h porch of the church, in which likewise the bodies of all the
after-following archbishops are buried but two; that is, Theodorus and
Berhtwald, whose bodies are laid in the church itself, because no more
might [be so] in the foresaid porch. Well-nigh in the middle of the
church is an altar set and hallowed in name of St. Gregory, on which
every Saturday their memory and decease are celebrated with mass-song by
the mass-priest of that place. On St. Augustine's tomb is written an
inscription of this sort: Here resteth Sir[47] Augustine, the first
archbishop of Canterbury, who was formerly sent hither by the blessed
Gregory, bishop of the Roman city; and was upheld by God with working of
wonders. King Ethelbert and his people he led from the worship of idols
to the faith of Christ, and, having fulfilled the days of his ministry
in peace, departed on the 26th day of May in the same King's reign.

JOHN RICHARD GREEN

Years had passed by since Gregory pitied the English slaves in the
market-place of Rome. As bishop of the imperial city he at last found
himself in a position to carry out his dream of winning Britain to the
faith, and an opening was given him by Ethelbert's marriage with Bertha,
a daughter of the Frankish king Charibert of Paris. Bertha, like her
Frankish kindred, was a Christian; a Christian bishop accompanied her
from Gaul; and a ruined Christian church, the church of St. Martin
beside the royal city of Canterbury, was given them for their worship.

The King himself remained true to the gods of his fathers; but his
marriage no doubt encouraged Gregory to send a Roman abbot, Augustine,
at the head of a band of monks to preach the Gospel, to the English
people. The missionaries landed in 597 in the Isle of Thanet, at the
spot where Hengist had landed more than a century before; and Ethelbert
received them sitting in the open air, on the chalk-down above Minster
where the eye nowadays catches miles away over the marshes the dim tower
of Canterbury.

The King listened patiently to the long sermon of Augustine as the
interpreters the abbot had brought with him from Gaul rendered it in the
English tongue. "Your words are fair," Ethelbert replied at last with
English good sense, "but they are new and of doubtful meaning." For
himself, he said, he refused to forsake the gods of his fathers, but
with the usual religious tolerance of his race he promised shelter and
protection to the strangers.

The band of monks