The pope was obliged to complain of the lack of episcopal zeal among Aethelberht Christian neighbours. Whether we are to understand the phrase ex vicinis (Greg., Epp.,VI) as referring to Gaulish prelates or to the Celtic bishops of northern and western Britain, the fact remains that neither Bertha's piety, nor Luidhard's preaching, nor Aethelberht's toleration, nor the supposedly robust faith of British or Gaulish neighbouring peoples was found adequate to so obvious an opportunity until a Roman pontiff, distracted with the cares of a world supposed to be hastening to its eclipse, first exhorted forty Benedictines of Italian blood to the enterprise. The itinerary seem to have been speedily, if vaguely, prepared; the little company set out upon their long journey in the month of June, 596. They were armed with letters to the bishops and Christian princes of the countries through which they were likely to pass, and they were further instructed to provide themselves with Frankish interpreters before setting foot in Britain itself. Discouragement, however, appears early to have overtaken them on their way. Tales of the uncouth islanders to whom they were going chilled their enthusiasm, and some of their number actually proposed that they should draw back. Augustine so far compromised with the waverers that he agreed to return in person to Pope Gregory and lay before him plainly the difficulties which they might be compelled to encounter. The band of missionaries waited for him in the neighbourhood of Aix-en-Provence. Pope Gregory, however, raised the drooping spirits of Augustine and sent him back without delay to his faint-hearted brethren, armed with more precise, and as it appeared, more convincing authority.

Augustine was named abbot of the missionaries (Bede, H. E.,I, xxiii) and was furnished with fresh letters in which the pope made kindly acknowledgment of the aid thus far offered by Protasius, Bishop of Aix-en-Provence, by Stephen, Abbot of Lérins, and by a wealthy lay official of patrician rank called Arigius [Greg., Epp., VI (indic. xiv) num. 52 sqq.;sc. 3,4,5 of the Benedictine series]. Augustine must have reached Aix on his return journey some time in August; for Gregory's message of encouragement to the party bears the date of July the twenty-third, 596. Whatever may have been the real source of the passing discouragement no more delays are recorded. The missionaries pushed on through Gaul, passing up through the valley of the Rhone to Arles on their way to Vienne and Autun, and thence northward, by one of several alternatives routes which it is impossible now to fix with accuracy, until they come to Paris. Here, in all probability, they passed the winter months; and here, too, as is not unlikely, considering the relations that existed between the family of the reigning house and that of Kent, they secured the services of the local presbyters suggested as interpreters in the pope's letters to Theodoric and Theodebert and to Brunichilda, Queen of the Franks [the Germanic people who ruled Gaul and gave France its name].

In the spring of the following year they were ready to embark. The name of the port at which they took ship has not been recorded. Boulogne was at that time a place of some mercantile importance; and it is not improbable that they directed their steps thither to find a suitable vessel in which they could complete the last and not least hazardous portion of their journey. All that we know for certain is that they landed somewhere on the Isle of Thanet (Bede, H. E.,I, xxv) and that they waited there in obedience to King Aethelberht orders until arrangements could be made for a formal interview. The king replied to their messengers that he would come in person from Canterbury, which was less than a dozen miles away. It is not easy to decide at this date between the four rival spots, each of which has claimed the distinction of being the place upon which St. Augustine and his companions first set foot. The Boarded Groin, Stonar, Ebbsfleet, and Richborough — last named, if the present course of the Stour has not altered in thirteen hundred years, then forming part of the mainland — each has its defenders. The curious in such matters may consult the special literature on the subject cited at the close of this article. The promised interview between the king and the missionaries took place within a few days. It was held in the open air, sub divo, says Bede (Bede, H.E.,I, xxv), on a level spot, probably under a spreading oak in deference to the king's dread of Augustine's possible incantations. His fear, however, was dispelled by the native grace of manner and the kindly personality of his chief guest who addressed him through an interpreter. The message told "how the compassionate Jesus had redeemed a world of sin by His own agony and opened the Kingdom of Heaven to all who would believe" (Aelfric, ap. Haddan and Stubbs, III, ii). The king's answer, while gracious in its friendliness, was curiously prophetic of the religious after-temper of his race. "Your words and promised are very fair" he is said to have replied, "but as they are new to us and of uncertain import, I cannot assent to them and give up what I have long held in common with the whole English nation. But since you have come as strangers from so great a distance, and, as I take it, are anxious to have us also share in what you conceive to be both excellent and true, we will not interfere with you, but receive you, rather, in kindly hospitality and take care to provide what may be necessary for your support. Moreover, we make no objection to your winning as many converts as you can to your creed". (Bede, H.E., I, xxv.)

