Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 3.djvu/139

ST. AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY 91 When Bertha married Ethelbert it was on condition that she should retain her own religion ; and she was accompanied to Kent by a French bishop, named Luidhard, who must have acted chiefly as her private chaplain. Ethelbert nobly kept his word, and thus the piety of Bertha, and her religion, may easily and deeply have impressed the Kentish heathen. That the Celtic bishops and clergy "sacerdotes e vicinio" did nothing for the conversion of the heathen English can scarcely be matter of surprise, though possibly of regret. For they were not only Christians, but belonged to the conquered race ; whom, apart from their re- ligion, it was the policy of the conquerors to drive out of the country, and who were compiled to take refuge in the remotest districts of the land. The Frank- ish bishops seem to have done little or nothing in response to Queen Bertha's solicitations ; and Gregory ordered Candidus, administrator of the Patrimony oi St. Peter in Gaul, to bring up English youths, and have them trained in monas- teries, and fitted to be made missionaries to their own land. At length, in the sixth year of his pontificate, he determined to undertake the work himself ; and sent from his own monastery of St. Andrew, on the Cselian Hill, in Rome, a com- pany of forty monks, headed by their prior, Augustine. Their progress at first was rapid. Starting in the summer of A.D. 596, they soon arrived in the neighborhood of Aix, in Provence. But the nearer they came to what should have been their journey's end, the less inclined they were for the work to which they had been appointed. The heathen English were repre- sented as barbarians of unusual ferocity ; and the companions of Augustine were as frightened as the companions of Caleb and Joshua. They induced their prior to return to Gregory and seek a release from their perilous task. But Gregory was not a man to be frightened himself, or to have much sympathy with cowards. He wrote, however, with great gentleness : " For as much as it had been better not to begin a good work than to think of desisting from that which has been be- gun, it behoves you, my beloved sons, to fulfil the good work which, by the help of the Lord, you have undertaken. Let not, therefore, the toil of the journey, nor the tongues of evil-speaking men, deter you : but with all possible earnest- ness and zeal, perform that which by God's direction you have undertaken." He furnished them with letters to the bishops of Tours, Marseilles, Vienne, and Autun, and also to the metropolitan of Aries. After the lapse of a year they slowly continued their journey, and landed at last at Ebbe's Fleet, in the Isle of Thanet. As soon as they had landed Augustine sent the interpreters, whom he had ob- tained from " the nation of the Franks," to tell Ethelbert of his arrival. Ethelbert seems to have been a really noble-hearted man, and had doubtless been attracted by the piety of his wife Bertha. The missionaries told him that they had come from Rome, the great capital of the West, and " had brought a joyful message which most undoubtedly assured to all that took advantage of it, everlasting joys in heaven, and a kingdom that would never end, with the living and true God." The king ordered them to remain in the island where they had landed, and prom- ised that they should be furnished with all necessaries till he should consider what