y and many
other buildings of the Middle Ages to see the large quantities of
Roman material then available. Wherever any excavation has taken place
in the heart of the present city, the foundations of Roman buildings
with tesselated pavements and quantities of pottery, small objects of
domestic use, and coins have been brought to light. These remains are
all far beneath the present surface, a most significant fact in
relation to the transition period between Roman and Saxon Canterbury.

The Romans having finally abandoned Britain early in the fifth
century, the invasions of the Anglo-Saxons began to take a permanent
form, and the Jutes gained possession of the south-eastern corner of
England. During the period of struggle between the rival groups of
invaders Durovernum must have been entirely abandoned by the Britons,
and the conquerors, having reduced the city to a shapeless ruin,
appear to have allowed it to become over-grown to such an extent that
when, after a lapse of perhaps a whole century, the town was rebuilt,
no attempt was made to dig down to the former surface. The new
buildings therefore arose with their foundations some feet above the
original level of the Romano-British city. So complete was the gap
between the destroyed Durovernum and the Saxon town which eventually
grew up that men had had time to forget the old name, and, finding it
necessary to invent one, called it Cantwarabyrig, which meant the
city of the men of Kent. This title reveals the fact that the new
settlers had by this time fixed their limits in Kent, and that they
had found this site at the junction of all the Roman roads the most
convenient for their capital. It was probably not until Ethelbert had
begun to reign in 561 that Canterbury became the most important place
in Kent, and at that time the site of the Cathedral was outside the
town walls. Ethelbert, it should be mentioned, had extended his power
so far beyond the confines of Kent that he had authority as far north
as the Humber, and Bede writes of "the city of Canterbury, which was
the metropolis of all his dominions."

Up to the year 597 this Saxon capital, of practically all
south-eastern England, was completely heathen, saving only the King's
Frankish wife Bertha and Bishop Luidhard, who had come over as her
chaplain about the year 575, when the marriage with the heathen
Ethelbert had taken place. But in the year 597, that famous landmark
in the Christianizing of Saxon Engla