The king more than made good his words. He invited the missionaries to take up their abode in the royal capital of Canterbury, then a barbarous and half-ruined metropolis, built by the Kentish folk upon the site of the old Roman military town of Durovernum. In spite of the squalid character of the city, the monks must have made an impressive picture as they drew near the abode "over against the Kings' Street facing the north", a detail preserved in William Thorne's (c. 1397) "Chronicle of the Abbots of St. Augustine's Canterbury," p.1759, assigned them for a dwelling. The striking circumstances of their approach seem to have lingered long in popular remembrance; for Bede, writing fully a century and a third after the event, is at pains to describe how they came in characteristic Roman fashion (more suo) bearing "the holy cross together with a picture of the Sovereign King, Our Lord Jesus Christ and chanting in unison this litany", as they advanced: "We beseech thee, O Lord, in the fulness of thy pity that Thine anger and Thy holy wrath be turned away from this city and from Thy holy house, because we have sinned: Alleluia!" It was an anthem out of one of the many "Rogation" litanies then beginning to be familiar in the churches of Gaul and possibly not unknown also at Rome. (Martène, "De antiquis Ecclesiae ritibus", 1764, III, 189; Bede, "H.E.", II, xx; Joanes Diac., "De Vita Gregorii", II, 17 in Migne, P.L., LXXXV; Duchesne's ed., "Liber Pontificalis", II, 12.) The building set apart for their use must have been fairly large to afford shelter to a community numbering fully forty. It stood in the Stable Gate, not far from the ruins of an old heathen temple; and the tradition in Thorn's day was that the parish church of St. Alphage approximately marked the site (Chr. Aug. Abb., 1759). Here Augustine and his companions seemed to have established without delay the ordinary routine of the Benedictine rule as practiced at the close of the sixth century; and to it they seem to have added in a quiet way the apostolic ministry of preaching. The church dedicated to St. Martin in the eastern part of the city which had been set apart for the convenience of Bishop Luidhard and Queen Bertha's followers many years before was also thrown open to them until the king should permit a more highly organized attempt at evangelization.

The evident sincerity of the missionaries, their single-mindedness, their courage under trial, and, above all, the disinterested character of Augustine himself and the unworldly note of his doctrine made a profound impression on the mind of the king. He asked to be instructed and his baptism was appointed to take place at Pentecost. Whether the queen and her Frankish bishop had any real hand in the process of this comparatively sudden conversion, it is impossible to say. St. Gregory's letter written to Bertha herself, when the news of the king's baptism had reached Rome, would lead us to infer, that, while little or nothing had been done before Augustine's arrival, afterwards there was an endeavor on the part of the queen to make up for past remissness. The pope writes: "Et quoniam, Deo volente, aptum nunc tempus est, agate, ut divina gratia co-operante, cum augmento possitis quod neglectum est reparare". [Greg. Epp., XI (indic., iv), 29.] The remissness does seem to have been atoned for, when we take into account the Christian activity associated with the names of this royal pair during the next few months. Aethelberht's conversion naturally gave a great impetus to the enterprise of Augustine and his companions. Augustine himself determined to act at once upon the provisional instruction he had received from Pope Gregory. He crossed over to Gaul and sought episcopal consecration at the hands of Virgilius, the Metropolitan of Arles. Returning almost immediately to Kent, he made preparations for that more active and open form of propaganda for which Aethelberht's baptism had prepared a way. It is characteristic of the spirit which actuated Augustine and his companions that no attempt was made to secure converts on a large scale by the employment of force. Bede tells us that it was part of the king's uniform policy "to compel no man to embrace Christianity" (H. E., I, xxvi) and we know from more than one of his extant letters what the pope though of a method so strangely at variance with the teaching of the Gospels. On Christmas Day, 597, more than ten thousand persons were baptized by the first "Archbishop of the English". The great ceremony probably took place in the waters of the Swale, not far from the mouth of the Medway. News of these extraordinary events was at once dispatched to the pope, who wrote in turn to express his joy to his friend Eulogius, Bishop of Alexandria, to Augustine himself, and to the king and queen. (Epp., VIII, xxx; XI, xxviii; ibid., lxvi; Bede, H. E., I, xxxi, xxxii.) Augustine's message to Gregory was carried by Lawrence the Presbyter, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, and Peter one of the original colony of missionary monks. They were instructed to ask for more Gospel labourers, and, if we may trust Bede's account in this particular and the curious group of letters embodied in his narrative, they bore with them a list of dubia, or questions, bearing upon several points of discipline and ritual with regard to which Augustine awaited the pope's answer.

