The Bible in English Literature

s beginning. For it was at Ebbsfleet in the Isle of Thanet that Hengest landed with his tribesmen from Jutland in the year 449 or 450. "No spot in Britain can be so sacred to Englishmen as that which first felt the tread of English feet."1 As if this were not enough to establish the fame of this one spot of English soil, a century and a half later another band of strangers from a different direction landed on the Isle of Thanet. The year was probably 597, and from this time forward the spot is quite as famous as the landing-place of the Christian monk Augustine and his emissaries from Rome, as of the far-away fathers of the English race. If the first landing at Ebbsfleet made the English people, the second landing at Ebbsfleet determined the character and destiny of the English people. The die of English history, and of English literature as well, was cast A Short History of the English People, by J. R. Green, Chapter I, Section II. ! 95 ' when Augustine and his monks stepped ashore on the sands of Kent in 597. They brought with them the Book of books. The story of how this came about is preserved for us in the writings of the Venerable Bede. It is a story that fires the imagination and feeds the spirit of romance that is native to men of the English stock. One day in the Forum of Rome an influential priest of the Christian church, Gregory by name, whose hand was already resting, unknown to himself, upon the Primate's chair, stood gazing at a co...