At first," till the King, being converted to the faith, allowed them to preach openly and build or repair churches in all places," they used the Church of St. Martin, just without the walls, for their more public services—for mass and preaching and baptizing; and we suppose that at this time the work of the missionaries was limited to the maintenance of their own religious life in their own habitation, and to public ministrations in the privileged Queen's chapel.

Some relics of this venerable church still remain; for though the present Church of St. Martin at Canterbury is a building of much more recent date, many Roman bricks, easily recognised by their dimensions and texture, are used in the building, and are in all probability part of the material of the original Roman-British church on the same site.

CHAPTER IX

THE SUCCESS OF THE WORK

WE come now to a series of interesting events, which it is important, but difficult, to arrange in chronological order. The events are the conversion and baptism of Ethelbert, the consecration of Augustine, a grand baptism of ten thousand converts one Christmastide, and a letter from Gregory to Queen Bertha. Bede says, in the 26th chapter of the First Book of the Ecclesiastical History, which is our main authority for the whole story, that after the King was baptized, greater numbers began daily to flock together to hear the Word, and were united to the Church. Then, at the beginning of the next chapter, he says: "In the meantime Augustine was consecrated, and sent Laurentius the Priest and Peter the Monk to Rome to acquaint Gregory that the nation of the English had received the faith, and that he was himself made their bishop."

Bede says nothing of the baptism of the ten thousand, and does not give the letter to Bertha; we get these incidents from the Letters of St. Gregory. Now, these letters are for the most part undated; they have been arranged by learned editors, who have bestowed much learning and ingenuity upon the task, in a chronological order which is probably approxi

mately right in the great majority of cases, but which is open to challenge in the case of any undated letter. In one of these undated letters, which the editors assign to June, 598 A.D., addressed to Eulogius, Bishop of Alexandria, Gregory tells him the glad tidings that a monk of his, whom he had sent with some companions to the nation of the English, and had caused to be made a bishop, had had so great а success that he had on the previous Christmas baptized ten thousand souls.

Gregory's letter to Queen Bertha is placed by the editors among a batch of letters which were sent by Gregory to England in the year 601. Some of these letters are dated, others are not; one which is dated is addressed to Ethelbert, and shows that Ethelbert was at that time a Christian. This, which is not dated, is addressed to Queen Bertha, and implies that Ethelbert was not a Christian, for it blames his wife for it, and exhorts her to use her influence for his conversion.

The difficulty arises in this way, that Bede does not give us dates for the baptism of Ethelbert and the consecration of Augustine; and though he mentions them in this order, yet the "meanwhile" with which he introduces the last-mentioned event leaves it doubtful whereabout in the preceding narrative it is to be introduced, whether before or after the firstmentioned event. The later biographers of Augustine

-Gocelin, 1098 A.D.; Thorn, 1397 A.D.; and Elmham, 1412 A.D.-were monks of St. Augustine's monastery, and give the tradition of the monastery; and they say that Ethelbert was baptized on Whitsunday 597 A.D., and Gregory was consecrated on November

16th of the same year; but the tradition is too late to be of much authority without confirmatory evidence, and cannot stand against any contemporary contradictory evidence. On a review of the whole case, we shall take leave to assume that the order of events is the consecration of Augustine, the baptism of the ten thousand, the letter to Bertha, and lastly the conversion of Ethelbert; and on the last two points we shall have more to say when they occur in the narrative.

Soon after Augustine's return thither from Rome, which he left 23rd July, 596 A.D., the Italian mission started from Southern Gaul. They would be anxious to reach their destination, there was no reason for delay, and it was a good season of the year for travelling. Even if they made the whole journey on foot, three months would be sufficient time for its accomplishment. We conclude, therefore, that they arrived in the course of the autumn. With very little further delay they were settled in temporary quarters in Canterbury, resumed their monastic life, and commenced their mission work.

The tradition of St. Augustine's monastery was that Augustine was consecrated, 16th November 597. We have already learned from Bede, in general terms, that the work was successful; we suppose that by the autumn of the following year Augustine felt that, with the King friendly and inclining towards Christianity, though not yet converted, with the support of the Queen, and with a considerable body of converts, he had secured a safe and permanent footing in the island, and that the time had come for establishing the Church among the English by seeking consecra

tion for himself as its bishop. His next proceeding was clearly according to instructions given him by Gregory, though they are not anywhere recorded. He proceeded to Gaul to seek consecration as bishop of the new Church which he had founded among the English. He did not seek consecration from Liudhard on the spot, and he did not go to the nearest Gallic bishops, but retraced his steps across the whole breadth of Gaul to Arles, and there received the episcopal order at the hands of Virgilius. It is clear that Gregory had requested Virgilius, as Metropolitan of Gaul and Gregory's representative, to act in this matter. Indeed, in the letter to Eulogius of Alexandria, he says expressly that the Gallic bishops consecrated by his desire.

The monastic biographers gave 16th November 597 as the date of Augustine's consecration. He must have hastened back if he was present at the great baptism of the ten thousand, which is assigned by the editors of Gregory's Letters to Christmas of the same year. This great triumph of the faith, according to the medieval tradition, did not take place at Canterbury, but in the river Irwell, somewhere about the place where it flows into the Medway, and therefore denotes the successful result of some special work by the missionaries in that neighbourhood.

Gregory's letter shows that it was not till after Christmas 597 A.D., it would probably not be till the spring of 598 A.D., that Augustine sent two of his best men-Laurence the Priest and Peter the Monkto Rome, to give a full report of all that had happened. It was on the return of these messengers, we submit,