Arthur and his knights were devoted Christians. For the Romans
had not only made good roads and built strong walls and forts in
Britain, but they had also brought the Christian religion into the
island. And at about the time of the Saxon invasion St. Patrick
was founding churches and monasteries in Ireland, and was baptizing
whole clans of the Irish at a time. It is said that he baptized
12,000 persons with his own hand. Missionaries were sent out by
the Irish Church to convert the wild Picts of Scotland and at a
later day the distant barbarians of Germany and Switzerland.
The Saxons, Angles, and Jutes believed in the old Norse gods, and
Tiew and Woden, Thor and Friga, or Frija, were worshiped on the
soil of Britain for more than a hundred years.
The Britons tried to convert their conquerors, but the invaders did
not care to be taught religion by those whom they had conquered;
so the British missionaries found the work unusually hard. Aid came
to them in a singular way. At some time near the year 575 A.D.,
the Saxons quarreled and fought with their friends, the Angles.
They took some Angles prisoners and carried them to Rome to be
sold in the great slave-market there. A monk named Gregory passed
one day through the market and saw these captives. He asked the
dealer who they were. "Angles," was the answer.
"Oh," said the monk, "they would be _angels_ instead of _Angles_
if they were only Christians; for they certainly have the faces
of angels."
[Illustration: ST. PATRICK BAPTIZING IRISH PRINCESSES]
Years after, when that monk was the Pope of Rome, he remembered this
conversation and sent the monk Au-gus'tine to England to teach the
Christian religion to the savage but angel-faced Angles. Augustine
and the British missionaries converted the Anglo-Saxons two hundred
years before the German Saxons were converted.
Still, though both Angles and Saxons called themselves Christians,
they were seldom at peace; and for more than two hundred years
they frequently fought. Various chiefs tried to make themselves
kings; and at length there came to be no less than seven small
kingdoms in South Britain.
In 784 Egbert claimed to be heir of the kingdom called Wessex;
but the people elected another man and Egbert had to flee for his
life. He went to the court of Charlemagne, and was with the great
king of the Franks in Rome on Christmas Day, 800, when the Pope
placed the crown on Charles' head and proclaimed him emperor.
Soon after this a welcome message came to Egbert. The mind of the
people in Wessex had changed and they had elected him king. So
bidding farewell to Charlemagne, he hurried to England.
Egbert had seen how Charlemagne had compelled the different quarreling
tribes of Germany to yield allegiance to him and how after uniting
his empire he had ruled it well.
Egbert did in England what Charlemagne had done in Germany. He
either persuaded the various petty kingdoms of the Angles, the
Saxons and the Jutes to recognize him as their ruler, or forced
them to do so; and thus under him all England became one united
kingdom.
But Egbert did even better than this. He did much to harmonize
the different tribes by his wise conciliation. The name "England"
is a memorial of this; for though Egbert himself was a Saxon, he
advised that to please the Angles the country should be called
An'gli-a, that is, Angleland or England, the land of the Angles,
instead of Sax-on-i'a, or Saxonland.