The genuineness of the document or libellus, as Bede calls it (H.E., II, i), in which the pope is alleged to have answered the doubts of the new archbishop has not been seriously called in question; though scholars have felt the force of the objection which St. Boniface, writing in the second quarter of the eighth century, urges, vis, that no trace of it could be found in the official collection of St. Gregory's correspondence preserved in the registry of the Roman Church.(Haddan and Stubbs, III, 336; Dudden, "Gregory the Great", II, 130, note; Mason, "Mission of St. Augustine", preface, pp. viii and ix; Duchesne, "Origines", 3d ed., p. 99, note.) It contains nine responsa, the most important of which are those that touch upon the local differences of ritual, the question of jurisdiction, and the perpetually recurring problem of marriage relationships. "Why", Augustine had asked "since the faith is one, should there be different usages in different churches; one way of saying Mass in the Roman Church, for instance, and another in the Church of Gaul?" The pope's reply is, that while "Augustine is not to forget the Church in which he has been brought up", he is at liberty to adopt from the usage of other Churches whatever is most likely to prove pleasing to Almighty God. "For institutions", he adds, "are not to be loved for the sake of places; but places, rather, for the sake of institutions". With regard to the delicate question of jurisdiction Augustine is informed that he is to exercise no authority over the churches of Gaul; but that "all the bishops of Britain are entrusted to him, to the end that the unlearned may be instructed, the wavering strengthened by persuasion and the perverse corrected with authority". [Greg., Epp., XI (indic., iv), 64; Bede, H. E., I, xxvii.] Augustine seized the first convenient opportunity to carry out the graver provisions of this last enactment. He had already received the pallium on the return of Peter and Lawrence from Rome in 601. The original band of missionaries had also been reinforced by fresh recruits, among whom "the first and most distinguished" as Bede notes, "were Mellitus, Justus, Paulinus, and Ruffinianus". Of these Ruffinianus was afterwards chosen abbot of the monastery established by Augustine in honour of St. Peter outside the eastern walls of the Kentish capital. Mellitus became the first English Bishop of London; Justus was appointed to the new see of Rochester [a bishop’s “see” is his diocese, named from his seat (Latin sedes)], and Paulinus became the Metropolitan of York.

Aethelberht, as Bretwalda, allowed his wider territory to be mapped out into dioceses, and exerted himself in Augustine's behalf to bring about a meeting with the Celtic bishops of Southern Britain. The conference took place in Malmesbury, on the borders of Wessex [the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of southern England], not far from the Severn, at a spot long described in popular legend as Austin's Oak. (Bede, H.E., II, ii.) Nothing came of this attempt to introduce ecclesiastical uniformity. Augustine seems to have been willing enough to yield certain points; but on three important issues he would not compromise. He insisted on an unconditional surrender on the Easter controversy; on the mode of administering the Sacrament of Baptism; and on the duty of taking active measures in concert with him for the evangelization of the Saxon conquerors. The Celtic bishops refused to yield, and the meeting was broken up. A second conference was afterwards planned at which only seven of the British bishops convened. They were accompanied this time by a group of their "most learned men" headed by Dinoth, the abbot of the celebrated monastery of Bangor-is-coed. The result was, if anything, more discouraging than before. Accusations of unworthy motives were freely bandied on both sides. Augustine's Roman regard for form, together with his punctiliousness for personal precedence as Pope Gregory's representative, gave umbrage to the Celts. They denounced the Archbishop for his pride, and retired behind their mountains. As they were on the point of withdrawing, they heard the only angry threat that is recorded of the saint: "If ye will not have peace with the brethren, ye shall have war from your enemies; and if ye will not preach the way of life to the English, ye shall suffer the punishment of death at their hands". Popular imagination, some ten years afterwards, saw a terrible fulfilment of the prophecy in the butchery of the Bangor monks at the hands of Aethelfrid the Destroyer in the great battle won by him at Chester in 613.

