St Augustine's Cross

In 595, Pope Gregory I selected the monk Augustine to lead a mission to England to convert the Anglo Saxons in the Kingdom of Kent to Christianity. The Gregorian mission landed in Kent in 597. Bede wrote in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People that "Over against the eastern districts of Kent there is a large island called Thanet which, in English reckoning, is 600 hides or families in extent. It is divided from the mainland by the river Wantsum, which is about three furlongs wide, can be crossed in two places only, and joins the sea at either end. Here Augustine, the servant of the Lord, landed with his companions, who are said to have been nearly forty in number. They had…