How there were seven chief kingdoms in England; how Augustine and his friends came from Rome and made the people Christians; and how some of the young men went to Rome to be taught. I told you, in the last chapter, that Hengist made himself king over part of Britain. His kingdom was Kent. Soon afterwards other brave captains of the Angles and Saxons made themselves kings. So there were seven chief kingdoms in England, besides many petty kings. As soon as they were settled, they and their people began to like the houses and gardens and bathing places the Romans had left in the country, though they destroyed the most of them. But there were few, if any, of the Christian clergymen left among them, to teach them to know the true God. The Angles and Saxons lived as heathens in their new country for more than a hundred years. And now I will tell you how God gave them the word of life, and turned them from their false gods to the faith of Jesus Christ. Soon after the Anglian and Saxon kings had settled themselves quietly in Britain, a good many boys were taken from Britain to be made servants at Rome. Most of these were Angles, and it happened that as they were standing together an Abbot named GREGORY saw them, and he thought they were very beautiful, and asked where they came from and who they were. He was told they were Angles from Britain, but that they were not Christians. He was sorry for this, and said if they were Christians they would be _Angels_, not _Angles_. Now Gregory did not go away and forget this; but, when he was made Bishop of Rome, he sent for a good man named AUGUSTINE, and asked him if he would go to Britain and teach these people to be Christians; and Augustine said he would, and he chose some other good men to help him to teach them. [Illustration: Gregory and Angles.] When Augustine and his friends got to England, they went to ETHELBERT, the king of the part they reached first, and asked leave to teach the people; and the king gave them leave, and gave them a church in the town of Canterbury, and learned a great deal from them himself. But some of the other kings did not like to be Christians, nor to let their people learn, and were very angry with those who listened to Augustine, and killed some of his friends. But at last, when they saw that the Christians behaved better than those who served the wooden and stone false gods they brought with them from their own country, they allowed their people to learn, and so by degrees they all became Christians. [Illustration: King Ethelbert declares himself a Christian.]