"Thus," says M. Guillaume Guizot in his History of Alfred the Great, "the Saxons originally rested their power upon the first state founded by the Jutes at the south-eastern extremity of England. They surrounded it by their own settlements, and all established themselves in the southern part of the island." They had scarcely completed their migrations when the Angles, who had then arrived only in small numbers, and were mingled with the Jutes, began on their own account to invade the eastern coast. About the year 527 several bands of Angles arrived under different chiefs, but it was not until some years later that they united to form the kingdom of East Anglia, which comprised the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridge, the isle of Ely, and probably a portion of Bedfordshire. The territories of Norfolk and Suffolk owe even their names to two tribes of Angles, the North folk and the South folk, while the entire race have given their name to England. This new kingdom, still isolated as well as defended by the sea, was fortified by fens and by many rivers. Where natural defences were wanting the Angles raised earthworks, long known as the Giant's Dyke, then as the Devil's Dyke. In spite of the draining of the fen, the line of these works can be traced to this day.
In the year 547, new bands of Angles, led by a chief named Ida, landed upon the north-east coast and founded there the kingdom of Bernicia, which comprised Northumberland and the south of Pentland, between the Tweed and the Firth of Forth. Some years later, in 560, other Angles, no less enterprising than their predecessors, established themselves from the southern limit of Bernicia as far as the Humber, and from one sea to the other, occupying all the territory of the counties of Lancaster, York, Westmoreland, Cumberland, and Durham. This was the kingdom of Deira. These two colonies were united under the same sceptre in 617, and took the name of Northumbria.
The Angles began to advance from the coasts. In the year 586 they occupied all the country bounded on the north by the river Humber and the kingdom of Deira; on the west, by Wales, which alone remained in the hands of the Britons; on the south, by the Saxon kingdoms; and on the south-east, by the Angles of East Anglia. Mercia, as the new kingdom was called, comprised then on the south-east the northern part of the counties of Hertford and Bedford; on the east, all the counties of Northampton, Huntingdon, and Rutland; on the north, the counties of Lincoln, Nottingham, Derby, and Chester; on the west, Staffordshire, Shropshire, Worcestershire, and Herefordshire; in the centre of the island, Warwickshire and Leicestershire; on the south, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, and the county of Buckingham. In this kingdom, the most extensive of all, the British population had not been destroyed or driven back, as they had in the greater portion of other parts; they continued to inhabit their ancient country, mingled with and subject to the Angles.
Such was the division of Britain among the conquerors, and the constitution of the Saxon kingdoms. This is what is known as the Heptarchy, or Octarchy, according to whether we place the denomination before or after the union of the kingdoms of Deira and Bernicia in a single kingdom of Northumbria. Such was the new scene of the wars which were destined to break out again and deluge Britain, now become England, with blood.
A more gentle influence was soon to exercise its effect upon the sanguinary passion of the barbarous races. The British Christians, though vanquished and driven back into the narrow territory of Cambria or Wales, do not seem to have attempted to convert their conquerors. For a moment they had themselves run the risk of falling into the heresies of Pelagius, an Irish monk who denied the doctrine of original sin; but the missionaries from Gaul, Saint Germain and Saint Loup, had succeeded in 429 and 446 in uprooting among them these disastrous tendencies. One day Saint Germain, who had been a soldier before being a bishop, found himself in the presence of a band of Picts and Saxons who were laying waste the coast. Putting himself at the head of his flock, he marched against the enemy amidst loud cries of "Alleluia!" These cries taken up by the neighboring echoes terrified the pirates, who fled; hence this peaceful victory became known by the name of "The Battle of the Alleluias."
The Britons were not heretics, but with the independence which always characterized their race they differed from Rome and from the Eastern Church upon various points of little importance in themselves, though they had often created divisions in Christendom. For no reason that has come down to us the Britons celebrated Easter in accordance with the customs of the Eastern Church—that is to say, at the fourteenth day of the moon, whatever might be the day on which that event fell, in imitation of the Jews who on that day offered up the Paschal lamb. The Western Church, on the contrary, postponed the celebration of Easter till the Sunday following. Nothing more was needed to breed dissensions between the British bishops and the missionaries despatched from Rome by Pope Gregory the Great. For some years previously, Gregory, not yet become a bishop, and being in fact only a simple priest, passing through the slave-market in Rome, had been struck by the handsome appearance of some young persons offered there for sale. Learning that they belonged to the race of Angles, or Saxons, "They would not be Angles but angels," he exclaimed, "if they were Christians;" and he conceived the project of going himself to preach the faith of Jesus Christ to a people so well endowed by nature. His friends were only able to prevail on him to renounce his intention by inducing the Pope to forbid his departure from Rome. When in his turn he was elevated to the episcopal dignity in the most important see of the Western Church, he did not forget the Saxons whose conversion had previously occupied his thoughts. He endeavored first to inflame with his zeal the young slaves whom he had caused to be placed in convents; but the Saxons were apparently not disposed to become Missionaries, for in the year 595 the Pope despatched to Britain a young monk named Augustine, prior of the Convent of St. Andrew at Rome, accompanied by forty friars. They took the road towards Gaul; but they had scarcely arrived at Aix, when they heard such terrible accounts of the ferocity of the Anglo-Saxons that they were alarmed and wrote to the Pope to ask his leave to retrace their footsteps. Gregory, on the contrary, encouraged them to persevere in their enterprise, and furnished with interpreters by the good offices of Brunehaut, who was reigning over Austrasia in the name of her grandsons, they arrived in 597 in the Isle of Thanet. Augustine sent immediately one of his monks to Ethelbert, king of Kent, announcing his intention of coming to preach Christianity to his court.
The place could not have been better chosen. A powerful prince in his domains, Ethelbert was their Bretwalda, or general chief of all the Heptarchy. This title, which was in no way well defined, but which conferred a certain influence in the counsels of the seven Saxon states, seems to have been accorded to a kind of merit understood by all. Two chiefs had already borne it before Ethelbert— Ella, first king of Sussex, and Ceawlin, king of Wessex. The new Bretwalda was a pagan, but he had married a Christian wife, Bertha, daughter of Charibert, king of Paris: she had reserved to herself the free exercise of her religion; a French bishop had even accompanied her. Ethelbert had no repugnance towards Christianity and he consented to receive the Roman missionaries. "Be careful to grant them an audience in the open air," said the pagan priests, however; "their maledictions will be less powerful there than under a roof." It was therefore in the open field that the Saxon Bretwalda awaited the approach of the Christian priests. They advanced bearing a crucifix and a banner on which was painted the image of the Saviour. They made the air resound with their grave canticles. The imagination of the barbarians was no doubt struck by these ceremonies, and when Augustine by the aid of an interpreter, had explained to the king the leading doctrines of the Christian faith and asked permission to preach to his subjects the religion which they had come to proclaim to him, Ethelbert mildly replied, "I am not disposed to abandon the gods of my fathers for an unknown and uncertain faith; but since your intentions are good and your words full of gentleness, you can speak freely to my people. I will prevent any one interfering with you, and will furnish food to you and your monks." Augustine overjoyed, directed his steps towards the neighboring city of Canterbury, which he entered chanting, "O Eternal Father, we supplicate Thee according to Thy mercy turn Thy anger from this city and from Thy sacred place, for we have sinned. Alleluia!"