There are few more remarkable narratives in history than that of the facility and enthusiasm with which the Anglo-Saxons, a people conservative then as now to the degree of extreme obstinacy, accepted Christianity and the new learning which followed in the train of the new religion.  After a few lapses into paganism in some localities, we find these people, who lately had swept Christian Britain with fire and sword, themselves became most zealous followers of Christ.  Under the influence of the Roman missionaries who, under St. Augustine, had begun their work in the south in 597 among the Saxons and Jutes, and under the combined influence of Irish and Roman missionaries in the north and east among the Angles, theological and secular studies were pursued with avidity.  By the end of the seventh century we find Anglo-Saxon missionaries, with St. Boniface at their head, carrying Christianity and enlightenment to the pagan German tribes on the Continent.

The torch had been passed to the Anglo-Saxon, and a new centre of learning, York,—­the old Roman capital, now the chief city of the Northumbrian Angles,—­became famous throughout Europe.  Indeed, York seemed for a time the chief hope for preserving and advancing Christian culture; for the danger of a relapse into dense ignorance had become imminent in the rest of Europe.  Bede, born about 673, a product of this Northumbrian culture, represented the highest learning of his day.  He wrote a vast number of works in Latin, treating nearly all the branches of knowledge existing in his day.  Alcuin, another Northumbrian, born about 735, was called by Charlemagne to be tutor for himself and his children, and to organize the educational system of his realm.  Other great names might be added to show the extent and brilliancy of the new learning.  It was more remarkable among the Angles; and only at a later day, when the great schools of the north had gone up in fire and smoke in the pitiless invasion of the Northmen, did the West Saxons become the leaders, almost the only representatives, of the literary impulse among the Anglo-Saxons.

It is significant that the first written English that we know of contains the first Christian English king’s provision for peace and order in his kingdom.  The laws of Athelbert, King of Kent, who died in 616, were written down early in the seventh century.  This code, as it exists, is the oldest surviving monument of English prose.  The laws of Ine, King of the West Saxons, were put into writing about 690.  These collections can scarcely be said to have a literary value; but they are of the utmost importance as throwing light upon the early customs of our race, and the laws of Ine may be considered as the foundation of modern English law.  Many of these laws were probably much older; but they were now first codified and systematically enforced.  The language employed is direct, almost crabbed; but occasionally the Anglo-Saxon love of figure shows itself.  To illustrate, I quote, after Brooke, from Earle’s ‘Anglo-Saxon Literature,’ page 153:—­