The church came as a teacher and civiliser, and in a few years the barbarous heathen English warrior had settled down into a toilsome agriculturist, an eager scholar, a peaceful law-giver, or an earnest priest.

The change was not merely a change of religion, it was a revolution from a life of barbarism to a life of incipient culture, and slow but progressive civilisation.
So inevitable was the Christianisation of England, that even while the flood of paganism was pouring westward, the east was beginning to receive the faith of Rome from the Frankish kingdom and from Italy.

It has been necessary, indeed, to anticipate a little, in order to show the story of the conquest in its true light.

Ten years before the heathen AEthelfrith of Northumbria massacred the Welsh monks at Chester, Augustine had brought Christianity to the people of Kent.
In 596, Gregory the Great determined to send a mission to England.

Even before that time, Kent had been in closer union with the Continent than any other part of the country.