“Not Angles, but angels, with faces so angel-like,” said Gregory; “but from what country come they?”
“From Deira,” was the answer.
“Deira,” rejoined Gregory; “well said, indeed. De ira, plucked from God’s ire and called to Christ’s mercy. But what is the name of their King?”
“Ælla,” the slave-dealer told him; and the Deacon was again equal to the occasion. “Alleluia,” he said, “shall be sung in Ælla’s land.”
At once he sought permission of the Pope to travel to that country whence those engaging pagans had come, to reconvert their land; and, having obtained it, set forth with a small following. He had not been gone more than the third day’s journey when, as the company rested at noon, a locust sprang upon the book he was reading. He saw an omen in it. “Rightly is it called Locusta,” said Gregory, “because it seems to say to us ‘Loco sta’; that is, ‘stay in your place.’ I see we shall not be able to finish our journey. But,” he added, strangely disregarding the omen his fancy had created, “rise, load the mules, and let us get on as far as we can.”
Before they had set out again came messengers who had ridden hastily from Rome to recall him: the people having missed their kindly Deacon. He returned, and never visited Britain. Years afterwards, when elected Pope, he was mindful of his old project, but was then compelled to send another on the mission that had lain so near his heart. That other was Augustine, and a most unwilling missioner he proved. He had not at any time wished to go, and departed from Rome with his forty companions only in obedience to his Sovereign Pontiff’s commands. Arrived midway in France, the expedition heard tales so dreadful of the distant land to which they were bound that they sent Augustine back, by no means unwilling, to beg of Gregory that the project might be abandoned. Bede, in his “Ecclesiastical History,” tells us “they were seized with craven terror, and began to think of returning home, rather than proceed to a barbarous, fierce, and unbelieving nation, to whose very language they were strangers.” But it was precisely because they were unbelieving that Augustine was sent to them. Gregory would not hear of the mission being abandoned; and so Augustine was obliged, after all, to fulfil it.
Britain was not, however, so terrible a country, nor was Christianity unknown there. Ethelbert, the powerful King of Kent, was a pagan, but his French wife, Bertha, was a Christian, and her chaplain, Luidhard, who was a Bishop in France, officiated in a chapel identified with the early church of St. Martin at Canterbury. And, while the Saxon kingdoms were pagan, away in the westward recesses of Britain, in the land we now know as Wales, unconquered by the Saxon, the British remained true to the early Church of the fourth century.
Gregory sent Augustine back, reluctant still, upon that business himself would so joyfully have gone, had it been possible. The mission at length landed here, at Ebbsfleet, and advanced into the centre of Thanet, where Ethelbert, doubtful of them, but not unkindly, met them in the open air; some say under an oak-tree, while others deny that oaks ever grew in the island. Painters have selected the striking incident of this meeting of the Saxon King and his soldiers with Augustine and his monks; and that historic event lends itself admirably to the sense of drama, and to form and colour. A great silver cross was borne aloft before Augustine, and in company with it went an image of the Saviour done in paint and gilding on a board, much after the usage of the icons in the Greek Church to-day. Bringing the solemn chant that accompanied their march to an “Amen,” the monks sat down to the conference between their leader and the King; a conference conducted of necessity through interpreters, as neither understood the other’s language.
In conclusion, the King gave leave for the missioners to establish themselves at Canterbury. The words in which he is said to have done so are at once dignified and hospitable, even although we must make a good deal of allowance for the literary English in which the chroniclers have cast them: “Your words are fair, and your promises—but because they are new and doubtful, I cannot give my assent to them and leave the customs I have so long observed, with the whole Anglo-Saxon race. But because you have come hither as strangers from a long distance, and as I seem to myself to have seen clearly that what you yourselves believed to be true and good you wish to impart to us, we do not wish to molest you; nay, rather, we are anxious to receive you hospitably and give you all that is needed for your support; nor do we hinder you from joining all whom you can to the faith of your religion.”
Thus favourably began the work Augustine was sent to do. The place at Ebbsfleet where he set foot ashore was long held sacred and a myth speedily grew about it; no less wild a story than that his foot had miraculously impressed itself upon the rock. If for “rock” we read “mud,” which is much more likely to have been a feature of this shore, we shall have less difficulty in believing the story. A chapel was built over that wonderful footprint—which no doubt the monks in after-years had provided; but, more wonderful still, it afterwards became known as the footprint of St. Mildred, who had landed at Ebbsfleet about a century later. I do not pretend to be able to reconcile the footprint of a man well over six feet high, as Augustine was represented to be, with that of a woman; but who would seriously criticise the statements in fairy tales? Not I, for one. The chapel disappeared at some unspecified time, and the marvellous footprint is said to have been broken up by roadmenders for road-metal in the first decade of the nineteenth century. This seems, for many reasons, a sad pity. One would joyfully barter the modern St. Augustine’s Cross that stands hereby for such. This memorial, a very fine one, was set up in 1884, on the supposed site of the landing, where an ancient oak formerly stood. It rises eighteen feet and is elaborately sculptured on the model of the famous crosses at Sandbach, Cheshire. Close at hand (a very modern touch this) is “Ebbsfleet, Cliff’s End, and St. Augustine’s Cross” railway station: which rather discounts the romance of the spot.