Struck with the beauty of their clear, ruddy complexions and fair hair, he inquired from what country they came.  “They are Angles” (S37), was the dealer’s answer.  “No, not Angles, but angels,” answered the monk; and he resolved that, when he could, he would send missionaries to convert a race of so much promise.[2]

[2] Bede’s “Ecclesiastical History.”

41.  Coming of Saint Augustine, 597.

When Gregory (S40) became Pope he fulfilled his resolution, and sent Augustine with a band of forty monks to Britain.  In 597 they landed on the very spot where the first Saxon war band had set foot on English soil nearly one hundred and fifty years before.  Like Caesar and his legions, Augustine and his monks brought with them the power of Rome.  But this time that power did not come armed with the sword to force men to submit or die, but inspired with a persuasive voice to cheer them with new hope.

41.  Augustine converts the King of Kent and his People (597).

The English at that time were wholly pagan, and had, in all probability, destroyed every vesetige of the faith for which the British martyrs gave their lives (S25).  But the King of Kent had married a French princess who was a devout Christian.  Through the Queen’s influence, the King was induced to receive Augustine.  He was afraid, however, of some magical practice, so he insisted that their meeting should take place in the open air and on the island of Thanet. (See map facing p. 32.)

The historian Bede tells us that the monks, holding a tall silver cross and a picture of Christ in their hands, advanced and saluted the King.  Augustine delivered his message, was well received, and invited to Canterbury, the capital of Kent.  There the King became a convert to his preaching, and before the year had passed ten thousand of his subjects had received baptism; for to gain the King was to gain his tribe as well.

43.  Augustine builds the First Monastery.

At Canterbury Augustine became the first archbishop over the first cathedral.  There, too, he established the first monastery in which to train missionaries to carry on the work which he had begun (S45).  Part of the original monastery of St. Augustine is now used as a Church of England missionary college, and it continues to bear the name of the man who brought Christianity to that part of Britain.  The example of the ruler of Kent was not without its effect on others.

44.  Conversion of the North.

The north of England, however, owed its conversion chiefly to the Irish monks of an earlier age.  They had planted monasteries in Ireland and Scotland from which colonies went forth, one of which settled in Durham.  Cuthbert, a Saxon monk of that monastery in the seventh century, traveled as a missionary throughout Northumbria, and was afterward recognized as the saint of the North.  Through his influence that kingdom was induced to accept Christianity.  Other missionaries went to other districts to carry the “good tidings of great joy.”