Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II THE CONVERSION OF THE ENGLISH A.D. 597-655 In the year 585 Gregory, who had just been made abbot of the monastery which he had founded upon the Cselian hill, where still it stands, while walking through the slave- of Augustine, market at Rome saw some Northumbrian boys 59 exposed there for sale. His sympathies were powerfully excited by their white skins, blue eyes, and flaxen hair, and he sought permission to leave Rome and devote himself to missionary work among the heathen English. His fellow- citizens would not let him go. He had to be patient and bide his time. A few years later the opportunity came. He was raised to the papacy, and found himself in a position to command, not to ask. Remembering his promise to the golden- haired boys that Alleluia should be sung in the land of ille, he chose Augustine, the prior of his monastery on the Cselian hill and his own friend and constant companion, to be the bearer of the message of truth and peace to the savage English. In the year 596 the little band set out from Rome, but when they reached Aix in Provence, struck, as Bede says, with sluggish fear, they refused to advance, and sent Augustine back to Rome to lay their difficulties before the pope. They little knew the man with whom they had to deal. Gregory would not hear of their return. Arming Augustine with greater powers over his companions by giving him the authority of an abbot, and smoothing his path through Gaul by sending letters of commendation to the rulers of the countries through which he must pass, he urged them to renewed efforts, and in the spring of the year 597 Augustine and his companions found themselves in safety opposite the white cliffs of Kent, on the threshold of their heroic enterprise. There was no sign of fainting now, no regretful...