to the English people together with us—­we will patiently bear with all other things which ye do that are contrary to our customs.”  They said that they would do none of these things, nor would have him for an archbishop; they said among themselves, “If he would not now rise for us, much more, if we shall be subjected to him, will he contemn us for naught.”  It is said that the man of God, St. Augustine, in a threatening manner foretold, “if they would not receive peace with men of God, that they should receive unpeace and war from their foes; and, if they would not preach among the English race the word of life, they should through their hands suffer the vengeance of death.”

And through everything, as the man of God had foretold, by the righteous doom of God it came to pass; and very soon after this Ethelfrith, king of the English, collected a great army, and led it to Legcaster, and there fought against the Britons, and made the greatest slaughter of the faithless people.  While he was beginning the battle, King Ethelfrith saw their priests and bishops and monks standing aloof in a safer place, that they should pray and make intercession to God for their warriors:  he inquired and asked what that host was, and what they were doing there.  When he understood the cause of their coming, then said he, “So!  I wot if they cry to their God against us, though they bear not a weapon, they fight against us, for they pursue us with their hostile prayers and curses.”  He then straightway ordered to turn upon them first, and slay them.  Men say that there were twelve hundred of this host, and fifty of them escaped by flight; and he so then destroyed and blotted out the other host of the sinful nation, not without great waning of his [own] host; and so was fulfilled the prophecy of the holy bishop Augustine, that they should for their trowlessness suffer the vengeance of temporal perdition, because they despised the skilful counsel of their eternal salvation.

After these things Augustine, bishop [of Britain], hallowed two bishops:  the one was named Mellitus, the other Justus.  Mellitus he sent to preach divine lore to the East Saxons, who are shed off from Kentland by the river Thames, and joined to the east sea.  Their chief city is called Lundencaster (now London), standing on the bank of the foresaid river; and it is the market-place of land and sea comers.  The King in the nation at that time was Seabright (or Sabert), Ethelbert’s sister-son, and his vassal.  Then he and the nation of the East Saxons received the word of truth and the faith of Christ through Mellitus, the bishop’s lore.  Then King Ethelbert ordered to build a church in London, and to hallow it to St. Paul the apostle, that he and his after-followers might have their bishop-seat in that place.  Justus he hallowed as bishop in Kent itself at Rochester, which is four-and-twenty miles right west from Canterbury, in which city likewise King Ethelbert ordered to build a church, and to hallow it to St. Andrew the apostle; and to each of these bishops the King gave his gifts and bookland and possessions for them to brook with their fellows.