The Britons tried to convert their conquerors, but the invaders did not care to be taught religion by those whom they had conquered; so the British missionaries found the work unusually hard. Aid came to them in a singular way. At some time near the year 575 A.D., the Saxons quarreled and fought with their friends, the Angles. They took some Angles prisoners and carried them to Rome to be sold in the great slave-market there. A monk named Gregory passed one day through the market and saw these captives. He asked the dealer who they were. "Angles," was the answer. "Oh," said the monk, "they would be _angels_ instead of _Angles_ if they were only Christians; for they certainly have the faces of angels." [Illustration: ST. PATRICK BAPTIZING IRISH PRINCESSES] Years after, when that monk was the Pope of Rome, he remembered this conversation and sent the monk Au-gus'tine to England to teach the Christian religion to the savage but angel-faced Angles. Augustine and the British missionaries converted the Anglo-Saxons two hundred years before the German Saxons were converted. Still, though both Angles and Saxons called themselves Christians, they were seldom at peace; and for more than two hundred years they frequently fought. Various chiefs tried to make themselves kings; and at length there came to be no less than seven small kingdoms in South Britain. In 784 Egbert claimed to be heir of the kingdom called Wessex; but the people elected another man and Egbert had to flee for his life. He went to the court of Charlemagne, and was with the great king of the Franks in Rome on Christmas Day, 800, when the Pope placed the crown on Charles' head and proclaimed him emperor. Soon after this a welcome message came to Egbert. The mind of the people in Wessex had changed and they had elected him king. So bidding farewell to Charlemagne, he hurried to England. Egbert had seen how Charlemagne had compelled the different quarreling tribes of Germany to yield allegiance to him and how after uniting his empire he had ruled it well. Egbert did in England what Charlemagne had done in Germany. He either persuaded the various petty kingdoms of the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes to recognize him as their ruler, or forced them to do so; and thus under him all England became one united kingdom. But Egbert did even better than this. He did much to harmonize the different tribes by his wise conciliation. The name "England" is a memorial of this; for though Egbert himself was a Saxon, he advised that to please the Angles the country should be called An'gli-a, that is, Angleland or England, the land of the Angles, instead of Sax-on-i'a, or Saxonland. ROLLO THE VIKING DIED 931 A.D. I