THE ANGLE CHILDREN A.D. 597.
The old English who had come to Britain were heathen, and believed in
many false gods: the Sun, to whom they made Sunday sacred, as Monday
was to the moon, Wednesday to a great terrible god, named Woden, and
Thursday to a god named Thor, or Thunder. They thought a clap of
thunder was the sound of the great hammer he carried in his hand.
They thought their gods cared for people being brave, and that the
souls of those who died fighting gallantly in battle were the happiest
of all; but they did not care for kindness or gentleness.
Thus they often did very cruel things, and one of the worst that they
did was the stealing of men, women, and children from their homes, and
selling them to strangers, who made slaves of them. All England had
not one king. There were generally about seven kings, each with a
different part of the island and as they were often at war with one
another, they used to steal one another's subjects, and sell them to
merchants who came from Italy and Greece for them.
Some English children were made slaves, and carried to Rome, where
they were set in the market-place to be sold. A good priest, named
Gregory, was walking by. He saw their fair faces, blue eyes, and long
light hair, and, stopping, he asked who they were. "Angles," he was
told, "from the isle of Britain." "Angles?" he said, "they have angel
faces, and they ought to be heirs with the angels in heaven." From
that time this good man tried to find means to send teachers to teach
the English the Christian faith. He had to wait for many years, and,
in that time, he was made Pope, namely, Father-Bishop of Rome. At
last he heard that one of the chief English kings, Ethelbert of Kent,
had married Bertha, the daughter of the King of Paris, who was a
Christian, and that she was to be allowed to bring a priest with her,
and have a church to worship in.
Gregory thought this would make a beginning: so he sent a priest,
whose name was Augustine, with a letter to King Ethelbert and Queen
Bertha, and asked the King to listen to him. Ethelbert met Augustine
in the open air, under a tree at Canterbury, and heard him tell about
the true God, and JESUS CHRIST, whom He sent; and, after some time,
and a great deal of teaching, Ethelbert gave up worshiping Woden and
Thor, and believed in the true God, and was baptized, and many of his
people with him. Then Augustine was made Archbishop of Canterbury;
and, one after another, in the course of the next hundred years, all
the English kingdoms learnt to know God, and broke down their idols,
and became Christian.
Bishops were appointed, and churches were built, and parishes were
marked off--a great many of them the very same that we have now. Here
and there, when men and women wanted to be very good indeed, and to
give their whole lives to doing nothing but serving God, without any
of the fighting and feasting, the buying and selling of the outer
world, they built houses, where they might live apart, and churches,
where there might be services seven times a day. These houses were
named abbeys. Those for men were, sometimes, also called monasteries,
and the men in them were termed monks, while the women were called
nuns, and their homes convents of nunneries. They had plain dark
dresses, and hoods, and the women always had veils. The monks used
to promise that they would work as well as pray, so they used to build
their abbeys by some forest or marsh, and bring it all into order,
turning the wild place into fields, full of wheat. Others used to
copy out the Holy Scriptures and other good books upon parchment--
because there was no paper in those days, nor any printing--drawing
beautiful painted pictures at the beginning of the chapters, which
were called illuminations. The nun did needlework and embroidery,
as hangings for the altar, and garments for the priests, all bright
with beautiful colors, and stiff with gold. The English nuns' work
was the most beautiful to be seen anywhere.
There were schools in the abbeys, where boys were taught reading,
writing, singing, and Latin, to prepare them for being clergymen; but
not many others thought it needful to have anything to do with books.
Even the great men thought they could farm and feast, advise the king,
and consent to the laws, hunt or fight, quite as well without reading,
and they did not care for much besides; for, though they were
Christians, they were still rude, rough, ignorant men, who liked
nothing so well as a hunt or a feast, and slept away all the evening,
especially when they could get a harper to sing to them.
The English men used to wear a long dress like a carter's frock, and
their legs were wound round with strips of cloth by way of stockings.
Their houses were only one story, and had no chimneys--only a hole at
the top for the smoke to go out at; and no glass in the windows. The
only glass there was at all had been brought from Italy to put into
York Cathedral, and it was thought a great wonder. So the windows had
shutters to keep out the rain and wind, and the fire was in the middle
of the room. At dinner-time, about twelve o'clock, the lord and lady
of the house sat upon cross-legged stools, and their children and
servants sat on benches; and square bits of wood called trenchers,
were put before them for plates, while the servants carried round the
meat on spits, and everybody cut off a piece with his own knife and
at it without a fork. They drank out of cows' horns, if they had not
silver cups. But though they were so rough they were often good,
brave people.