[74] This battle was fought between Hengist and Vortimer, the eldest son of Vortigern, at Aylesford, in Kent. [75] It is by no means probable that the invasion of Britain by the Saxons was followed by such wholesale extermination of the natives as is here represented, though it is certain that everywhere, except in the far west (Wales) and north (Scotland), the native population was reduced to complete subjection. [76] That is, the throne of the Eastern Empire at Constantinople. [77] Gregory was a monk before he was elected pope. He held the papal office from 590 to 604 [see p. 90]. [78] Augustine at the time (596) was prior of a monastery dedicated to St. Andrew in Rome. [79] The missionaries had apparently gone as far as Arles in southern Provence when they reached this decision. [80] An abbot was the head of a monastery. Should such an establishment be set up in Britain, Augustine was to be its presiding officer. [81] The Germanic peoples north of the Humber were more properly Angles, but of course they were in all essential respects like the Saxons. Ethelbert was not actually king in that region, but was recognized as "bretwalda," or over-lord, by the other rulers. [82] For later changes in this part of the coast line, see p. 70, note 1. [83] This was possible because the Franks and Saxons, being both German, as yet spoke languages so much alike that either people could understand the other without much difficulty. [84] Bertha was a daughter of the Frankish king Charibert. The Franks had been nominally a Christian people since the conversion of Clovis in 496 [see p. 53]--just a hundred years before Augustine started on his mission to the Angles and Saxons. [85] Luidhard had been bishop of Senlis; a town not many miles northeast of Paris. Probably Augustine and his companions profited not a little by the influence which Luidhard had already exerted at the Kentish court. [86] "The present church of St. Martin near Canterbury is not the old one spoken of by Bede, as it is generally thought to be, but is a structure of the thirteenth century, though it is probable that the materials of the original church were worked up in the masonry in its reconstruction, the walls being still composed in part of Roman bricks."--J. A. Giles, _Bede's Ecclesiastical History_, p. 39. [87] Thus was established the "primacy," or ecclesiastical leadership, of Canterbury, which has continued to this day. CHAPTER VI. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 10. Pope Leo's Sermon on the Petrine Supremacy