Martin
beside the royal city of Canterbury, was given them for their worship.
The King himself remained true to the gods of his fathers; but his
marriage no doubt encouraged Gregory to send a Roman abbot, Augustine,
at the head of a band of monks to preach the Gospel, to the English
people. The missionaries landed in 597 in the Isle of Thanet, at the
spot where Hengist had landed more than a century before; and Ethelbert
received them sitting in the open air, on the chalk-down above Minster
where the eye nowadays catches miles away over the marshes the dim tower
of Canterbury.
The King listened patiently to the long sermon of Augustine as the
interpreters the abbot had brought with him from Gaul rendered it in the
English tongue. "Your words are fair," Ethelbert replied at last with
English good sense, "but they are new and of doubtful meaning." For
himself, he said, he refused to forsake the gods of his fathers, but
with the usual religious tolerance of his race he promised shelter and
protection to the strangers.
The band of monks entered Canterbury bearing before them a silver cross
with a picture of Christ, and singing in concert the strains of the
litany of their church.
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