side, and Pegwell Bay on the other. In early days a rock was shown here, on which it was said that Augustine placed his foot as he landed, and the impress of his foot remained on it as if it had been plastic clay. In later times it was said that St. Mildred landed there, and that it was her foot which left its miraculous mark, and a chapel dedicated to St. Mildred was erected over it.

CHAPTER VII

ENGLAND IN 596 A.D.

THE fears which had beset them at Marseilles, and made them seek to turn back from their enterprise, would be allayed when they found themselves among civilised people, who treated them with consideration, and only required that they should wait till the will of King Ethelbert could be ascertained as to their further movements. Augustine sent a messenger to the King from Thanet, and waited for the answer, and for some days the party halted there; the Kentishmen, not unaccustomed to the sight of foreign visitors, yet wondering at this large company of Italians with their tonsured heads and strange monastic robes; the Italians eagerly studying the large, fair-complexioned, blue-eyed natives, among whom they were henceforth to live, and their strange, rude ways; each asking the other all kinds of questions through their Frank interpreters.

Here we may conveniently take our stand, and from this corner of the land consider the condition of the island and its people, as it would be presented to the Italians in answer to their inquiries.

Kent was the first part of the island which had been conquered by the Teutonic invaders. It is probable that its conquest had been effected with less violence, less disturbance of the native population, and therefore

with less interruption of its prosperity, than some other parts.

The Jutes had come into the island one hundred and fifty years before (c. 450), and the grant of Thanet as the payment of their military services was the beginning of their kingdom. Oisc, the son of the mythic Hengist, was the first to take the title of King of Kent, and his descendants were called Oiscings; Oisc was the father of Octa, and he of Irminric, and he of Ethelbert, now reigning. The kingdom of the South Saxons had been founded to the west of them, and the kingdom of the West Saxons still further westward, and so the whole south of the country had been conquered and settled as far as the Avon on the borders of Wilts and Dorset by the year 516; soon afterwards the East Saxons had founded a kingdom in the country north of the Thames, and the East Angles in the eastern peninsula still to the north of Essex; and thus, by the year 577, the whole eastern side of the country, as far north as the Humber, had been conquered and settled.

The settlement of the respective territories and mutual relations of the independent bands of conquerors had not been effected without some appeals to the arbitrament of arms. When their boundaries had been adjusted, there was still a question of supremacy of one over the rest to be determined. Bede records that the first who exercised this supremacy over all the southern provinces that are divided from the northern by the river Humber, and the borders contiguous to the same," was Ælle, King of the South Saxons, then it came to Ceawlin, King of the West Saxons, and then Ethelbert of Kent obtained it.

The subject of this dignity of Bretwalda,1 which seems to mean Lord of Britain, is an obscure and difficult one. The probable explanation of it is, that when the imperial power was withdrawn from the province of Britain, the native people kept up the existing form of government as well as they could. This consisted in outline of a Vicar of Britain, in whom the civil administration centred, while the military command was divided between three officials; the Count of Britain had the general and supreme control; to the Count of the Saxon shore was committed the command of the troops and fortresses devoted to the defence of the eastern and southern shores ; the Duke of Britain had the command of the troops and fortresses which protected the north and north-west. One and another of the Teutonic conquerors, it is conjectured, on defeating one of these native officials, assumed his title to himself, and, on being defeated in the contests which the conquerors waged among themselves, yielded it to the victor. We seem to see this very clearly in the case of Edwin of Northumbria, who, after his victory over Cadwallon, assumed the dignity of Bretwalda. authority is spoken of (hyperbolically, no doubt) as extending throughout the island from sea to sea, and "his dignity was so great throughout his dominions that his banners were not only borne before him in battle, but even in time of peace, when he rode about his cities, towns, or provinces with his officers, the standardbearer was wont to go before him. Also, when he walked along the streets, that sort of banner which the

His

1 Bretwalda, Bretenanwealda, and Brytanwealda, are the three forms in which the title appears in the Saxon Chronicle.

Romans call Tufa,1 and the English Tuuf, was in like manner borne before him." We should conclude, therefore, that Ælle, King of the South Saxons, had defeated the Count of the Saxon shore, and assumed his title as implying the rule of the conquered Roman British population, that he or his successor had been defeated by Ceawlin of the West Saxons, and had yielded the title as one of the spoils of victory, and that Ceawlin or his successor had in turn been defeated and had yielded the title to Ethelbert of Kent. We shall see in the sequel of the story that the title implied a real and effective authority over the subject kings.

King Ethelbert thus, as we have said, was a powerful King, ruling his own Kentishmen in peace and prosperity, and exercising supremacy over the whole south-east of the island, northward to the Humber, and westward to the Dorset Avon. But this was the whole of the island which was at this time peacefully subject to the Teutonic conquerors. Beyond these limits the slow war of the two races still raged.

The Angles of Northumbria were still engaged in chronic hostilities with the Britons of Strathclyde, and the final issue was still doubtful. Bands of adventurers were gradually winning for themselves settlements in the middle of the country, destined to coalesce into a kingdom of Mercia, but another thirty years had to elapse before Mercia had spread over middle England, and sixty years before the Briton ceased to dispute the possession. On the Welsh border the war still raged, and conquest did not reach its limit for nearly two centuries. On the border of 1 A globe or a tuft of feathers fixed on a spear.