the savage cha-racter of the Saxons filled them with alarm, andthey prevailed on Augustine to return to Romeand obtain for them from Gregory a release fromtheir arduous task.
But Augustine had to deal with one who hadlearnt to crush all human weakness, and torecognise no call but that of duty. He was forth-with sent back with a letter to his timid brethren,wherein they were urged to accomplish what,by God’s help, they had undertaken, to suffernothing to deter them, and to remember that themore arduous the labour the greater would betheir eternal reward. Thus urged by an au-thority they could not resist, and furnished withletters to the Bishops of Tours, Marseilles, Vienne,and Autun, as also to the Metropolitan of Arles,after the lapse of a year the missionaries slowlybent their steps from Aix to Arles, from Arles toVienne, thence to Tours, and so through Anjouto the sea-coast. There having provided them-selves with interpreters, they set sail, and landedat Ebbe’s Fleet, * 1 in the Isle of Thanet.
5. The Interview with King Ethelbert. Oncesafely landed, they sent the interpreters to an-nounce to Ethelbert that they had come from thegreat capital of the West, that they were thebearers of joyful tidings, and could promise himglory in heaven, and a never-ending kingdom inthe presence of the living and true God. Ethel-bert received the messengers in a friendly spirit,but begged that for the present they wouldremain on the other side of the Stour, and wouldabstain from entering Canterbury. He furtherstipulated that his first interview with the mis-sionaries should not take place under a roof,but in the open air, from a fear of the charmsand spells he fancied they might exercise overhim. k
Accordingly the Saxon king crossed the Stourand repaired to the Isle of Thanet, and there,either in the open space 1 near Ebbe’s Fleet, or,according to another account, under an ancientoak in the middle of the island, awaited thecoming of Augustine. To make a deeper impres-sion on the monarch’s mind, Augustine came upfrom the shore in solemn procession, preceded bya verger carrying a large silver cross, and fol-lowed by one bearing aloft on a board, paintedand gilded, a representation of the Saviour.Then came the rest of the brethren and the choir,headed by Honorius and the deacon Peter, chant-ing a solemn litany for their own as also for theeternal welfare of the people amongst whom theyhad come. Arrived in the king’s presence,
i Four spots claim the honour of the landing—(0Ebbe’s Fleet, the usual landing-place in the Isle of Thanet;(2) a place called the Boarded Groin, which, however,must then have been covered by the sea; (3) Startar,near Sandwich; (4) Kichborough, which, however, wasnot in the Isle of Thanet. See Stanley’s Memorials ofCanterbury, p. 55.
* Bede, 3. E. i. 25.
i Sub divo (Bede, i. 25). " Under an oak that grew inthe middle of the island, which all the German paganshad in the highest veneration.”—Lewis’ Isle of Thandtp. 83.