2. He was told that they were heathen boys from the Isle of Britain. Gregory was sorry to think that forms which were so fair without should have no light within, and he asked again what was the name of their nation. "Angles," he was told. "Angles," said Gregory; "they have the faces of angels, and they ought to be made fellow-heirs of the angels in heaven. But of what province or tribe of the Angles are they?" "Of Deira," said the merchant. "De ira!" said Gregory; "then they must be delivered from the wrath of God. And what is the name of their king?" "Ælla." "Ælla; then Alleluia shall be sung in his land."
3. Gregory then went to the Pope, and asked him to send missionaries into Britain, of whom he himself would be one, to convert the English. The Pope was willing, but the people of Rome, among whom Gregory was a priest and was much beloved, would not let him go. So nothing came of the matter for some time.
4. We do not know whether Gregory was able to do anything for the poor English boys whom he saw in the market, but he certainly never forgot his plan for converting the English people. After a while he became Pope himself. Of course, he now no longer thought of going into Britain himself, as he had enough to do in Rome. But he now had power to send others. He therefore presently sent a company of monks, with one called Augustine at their head, who became the first Archbishop of Canterbury, and is called the Apostle of the English.
5. This was in 597. The most powerful king in Britain at this time was Æthelbert, of Kent, who is said to have been lord over all the kings south of the Humber. This Æthelbert had done what was very seldom done by English kings then or for a long time after; he had married a foreign wife, the daughter of Chariberth, one of the kings of the Franks, in Gaul.
6. Now, the Franks had become Christians; so when the Frankish queen came over to Kent, Æthelbert promised that she should be allowed to keep to her own religion without let or hindrance. She brought with her, therefore, a Frankish bishop named Lindhard, and the queen and her bishop used to worship God in a little church near Canterbury, called Saint Martin's, which had been built in the Roman times. So you see that both Æthelbert and his people must have known something about the Christian faith before Augustine came.
7. It does not, however, seem that either the king or any of his people had at all thought of turning Christians. This seems strange when one reads how easily they were converted afterward. One would have thought that Bishop Lindhard would have been more likely to convert them than Augustine, for, being a Frank, he would speak a tongue not very different from English, while Augustine spoke Latin, and, if he ever knew English at all, he must have learned it after he came into the island. I can not tell you for certain why this was. Perhaps they did not think that a man who had merely come in the queen's train was so well worth listening to as one who had come on purpose all the way from the great city of Rome, to which all the West still looked up as the capital of the world.
8. So Augustine and his companions set out from Rome, and passed through Gaul, and came into Britain, even as Cæsar had done ages before. But this time Rome had sent forth men not to conquer lands, but to win souls. They landed first in the Isle of Thanet, which joins close to the east part of Kent, and thence they sent a message to King Æthelbert, saying why they had come into his land. The king sent word back to them to stay in the isle till he had fully made up his mind how to treat them; and he gave orders that they should be well taken care of meanwhile.
9. After a little while he came himself into the isle, and bade them come and tell him what they had to say. He met them in the open air, for he would not meet them in a house, as he thought they might be wizards, and that they might use some charm or spell, which he thought would have less power out-of-doors. So they came, carrying an image of our Lord on the cross, wrought in silver, and singing litanies as they came. And when they came before the king, they preached the gospel to him and to those who were with him.
10. So King Æthelbert hearkened to them, and he made answer like a good and wise man. "Your words and promises," said he, "sound very good unto me; but they are new and strange, and I can not believe them all at once, nor can I leave all that I and my fathers, and the whole English folk, have believed so long. But I see that ye have come from a far country to tell us that which ye yourselves hold for truth; so ye may stay in the land, and I will give you a house to dwell in and food to eat; and ye may preach to my folk, and if any man of them will believe as ye believe, I hinder him not."
11. So he gave them a house to dwell in in the royal city of Canterbury, and he let them preach to the people. And, as they drew near to the city, they carried their silver image of the Lord Jesus, and sang litanies, saying, "We pray Thee, O Lord, let thy anger and thy wrath be turned away from this city, and from thy holy house, because we have sinned. Alleluia!"