CHAPTER III.

THE CONVERSION OF ENGLAND.

1. A Missionary sent to England by the Pope.Soon after the Roman soldiers left Britain, the Roman Empire came to an end in the West of Europe. Its place was taken by a number of German nations who had conquered it. These conquerors, however, were not heathens like the English who conquered Britain, and the Bishop of Rome had a great influence over them. He was generally looked up to, and was called the Pope; that is to say, the Papa, or Father of Christians. About 150 years after the English began to come into Britain. there was a Pope named Gregory. The English conquerors were heathens. Long before Gregory was Pope he had seen some fair-haired boys from Northumberland in the slave-market at Rome. had asked what nation they were of. He was told that they were Angles. Not Angles,' he said, 'but Angels. Who is their king?' he further asked. 'His name,' said the merchant, who wanted to sell the boys, is Ella.' Allelujah,' answered Gregory, shall be sung in the land of Ella.' Many years afterwards, when he had become Pope, he remembered his meeting with the boys. He sent Augustine as a missionary to convert the English.

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2. Augustine at Canterbury.-In 597 Augustine landed, on his mission of love, in the Isle of Thanet, where Hengist and Horsa had landed 148 years

before to ravage and to slay. Followed by a band of missionaries, he made his way to the home of the King of Kent, where now is the city of Canterbury,

GREGORY AND ENGLISH SLAVES.

with its grand cathedral rising above the roofs of the houses. Ethelbert, the king, who had married a Christian wife from beyond the sea, allowed him to preach to the people. After a time he and the men of Kent became Christians. From Canterbury the gospel spread over the southern part of England. Augustine became the first archbishop, and therefore the Archbishop of Canterbury, where first Christianity was preached to the heathen English, has always been the archbishop of all Southern England.

3. The Conversion of the North.-The South of England had learned Christianity from a man sent from Rome. The North learned it from a man sent from Iona, a little island off the west coast of Scotland, where was settled a colony of Irish Christians who were zealously eager to preach the gospel. From Iona came Aidan, who settled himself in Holy Island, off the coast of Northumberland, and sent forth swarms of preachers. Whether the preachers came from Rome or from Iona they taught much the same lesson. They taught men to be merciful and gentle, to reverence Christ and his gospel of love in the place of the heathen gods. Men welcomed them because they thought it was better to be meek and forgiving than to be always fighting and quarrelling. Even when, as often happened, they did not give up fighting themselves, they respected men who would not return a blow, and who were always kind to the poor and the sick. One of the kings once gathered his great men together and asked them whether they would be Christians. So seems the life of man, O king,'

answered one of the chiefs, as a sparrow's flight through the hall when a man is sitting at meat in winter-tide with the warm fire lighted on the hearth but the chill rain-storm without. The sparrow flies in at one door and tarries for a moment in the light and heat of the hearth-fire, and then flying forth from the other vanishes into the wintry darkness whence it came. So tarries for a moment the life of man in our sight, but what is before it, what after it, we know not. If this new teaching tell us aught certainly of these, let us follow it.'

4. The Monks.-The new teaching was gradually adopted. But the mass of men did not change their nature because they had learned to pray to Christ. It was much easier to go to church, or to repeat prayers, than it was to live as the gospel taught men to live. Most Englishmen remained as fond of fighting as they were before. There were some, however, who tried hard to make themselves better, to forgive instead of taking vengeance, and to live at peace instead of being constantly at war. Those who tried hardest to do this found that they could not succeed, unless they separated themselves altogether from the people round them. They therefore lived together in houses which were called monasteries. Men who lived together in these monasteries were called monks, and women who lived together were called nuns. They lived very hard lives, not eating or drinking more than was quite necessary, and praying often, as well as working with their hands to procure their daily food. The ruins of many of these monasteries are to be found

in England, and people sometimes say that the monks took care to choose very pretty places to live in. The truth is, that they did not care whether the places were pretty or not. They wanted to get away far from the temptations which were to be found where other men lived. They went to places as far as possible from the dwellings of men, where there was a stream of water to give them drink, and trees to give them wood to burn, and a little fertile ground on which to grow corn to eat. Green grass, and corn, with trees and a river, look very pretty to people now who visit them on a holiday, but those who had to live amongst them in those old days had hard work to do to get food enough to live on in such a country.

CHAPTER IV.

THE UNION OF ENGLAND.

1. What Egbert did. The lesson taught by the monks was one which men are slow to learn. The whole of England was full of bloodshed and confusion. The kings were perpetually fighting with one another. Sometimes one, sometimes another would have the upper hand. At last Egbert, the King of the West Saxons, subdued all the others. He was not King of all England in the sort of way that Victoria is Queen of all England. Some of the separate kingdoms still managed their own affairs.

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