These efforts toward Catholic unity with the Celtic bishops and the constitution of a well-defined hierarchy for the Saxon Church are the last recorded acts of the saint's life. His death fell in the same year says a very early tradition (which can be traced back to Archbishop Theodore's time) as that of his beloved father and patron, Pope Gregory. Thorn, however, who attempts always to give the Canterbury version of these legends, asserts — somewhat inaccurately, it would appear, if his coincidences be rigorously tested — that it took place in 605. He was buried, in true Roman fashion, outside the walls of the Kentish capital in a grave dug by the side of the great Roman road which then ran from Deal to Canterbury over St. Martin's Hill and near the unfinished abbey church which he had begun in honour of Sts. Peter and Paul and which was afterwards to be dedicated to his memory. When the monastery was completed, his relics [the bodily remains of a saint, or objects they used, kept with honor] were translated to a tomb prepared for them in the north porch. A modern hospital is said to occupy the site of his last resting place. [Stanley, "Memorials of Canterbury" (1906), 38.] His feast day in the Roman Calendar is kept on 28 May; but in the proper of the English office it occurs two days earlier, the true anniversary of his death.

Bede, Hist. Eccl. I and II; Paulus Diaconus, Johannes Diaconus, and St. Gall MSS., Lives of St. Gregory in P.L., LXXV; Epistlae Gregorii, ibid.; Gregory of Tours [bishop and historian of the Franks (d. 594)], Historia Francorum, ibid., LXXI; Goscelin, Life of St. Gregory in Acta SS., May, VI, 370 sqq.; Wm. Thorne, Chron. Abbat. S. Aug. in Twysden's Decem Scriptores (London, 1652), pp 1758-2202; Haddan and Stubbs, Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents relating to Great Britain and Ireland (Oxford, 1869-1873, 3 vols.); Mason (ed.), The Mission of St. Augustine according to the Original Documents (Cambridge, 1897); Dudden, Gregory the Great, His Place in the History of Thought (London, New York, Bombay, 1905); St Gallen MS., ed, Gasquet (1904);Stanley, Memorials of Canterbury (London, 1855, 1906); Bassenge, Die Sendung Augustins zur Bekehrung d. Angelsachsen (Leipzig, 1890); Brou, St. Augustin de Canterbury et ses Compagnons (Paris, 1897); Lévèque, St Augustin de Canterbury, in Rev. des Quest. Hist. (1899), xxi, 353-423; Martielli, Recits des fetes celebrees a l'occ. du 13e centenaire de l'arrivee de St. Aug. en Angleterre (Paris, 1899)

Baring-Gould’s sources: Roman and Anglican Martyrologies; also Reformed Anglican Kalendar; Bede, Hrabanus, Ado, Notker, &c. Authority: — Bede’s Eccl. Hist., the life of S. Augustine by Gotselin, d. 1098, contains no original matter.] The account of the mission of S. Augustine to England, and of his landing in Kent, and the establishment of the see of Canterbury has been already given in the Lives of S. Gregory the Great (March 12th), and S. Ethelbert (Feb. 24th), and it need not Ipe repeated in full here. The monastery of S. Andrew, on the Coelian hill, had been founded by S. Gregory the Great, while still a simple monk, at the time when he transformed his patrimonial mansion into a cloister. In the church of the monastery is still shown the pulpit from which Gregory preached, the altar before which he must often have prayed for the conversion of his beloved English. On the fagade of the church an inscription records that thence set out the first apostles of the Anglo-Saxons, and preserves their names. Absolutely nothing is known of Augustine’s history previous to the solemn days on which, in obedience to the commands of the pontiff, who had been his abbot, he and his forty companions (in 396), went forth on their sacred mission. He must, as prior of the monastery, have exhibited distinguished qualifications ere he could have been chosen by Gregory for such a mission. They arrived in Provence, and stopped for some time at Lerins, in that Mediterranean isle of the saints, where, a century and a half before, Patrick, the monastic apostle of Ireland, had sojourned before he was sent on his evangelical mission by Pope Celestine. But there, the Roman monks received May a6.] S. Augustine of Canterbury frightful accounts of the country which they were going to convert. They took fright, and persuaded Augustine to return to Rome and obtain from the pope permission to abandon their dangerous enterprise. Instead of listening to their request, Gregory sent Augustine back to them with a letter which ordered them to obey Augustine implicitly as their abbot, and to continue their journey forthwith. Thus stimulated, Augustine and his monks took courage, and again set out upon their way. They traversed France, and brought their journey to a close on the southern shore of Great Britain, at Ebbsfleet, near Sandwich. It was there that Julius Csesar had landed with his legions. The new conquerors, like Julius Caesar, arrived under the ensigns of Rome — but of Rome the eternal, not the imperial. The rock which received the first print of the footsteps of Augustine was long preserved and venerated, and was the object of many pilgrimages. Immediately on his arrival, Augustine sent interpreters whom he had brought with him from France, to Ethelbert king of Kent. The king appointed them to meet him in the Isle of Thanet. “ The history of the Church,’’ says Bossuet, “ contains nothing finer than the entrance of the holy monk Augustine into the kingdom of Kent with forty of his companions, who preceded by the cross and the image of the great king, our Lord Jesus Christ, offered their solemn prayers for the conversion of England.” At their head marched Augustine, whose lofty stature and patrician presence attracted every eye, for, like Saul, <c he was higher than any of the people from his shoulders and upwards.” The king received the missionaries graciously, and permitted them freely to preach Christianity among his subjects. He allowed them to follow him to Canterbury, where he assigned them a dwelling, which still exists under the name of the Stable Gate.

