Beautiful Britain | Page 3

present city, the
foundations of Roman buildings with tesselated pavements and
quantities of pottery, small objects of domestic use, and coins have
been brought to light. These remains are all far beneath the present
surface, a most significant fact in relation to the transition period
between Roman and Saxon Canterbury.
The Romans having finally abandoned Britain early in the fifth century,
the invasions of the Anglo-Saxons began to take a permanent form, and
the Jutes gained possession of the south-eastern corner of England.
During the period of struggle between the rival groups of invaders
Durovernum must have been entirely abandoned by the Britons, and
the conquerors, having reduced the city to a shapeless ruin, appear to
have allowed it to become over-grown to such an extent that when,
after a lapse of perhaps a whole century, the town was rebuilt, no
attempt was made to dig down to the former surface. The new
buildings therefore arose with their foundations some feet above the
original level of the Romano-British city. So complete was the gap
between the destroyed Durovernum and the Saxon town which
eventually grew up that men had had time to forget the old name, and,
finding it necessary to invent one, called it Cantwarabyrig, which
meant the city of the men of Kent. This title reveals the fact that the
new settlers had by this time fixed their limits in Kent, and that they

had found this site at the junction of all the Roman roads the most
convenient for their capital. It was probably not until Ethelbert had
begun to reign in 561 that Canterbury became the most important place
in Kent, and at that time the site of the Cathedral was outside the town
walls. Ethelbert, it should be mentioned, had extended his power so far
beyond the confines of Kent that he had authority as far north as the
Humber, and Bede writes of "the city of Canterbury, which was the
metropolis of all his dominions."
Up to the year 597 this Saxon capital, of practically all south-eastern
England, was completely heathen, saving only the King's Frankish wife
Bertha and Bishop Luidhard, who had come over as her chaplain about
the year 575, when the marriage with the heathen Ethelbert had taken
place. But in the year 597, that famous landmark in the Christianizing
of Saxon England, Augustine, landed--if Bede may be trusted for a
topographical detail of this character--on the island of Ebbsfleet, where
Hengist and Horsa had previously found a haven for their vessels. This
is now part of the corner of Kent, called Thanet, and is an island no
longer. There Ethelbert, in that generous and broad-minded speech,
familiar to all students of English history, while expressing himself as
content with the gods of his forefathers (these included Thor, Woden,
Freya, and the rest), yet would place no obstacles in the way of these
missionaries of new and strange ideas. He even provided them with
quarters in Canterbury, and in the old church of St. Martin outside the
city, where Queen Bertha had been in the habit of worshipping with her
chaplain, Augustine and his monks began to preach and instruct all who
cared to listen. It seems unlikely that the influence of the queen and her
good chaplain should have been entirely without results, and it is quite
possible that Augustine found the ground prepared for the seed he
diligently began to sow. Bishop Luidhard, whose name should always
be linked with that of St. Augustine, appears to have died soon after the
arrival of Pope Gregory's mission, and his remains were eventually
placed in a golden chest in the church of Saints Peter and Paul,
afterwards St. Augustine's.
The zeal and enthusiasm of the band of missionaries began to bring in
many converts. Ethelbert himself consented to be baptized on June 2 in

the year of Augustine's landing, and the Saxons soon began to embrace
the new faith in thousands, so that in a very few years the
Christianizing of England had made such progress that Canterbury
became the headquarters of the Christian Church in England, a position
it has held without interruption ever since--a period of over 1,300 years.
It took England nearly nine centuries to make up its mind to rid itself of
the stultifying authority of the Bishop of Rome and to shake itself free
from monasticism and the various forms of idolatrous worship which
grew up in the sultry atmosphere of the Papal Church; but these great
changes have been evolved, and still the ancient city of Canterbury,
hallowed with so many memories of saintly lives, continues to be the
metropolis of the Established Church of England. And the imminence
of further change carries with it no danger of any break in this long
association of Canterbury with