In the same year with Augustine, Gregory also died, after long and severe illness, which obliged him for years to keep his bed, but could not check his activity in watching over the interests of religion.
Gregory had intended that Augustine should be archbishop of London, because in the old Roman days London had been the chief city of Britain; and it might seem natural that the chief bishop of our Church should now take his title from the capital of all England. But when Gregory sent forth his missionaries he did not know that England had been divided by the Saxons into several kingdoms. In consequence of this division of the country, Augustine, instead of becoming archbishop of London, fixed himself in the capital of Kent, the first kingdom which he converted, and then the most powerful of all. Hence it is that his successors, the primates of all England, to this day, are not archbishops of London but of Canterbury.
And, although Canterbury be not now a very large town, it is a very interesting place, and is full of memorials of its first archbishop. The noble cathedral, called Christ Church, stands in the same place with an ancient Roman-British church which Augustine recovered from heathen uses and consecrated in honour of the Saviour. Close to it are the remains of the archbishop's palace, built on the same ground with the palace of Ethelbert, which he gave up to the missionaries. A little church of St. Martin still stands on a rising ground outside the city, on the spot where Bertha and Luidhard had worshipped before the arrival of Augustine, and where he and his brethren celebrated their earliest services. And, although it has been rebuilt since then, we may still see in its walls a number of bricks which by their appearance are known to be Roman,—the very same materials of which the little church was built at first, while the Romans were yet in Britain, fourteen centuries and a half ago; nay, it is even supposed that some part of the masonry is Roman too. Between St. Martin's and the cathedral lay the great monastery of St. Peter and St. Paul, which Augustine began to build. He died before it was finished; but, as soon as it was ready, his body was removed to it, and in it Queen Bertha and her husband were afterwards buried. After a time the name of the monastery was changed to St. Augustine's, and for hundreds of years it was the chief monastery of all England. The Reformation in the sixteenth century put an end to monasteries; and the buildings of St. Augustine's went through many changes, until in the year 1844 the place was turned to a purpose similar to that which Augustine and Gregory had at heart when they undertook the conversion of England; for it is now a college for training missionaries. And, as Gregory wished that Saxon boys should be brought up with a view to converting their countrymen, so there are now at St. Augustine's College young men from distant heathen nations, receiving an education which may fit them hereafter to become missionaries of the Church of England to their brethren.[61] Nor is the good Gregory forgotten in the city which owes so much to him; for within the last few years a beautiful little church called by his name has been built, close to the college of St. Augustine.
Here this little book must close. It ends with the replanting of the Gospel in our own land. And, if hereafter the story should be carried further, some of its brightest pages will be filled by the labours of the missionaries who went forth from England to preach the faith of Christ in Germany and the adjoining countries.
NOTES
[ [61]Among those who were at the College when this volume was first printed was Kalli, the Esquimaux, of whom an account has since been written by the Rev. T. B. Murray, and published by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. He afterwards went to the diocese of Newfoundland, where he died of consumption.