on that Kent was in the end
to further the creation of a single England; for the lordship which
AEthelberht built up was doomed to fall for ever with his death, and yet
his death left Kent the centre of a national union far wider as it was
far more enduring than the petty lordship which stretched over Eastern
Britain. Only three or four years after Gregory had pitied the English
slaves in the market-place of Rome, he found himself as Bishop of the
Imperial City in a position to carry out his dream of winning Britain to
the faith; and an opening was given him by AEthelberht'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
Hengest had landed more than a century before; and AEthelberht 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," AEthelberht 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 the German race he promised shelter and
protection to the strangers. The band of monks entered Canterbury bearing
before them a silver cross with a picture of Christ, and singing in
concert the strains of the litany of their Church. "Turn from this city,
O Lord," they sang, "Thine anger and wrath, and turn it from Thy holy
house, for we have sinned." And then in strange contrast came the
jubilant cry of the older Hebrew worship, the cry which Gregory had
wrested in prophetic earnestness from the name of the Yorkshire king in
the Roman market-place, "Alleluia!"

[Sidenote: Christian England]

It was thus that the spot which witnessed the landing of Hengest became
yet better known