The Jutes, with whom Kent is more immediately concerned, were the northernmost of the three tribes of the Germanic family. They lived in the marshy forests and along the shores of the extreme peninsula of Denmark, which retains the name of Jutland to the present day. We know little of their early history, but it is probable that the Jutes, the Angles, and the Saxons, although speaking the same language, worshipping the same gods, and using the same laws, had no national or political unity--and the separate expeditions, resulting in the final conquest of Britain, were unconnected with one another, though almost continuous in point of time. It is certain that the invaders to a large extent declined to amalgamate with the people whom they had conquered; nor would they consent to tolerate their existence side by side. A few may have lingered on in servitude round the homesteads of their conquerors, but a large portion of the survivors (as we have said) took refuge in Western Britain. As to their _religion_, we know that England for nearly a century and a half was almost entirely a heathen country, represented on a map as a black patch between the Christians of Gaul and the Christian Celts of our island. While the Goths, Vandals, Burgundians, and Franks in other parts of the Roman empire soon became Christians, the English went on worshipping their false gods, such as Woden, Thor, and others, who gave their names to river, homestead, and boundary alike, and even to the days of the week. And yet their mythology was not so degraded but that it presented in fragments the outlines of Christianity. This was recognised afterwards by Pope Gregory's wise counsel to Augustine not to interfere needlessly with the religious faith of his pagan converts, but allow them to worship the old objects under new names; not to destroy the old temples, but to consecrate them as Christian churches, the reason being that "for hard and rough minds it is impossible to cut away abruptly all old customs, because he who wishes to reach the highest place must ascend by steps and not by jumps." Kemble (in his "Saxons in England") gives an insight into the character of their religion, and accounts for the ultimately rapid spread of Christianity among them by this process of adaptation, and also because the moral demands of the new faith did not seem to the Saxons more onerous than those to which they were previously accustomed. Bede not unnaturally reproaches the Britons for refusing or failing to convert their enemies to the true faith, whereas it had been the habit elsewhere for the Christian priesthood to act as mediators between barbarian invaders and the conquered.