There was outside the town, to the east, a small church dedicated to S. Martin [St. Martin of Tours (d. 397), soldier turned bishop], dating from the time of the Romans, whither Bertha, the Christian queen of Ethelbert, was in the habit of going to pray. Thither also went Augustine and his companions to chant their monastic office, to celebrate mass, to preach and to baptize. Here then we behold them, provided, thanks to the royal munificence, with the necessaries of life, endowed with the supreme blessing of liberty, and using that liberty in labouring to propagate the truth. The innocent simplicity of their lives, the heavenly sweetness of their doctrine, appeared to the Saxons arguments of invincible eloquence, and every day the number of candidates for baptism increased. The good king Ethelbert did not lose sight of them, he sought and obtained baptism at the hand of Augustine. A crowd of Saxons followed his example. Augustine now perceived that he would be henceforward at the head of an important Christian community, and in conformity to his instructions, returned to France to be consecrated archbishop of the English by Virgilius, the celebrated metropolitan [the archbishop who heads a group of dioceses] of Arles. On his return to Canterbury he found that the example of the king and the labours of his companions had borne fruit beyond all expectation; so much so, that at Christmas in the same year, 597, more than ten thousand Anglo-Saxons presented themselves for baptism; and that sacrament was administered to them in the Thames at the mouth of the Medway, opposite the Isle of Sheppey.

The first of the converts was also the first of the benefactors of the infant church. Ethelbert gave his palace in the town of Canterbury to Augustine to be converted into a monastery; and by its side Augustine laid the foundations of Christ Church, the metropolitan Church of England. To the west of the royal city, and halfway to the church of S. Martin, Augustine discovered the site of an ancient British church which had been transformed into a pagan temple. Ethelbert gave up to him the temple, with the ground surrounding it. The archbishop forthwith restored it to its original use as a church, and dedicated it to S. Pancras. Round the new sanctuary he raised another monastery, of which Peter, one of his companions, was the first abbot. He consecrated this new foundation to SS. Peter and Paul; but it is under his own name that the famous abbey became one of the most opulent and revered sanctuaries of Christendom. Seven years were needed to complete the monastery, but some months before his death, Augustine had the satisfaction of seeing his foundation sanctioned by the solemn charter of the king and the chief of the nation whom he had con* verted, 9th Jan., 605.

Some time before the solemn consecration of his work, Augustine had sent to Rome two of his companions, Laurence, who was to succeed him as archbishop, and Peter, who was to be the first abbot of the new monastery of SS. Peter and Paul, to announce to the Pope the great and good news of the conversion of the king, with his kingdom of Kent, and to demand from him new assistants in the work. His appeal was promptly responded to, and Mellitus and Justus at the head of a new swarm of monks descended on Kent. The Pope sent to Augustine the pall, as a reward for having established the new English Church, and constituted him metropolitan of twelve bishoprics, which he enjoined him to erect in southern England. He gave him authority to appoint whom he would metropolitan bishop at York, subordinating to the see of York [a bishop’s “see” is his diocese, named from his seat (Latin sedes)] twelve new bishoprics yet to be created, but securing to Augustine during his lifetime the primacy over the northern metropolitan.

