{183} to Charles the Great,
which were finally accepted throughout the greater part of Italy, the
Ambrosian rite in the province of Milan remaining different throughout
the changes.

It is natural that English readers should desire to know more
particularly of the first English Christian worship. How did the
Church's worship first begin in our own land?

[Sidenote: The rites of the Western isles.]

No doubt the Christians who received conversion during the Roman
occupation of Britain, and those of Ireland who were won by the
preaching of S. Patrick, worshipped according to the same rite as the
churches of Spain or the churches of Gaul, following that use which
survived in Spain generally till the eleventh century and in Gaul till
the ninth. Gildas, who wrote during the stress of the conquest of the
Christian Brythons by the heathen English, mentions one custom which
undoubtedly was Gallican, and which is preserved in the Gelasian
Sacramentary and the _Missale Francorum_, the one a Roman collection
which contains Gallican uses, the other a Gallican rite. It is that of
anointing the hands of priests, and perhaps deacons, in ordination, and
the custom was kept up after the conversion of the English, at least in
some parts of England in the tenth and eleventh centuries. But the
influence of the British Church was slight. It is of more interest to
us to know what was the first worship offered in this land by those who
were to convert our own forefathers.

Bede tells us how first Augustine prayed when he came before the
heathen king of Kent. Some days after their landing Aethelbert
received the monks from {184} Rome. [Sidenote: S. Augustine in Kent.]
They had tarried, it seems probable, under the walls of the old Roman
fortress of Richborough. They had waited, in prayer and patience, for
the beginning of their Mission. It was on prayer that they still
depended when they were summoned before the king. On a ridge of rocks
overlooking the sea sat Aethelbert and his gesiths, and watched the
band of some forty men draw near. Slowly they came, and the strange
sound of the Church's music was wafted to the ears of the heathen
company as they drew near. Before them was borne a tall silver cross,
and a banner which displayed the pictured image of the Saviour Lord,

The Cross preceding Him who floats in air,
The pictured Saviour.

S. Gregory, the great pope who had sent the mission, who had himself
long dwelt a