Little Arthur's history of England

by Lady Maria Callcott

Soon after the Anglian and Saxon kings had settled themselves quietly in Britain, a good many boys were taken from Britain to be made servants at Rome. Most of these were Angles, and it happened that as they were standing together an Abbot named Gregory saw them, and he thought they were very beautiful, and asked where they came from and who they were. He was told they were Angles from Britain, but that they were not Christians. He was sorry for this, and said if they were Christians they would be Angels, not Angles.

Now Gregory did not go away and forget this; but, when he was made Bishop of Rome, he sent for a good man named Augustine, and asked him if he would go to Britain and teach these people to be Christians; and Augustine said he would, and he chose some other good men to help him to teach them.

Gregory and Angles.

When Augustine and his friends got to England, they went to Ethelbert, the king of the part they reached first, and asked leave to teach the people; and the king gave them leave, and gave them a church in the town of Canterbury, and learned a great deal from them himself. But some of the other kings did not like to be Christians, nor to let their people learn, and were very angry with those who listened to Augustine, and killed some of his friends. But at last, when they saw that the Christians behaved better than those who served the wooden and stone false gods they brought with them from their own country, they allowed their people to learn, and so by degrees they all became Christians.

King Ethelbert declares himself a Christian.

Ina, who was one of the kings of that part of England which was then called Wessex (but now contains Berkshire, Hampshire, and other counties) was very fond of learning, and old books tell us that he collected a penny from every house where the master could spare it, and sent all these pennies to Rome to pay for a school that he might send the young men to, because they could get better masters in Rome than in England at that time. These pennies were called Peter’s Pence, and were sent to Rome for a great many years; but learned men now think that it was not Ina, but a later English king, called Offa, who first began to send them.

Now I must tell you what the young men at that time learned in the school. First of all to read, and to write, and to count; then to paint pictures in books, and to build beautiful churches, and to plant gardens, and to take care of fruit trees, and to sing well in church. And they taught all these things to their friends when they came back to England.

I should have told you that it was only the clergymen who went to school in Rome; and when they came home, though some of them lived in houses of their own, yet most went and lived in large houses, called convents, big enough to hold a great many of them, besides having schools in them for teaching children, and rooms where they allowed poor people, who were travelling, to sleep; and they were very good to the poor and took great care of people who were sick.