The British Church, though secluded in the fastnesses of Wales to Cornwall, could not but hear of the arrival of the Roman missionaries, and of their success in the conversion of the Saxons. Augustine and his followers could not but inquire with deep interest concerning the relics [the bodily remains of a saint, or objects they used, kept with honor] of that ancient Christianity which had formerly embraced all Britain, but which had been thrust back at the point of the Saxon spears into the mountain fastnesses of the West. The British Church followed a different usage from Rome in the time of the celebration of Easter. It claimed, but erroneously, Eastern authority; the real cause of the divergence lay in erroneous computation. The Church of Alexandria had discovered an astronomical error, originating in the employment of the ancient Jewish computation by the Christians, and had introduced a more exact calculation, which was adopted by all the Eastern Churches; and the result was, that from the pontificate of S. Leo the Great (440-61) a difference of an entire month had arisen between Easter Day at Rome and Easter Day at Alexandria. Towards the middle of the sixth century, the difference ceased. But Ireland and Britain had been converted before the correction of the calendar, and therefore adhered to the old computation, which was at variance not only with Rome and the whole West, but also with the East, which celebrated that festival, like the Jews, on the precise day of the week on which it fell. The zealous missionaries of Gregory did not know the origin of the error; all they saw was that error existed, and that the British Church adhered tenaciously to it. The Roman and British clergy met, it is said, in solemn synod, on the confines of Wessex [the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of southern England], near the banks of the Severn, which separated the Saxons from the Britons. The interview, like that of Augustine with Ethelbert, after his landing in Kent, took place in the open air, and under an oak, which for a long time afterwards was known as Augustine’s oak. The Romans demanded submission to their discipline, and the implicit adoption of the Western ceremonial on the contested points. The British bishops demurred; Augustine proposed to place the issue of the dispute on the decision of a miracle. The miracle was duly performed, — a blind man brought forward and restored to sight. But the miracle made no impression on the obdurate Britons. They demanded a second meeting, and at the advice of a hermit, resolved to put the Christianity of the strangers to a moral test. “ True Christianity,’" they said, “ is meek and lowly of heart. Such will be this man (Augustine), if he be a servant of God. If he be "haughty and ungentle, he is not of God, and we may disregard his words. Let the Romans arrive first at the synod. If on our approach he rises from his seat to receive us with meekness and humility, he is the servant of Christ, and we will obey him. If he despises us, and remains seated, let us despise him.” Augustine sat, more Romano, says the historian,1 as they drew near, in unbending dignity. The Britons at once refused obedience to his commands, and disclaimed him as their metropolitan. The indignant Augustine burst forth into stern denunciations of their guilt, in not having carried the light of the Gospel to their enemies. It was a charge that could then be made with justice, but it was one speedily and gloriously to be refuted by the conversion of Northumbria [the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of northern England and south-east Scotland] and Mercia [the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the English Midlands] through missionaries of the Keltic Church. Augustine prophesied the divine vengeance by the hands of the Saxons. So complete was the alienation, so entirely did the Anglo-Saxon clergy espouse the fierce animosities of the Anglo-Saxons, and even embitter them by their theologic hatred, that the gentle Bede [English monk and historian (d. 735)] relates with triumph, 1 Henry of Huntingdon.

as a manifest proof of the divine wrath against the refractory Britons, a great victory over that wicked race, preceded by a massacre of 1200 of their clergy, chiefly monks of Bangor, who stood aloof on an eminence, praying for the success of their countrymen.

Condemned by the obstinacy of the British to deprive himself of their assistance, Augustine none the less continued his “hunt of men,3' as his biographer calls it, by evangelizing the Saxons. In so doing he sometimes encountered an opposition which expressed itself in insult and derision, especially when he passed the bounds of Ethelbert3s kingdom. On one occasion, whilst traversing Dorsetshire, he and his companions found themselves in the midst of a sea-faring population, who heaped on them affronts and outrages, hunted them from their territory, and with a rude derision fastened fish-tails to the black robes of the Italian monks.1 * Augustine was not a man to be discouraged by such trifles. Besides, he found in other places crowds more attentive and more impressible. And thus he persevered for seven years, until his death, in his apostolic journeys.

S. Gregory died in the early months of the year 605, and two months after, Augustine followed his father and friend to the tomb. The great apostle of the English was buried in the unfinished church of the famous monastery which was about to assume and to preserve his name. 1 John Bale, the coarse reformer in Edward VI.’s time, says, “ John Capgrave and Alexander of Esseby sayth, that for castynge of fyshe tayles at thys Augustyne, Dorsettshyre men had tayles ever after. But Polydorus applieth it unto Kentish men at Stroud, by Rochester, for cuttinge off Thomas Becket’s horse’s tail. Thus hath England in all other land «*. perpetual infamy of tayles.. that an Englyshman now cannot travayle in another land by way of merchandyse, or any otber honest occupyinge, but it is most contumeliously thrown in his tethe that all Englyshmen have tayls."