and the modern archbishops trace back their
succession directly to St. Augustine.

For awhile, the young Church seemed to make vigorous progress. Augustine
built a monastery at Canterbury, where AEthelberht founded a new church
to SS. Peter and Paul, to be a sort of Westminster Abbey for the tombs
of all future Kentish kings and archbishops. He also restored an old
Roman church in the city. The pope sent him sacramental vessels, altar
cloths, ornaments, relics, and, above all, many books. Ten years later,
Augustine enlarged his missionary field by ordaining two new
bishops--Mellitus, to preach to the East Saxons, "whose metropolis,"
says Baeda, "is the city of London, which is the mart of many nations,
resorting to it by sea and land;" and Justus to the episcopal see of
West Kent, with his bishop-stool at Rochester. The East Saxons
nominally accepted the faith at the bidding of their over-lord,
AEthelberht; but the people of London long remained pagans at heart. On
Augustine's death, however, all life seemed again to die out of the
struggling mission. Laurentius, who succeeded him, found the labour too
great for his weaker hands. In 613 AEthelberht died, and his son Eadbald
at once apostatised, returning to the worship of Woden and the ancestral
gods. The East Saxons drove out Mellitus, who, with Justus, retired to
Gaul; and Archbishop Laurentius himself was minded to follow them. Then
the Kentish king, admonished by a dream of the archbishop's, made
submission, recalled the truant bishops, and restored Justus to
Rochester. The Londoners, however, would not receive back Mellitus,
"choosing rather to be under their idolatrous high-priests." Soon
Laurentius died too, and Mellitus was called to take his place, and
consecrated at last a church in London in the monastery of St. Peter. In
624, the third archbishop was carried off by gout, and Justus of
Rochester succeeded to the primacy of the struggling church. Up to this
point little had been gained, except the conversion of Kent itself, with
its dependent kingdom of Essex--the two parts of England in closest
union with the Continent, through the mercantile intercourse by way of
London and Richborough.

Under the new primate, however, an unexpected opening occurred for the
conversion of the North. The Northumbrian kings had now risen to the
first place in Britain. AEthelfrith had done much to establish their
supremacy; under Eadwine it rose to a height of acknowledged
ov