Thus Gregory's gracious heart set the sound of every word to the time of spiritual goodness. Nor can his words be justly censured for levity, if we consider how, in that age, the elegance of poetry consisted in rhythm, and the eloquence of prose in allusions. And which was the main, where his pleasant conceits did end, there his pious endeavours began; which did not terminate in a verbal jest, but produce real effects, which ensued hereupon." _Thomas Fuller, The Church History of Britain, book 2, section 1._ In 590 the good Gregory became Bishop of Rome, or Pope, and six years later, still retaining the interest awakened in him by the captive English youth, he dispatched a band of missionary monks to Britain, with their prior, Augustine, at their head. Once they turned back, affrighted by what they heard of the ferocity of the new heathen possessors of the once-Christian island of Britain; but Gregory laid his commands upon them again, and in the spring of 597 they crossed the channel from Gaul, landing at Ebbsfleet, in the Isle of Thanet, where the Jutish invaders had made their first landing, a century and a half before. They found Ethelbert of Kent, the most powerful of the English kings at that time, already prepared to receive them with tolerance, if not with favor, through the influence of a Christian wife--queen Bertha, of the royal family of the Franks. The conversion and baptism of the Kentish king and court, and the acceptance of the new faith by great numbers of the people followed quickly. In November of the same year, 597, Augustine returned to Gaul to receive his consecration as "Archbishop of the English," establishing the See of Canterbury, with the primacy which has remained in it to the present day. The East Saxons were the next to bow to the cross and in 604 a bishop, Mellitus, was sent to London. This ended Augustine's work--and Gregory's-- for both died that year. Then followed an interval of little progress in the work of the mission, and, afterwards, a reaction towards idolatry which threatened to destroy it altogether. But just at this time of discouragement in the south, a great triumph of Christianity was brought about in Northumberland, and due, there, as in Kent, to the influence of a Christian queen. Edwin, the king, with many of his nobles and his people, were baptised on Easter Eve, A. D. 627, and a new center of missionary work was established at York. There, too, an appalling reverse occurred, when Northumberland was overrun, in 633, by Penda, the heathen king of Mercia; but the kingdom rallied, and the Christian Church was reestablished, not wholly, as before, under the patronage and rule of Rome, but partly by a mission from the ancient Celtic Church, which did not acknowledge the supremacy of Rome. In the end,