This opportunity induced Pope Gregory to commission Augustin, a monk of Rheims, and a man of distinguished piety, to undertake this arduous enterprise.
[Sidenote: A.D.

600] It was in the year of Christ 600, and 150 years after the coming of the first Saxon colonies into England, that Ethelbert, king of Kent, received intelligence of the arrival in his dominions of a number of men in a foreign garb, practising several strange and unusual ceremonies, who desired to be conducted to the king's presence, declaring that they had things to communicate to him and to his people of the utmost importance to their eternal welfare.

This was Augustin, with forty of the associates of his mission, who now landed in the Isle of Thanet, the same place by which the Saxons had before entered, when they extirpated Christianity.
The king heard them in the open air, in order to defeat,[28] upon a principle of Druidical superstition, the effects of their enchantments.
Augustin spoke by a Frankish interpreter.

The Franks and Saxons were of the same origin, and used at that time the same language.

He was favorably received; and a place in the city of Canterbury, the capital of Kent, was allotted for the residence of him and his companions.