THEY had not long been on the road when the thought of chilly Britain and barbarian Kentish pagans prompted the delegates to send Augustine back to Rome, to request another assignment. But Gregory was firm. In 597, Augustine and his companions stepped off their ship on the Isle of Thanet, singing bravely, and bearing a silver cross and a painted icon of Christ.*
King Ethelbert welcomed them, though he kept them in the open air to dissipate the power of their magic; but being already sympathetic, he invited them to Canterbury, and lent them his wife’s chapel of St Martin of Tours, dating back to Roman times. The King himself was baptised on Whit Sunday that year, and though none was compelled many of his subjects followed suit.
Buoyed by success, Augustine went to Arles to be consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury. Within a century, England’s seven kingdoms were Christian;* soon English clergy were spreading the gospel in Holland and Germany, and later in Scandinavia.
English sacred art in the Anglo-Saxon era was very much like that of the Eastern Churches, and was cherished in England even when other parts of the Church were assailed by groundless doubts. See The Restoration of the Icons.
King Saebert of Essex, who was King Ethelbert of Kent’s nephew, was baptised in 604; King Edwin of Northumbria was baptised in 627; Sigeberht, who was already a Christian, came to the throne of East Anglia in about 629; King Cynegils of Wessex was baptised by 640, and though his son and successor was a pagan, he too was soon baptised; King Peada of Mercia was a Christian when he succeeded to the throne in 655; and King Æðelwealh of Sussex was baptised in 681.