. 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.

[60] See page 139.

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, w