He went at once to the pope, and asked leave to go as a missionary to the heathens of Britain. But, although the pope consented, the people of Rome were so much attached to Gregory that they would not allow him to set out, and he was obliged to give up the plan. Yet he did not forget the heathens of Britain; and when he became pope, although he could not himself go to them, he was able to send others for the work of their conversion.
An opening had been made by the marriage of Ethelbert, king of Kent, the Saxon kingdom which lay nearest to the continent, with Bertha, daughter of Charibert, a Frankish king, whose capital was Paris (A.D. 570). As Charibert and his family were Christians, it had been agreed that the young queen should be allowed freely to practise her religion, and a French bishop, named Luidhard, came to England with her, and acted as her chaplain. Ethelbert by degrees became much more powerful than he was at the time of his marriage, and in 593 he was chosen Bretwalda, which was the title given to the chief of the Saxon kings. This office gave him much influence over most of the other kingdoms; so that, if his favour could be gained, it was likely to be of very great advantage for recommending the Gospel to others. But Ethelbert was still a heathen, after having been married to Bertha about five-and-twenty years, although we may well suppose that she had sometimes spoken to him of her religion, and had tried to bring him over to it. And perhaps Bertha may have had a share in sending Gregory the reports which he mentions, that the Saxons in England were ready to receive the Gospel, and in begging him to take pity on them.
In the year 596 Gregory sent off a party of monks as missionaries to the English Saxons. The head of them was Augustine, who had been provost (that is, the highest person after the abbot)[59] of the monastery to which the pope himself had formerly belonged. And, at the same time, Gregory directed the manager of his estates in France to buy up a number of captive Saxon youths, and to place them in monasteries, that they might learn the Christian faith, and might afterwards become missionaries to their own countrymen.
When Augustine and his brethren had got as for as the south of France, they heard many terrible stories of the English, so they took fright at the thought of going among such savages, whose very language was unknown to them; and Augustine went back to Rome to beg that they might be allowed to give up their undertaking. But Gregory would not consent to this. He encouraged them to go on, and he gave Augustine letters to some French kings and bishops, desiring them to assist the missionaries, and to supply them with interpreters who understood the language of the Saxons. Augustine, therefore, returned to the place where he had left his companions. They made their way across France, and in 597 he landed, with about forty monks, in the Isle of Thanet.
Ethelbert lived at Canterbury, the capital of the Kentish kingdom, at no great distance from the place where the missionaries had landed. On receiving notice of their arrival, he sent to desire that they would remain where they were until he should visit them; and within a few days he went to them. The meeting was held in the open air; for Ethelbert had a superstitious fear that they might do him some mischief by magical arts, if he were to trust himself under a roof with them. The missionaries advanced in procession, with a silver cross borne before them, and displaying a picture of the crucified Saviour; and, as they slowly moved onwards, they chanted a prayer for their own salvation and that of the people to whom they had been sent. Ethelbert received them courteously, and desired them to sit down; and then Augustine made a speech, telling the king that they were come to preach the word of life to him and to his subjects. "These are indeed fair words and promises which you bring with you," said Ethelbert; "but, because they are new and uncertain, I cannot at once take up with them, and leave the faith which I and all my people have so long observed. But as you have come from far, and as I think you wish to give us a share in things which you believe to be true and most profitable, we will not show you unkindness, but rather will receive you hospitably, and not hinder you from converting as many as you can to your religion."
He then granted them a lodging in his capital, and ordered that they should be supplied with all that they might need. As they drew near to Canterbury, they again displayed the silver cross, and the banner on which the Saviour was painted; and they entered the city in procession, chanting a litany which Gregory had made for the people of Rome, during the great plague which carried off pope Pelagius.
A little way outside the city they found a small church, which had been built in the days of the old British Christianity, and in which Luidhard had since held his service for Queen Bertha and the Christians of her court. It was called by the name of St. Martin; for even before the Saxon invasion his name had become so famous that many churches were called after it; and we may well believe that Queen Bertha, on arriving from France, was glad to find that the church in which she was to worship had long ago been named in honour of the great saint of her own land. There Augustine and his brethren now held their service; and the sight of their holy, gentle, and self-denying lives soon drew many to receive their instructions. Ethelbert himself was baptized on Whitsunday, 597, and, although he would not force his people to profess the Gospel, he declared himself desirous of their conversion.
Gregory had desired Augustine, if he met with success in the beginning of his mission, to return from Britain into France and be consecrated as a bishop. He now obeyed this direction, and was consecrated at Arles; and without any delay he again crossed the sea, and renewed his labours among the Saxons. Such was his progress in the work of conversion, that at Christmas of the year in which he first landed in Britain ten thousand persons were baptized in one day. Four years later, Gregory made him an archbishop; and he sent him a fresh body of clergy to help him, with a large supply of books, vestments, and other things for the service of the Church. He also gave him instructions how to proceed, so as to advance the true faith without giving needless offence to the prejudices of the heathen.
Augustine's chief difficulties, indeed, were not with the Saxons, but with the clergy of the ancient British Church, whom he could not succeed in bringing to an agreement. We must not lay the blame wholly on either side; if the Britons were somewhat jealous and obstinate, Augustine seems to have taken too much upon himself in his way of dealing with them. But, whatever his faults may have been, we are bound to hold his memory in honour for the zealous and successful labours by which the Gospel was a second time introduced into the southern part of this island. Before his death, in 604, he had established a second bishop for Kent, in the city of Rochester, and one at London, which was then the capital of the kingdom of Essex. And by degrees, partly by the followers of St. Augustine, and partly by the Scotch monks of Icolumbkill,[60] all the Saxon kingdoms of England were converted to the Christian faith.