How there were seven chief kingdoms in England; how Augustine and his
friends came from Rome and made the people Christians; and how some
of the young men went to Rome to be taught.
I told you, in the last chapter, that Hengist made himself king over
part of Britain. His kingdom was Kent.
Soon afterwards other brave captains of the Angles and Saxons made
themselves kings. So there were seven chief kingdoms in England,
besides many petty kings. As soon as they were settled, they and
their people began to like the houses and gardens and bathing places
the Romans had left in the country, though they destroyed the most
of them. But there were few, if any, of the Christian clergymen left
among them, to teach them to know the true God. The Angles and
Saxons lived as heathens in their new country for more than a hundred
years. And now I will tell you how God gave them the word of life,
and turned them from their false gods to the faith of Jesus Christ.
Soon after the Anglian and Saxon kings had settled themselves quietly
in Britain, a good many boys were taken from Britain to be made
servants at Rome. Most of these were Angles, and it happened that as
they were standing together an Abbot named GREGORY saw them, and he
thought they were very beautiful, and asked where they came from and
who they were. He was told they were Angles from Britain, but that
they were not Christians. He was sorry for this, and said if they
were Christians they would be _Angels_, not _Angles_.
Now Gregory did not go away and forget this; but, when he was made
Bishop of Rome, he sent for a good man named AUGUSTINE, and asked him
if he would go to Britain and teach these people to be Christians;
and Augustine said he would, and he chose some other good men to help
him to teach them.
[Illustration: Gregory and Angles.]
When Augustine and his friends got to England, they went to
ETHELBERT, the king of the part they reached first, and asked leave
to teach the people; and the king gave them leave, and gave them a
church in the town of Canterbury, and learned a great deal from them
himself. But some of the other kings did not like to be Christians,
nor to let their people learn, and were very angry with those who
listened to Augustine, and killed some of his friends. But at last,
when they saw that the Christians behaved better than those who
served the wooden and stone false gods they brought with them from
their own country, they allowed their people to learn, and so by
degrees they all became Christians.
[Illustration: King Ethelbert declares himself a Christian.]
Ina, who was one of the kings of that part of England which was then
called Wessex (but now contains Berkshire, Hampshire, and other
counties) was very fond of learning, and old books tell us that he
collected a penny from every house where the master could spare it,
and sent all these pennies to Rome to pay for a school that he might
send the young men to, because they could get better masters in Rome
than in England at that time. These pennies were called PETER’S
PENCE, and were sent to Rome for a great many years; but learned men
now think that it was not Ina, but a later English king, called Offa,
who first began to send them.
Now I must tell you what the young men at that time learned in the
school. First of all to read, and to write, and to count; then to
paint pictures in books, and to build beautiful churches, and to
plant gardens, and to take care of fruit trees, and to sing well in
church. And they taught all these things to their friends when they
came back to England.
I should have told you that it was only the clergymen who went to
school in Rome; and when they came home, though some of them lived in
houses of their own, yet most went and lived in large houses, called
convents, big enough to hold a great many of them, besides having
schools in them for teaching children, and rooms where they allowed
poor people, who were travelling, to sleep; and they were very good
to the poor and took great care of people who were sick.
And because these clergymen did so much good, the kings and the
people gave them money, and some land fit for corn-fields and
gardens, that they might have plenty for themselves, and the
schoolboys, and the poor.