About the middle of the fifth century the Saxon ships reached the British coast, and under their leaders, Hengist and Horsa, a few hundred fierce and desperate warriors disembarked. These famous leaders immediately took the field at the head of their followers, and completely defeated the Picts and Scots. But the remedy proved worse than the disease. One great evil was averted, but another and a greater followed. The Saxons, finding the country they had been hired to defend possessed a more genial climate than their own, and eager to exchange the bleak shores of the North for the rich fields of Britain, invited fresh bodies of their countrymen to join them; and thus, from being the defenders, they became the conquerors and masters of the ill-fated Britons. The Angles and other tribes poured in on the country; and although the British did not yield without a severe struggle, the Saxon power prevailed, and reduced the natives to entire submission, or drove them to seek shelter in the mountains of Wales, Cornwall, and Cumberland. Many emigrated, and some settled in Armorica, now Brittany, in the north-west of France.
But the Saxons and Angles were not only wild warriors, they were savage merciless pagans. They exterminated Christianity wherever they conquered. According to the "venerable Bede," the bishops and their people were indiscriminately slaughtered with fire and sword, and there was no one to bury the victims of such cruelty. Public and private buildings were alike destroyed, priests were everywhere murdered at the altar; some who had fled to the mountains were seized, and slain by heaps; others, worn out with hunger, surrendered themselves, embracing perpetual slavery for the sake of life; some made for regions beyond the sea, and some led a life of poverty among mountains, forests, and lofty rocks.
Britain, after this event, relapsed into a state of obscure barbarism, was withdrawn from the view of the civilized world, and was sunk down to the depths of misery and cruelty; and yet these are the very people whom the Lord had laid on the heart of Gregory to win over to Himself by the gospel of peace. How could a few poor monks, without fleet or army, we may well exclaim, venture on such a shore, far
less hope to gain the hearts and subdue the lives of such savages to the faith and practice of the gospel of peace? It is the same gospel that triumphed over Judaism, Orientalism, and Heathenism, and by the same divine power, was soon to triumph over the fierce barbarism of the Anglo-Saxons. How weak and foolish is the infidelity that questions its divine origin, power, and destiny! We will now watch the progress of the mission.