But it is well to remember that Caedmon
wrote in Anglo-Saxon and Bede in Latin.
There were others who wrote history before Bede, but he was
perhaps the first who wrote history in the right spirit. He did
not write in order to make a good minstrel's tale. He tried to
tell the truth. He was careful as to where he got his facts, and
careful how he used them. So those who came after him could
trust him. Bede's History, you remember, was one of the books
which Layamon used when he wrote his Brut, and in it we find many
of the stories of early British history which have grown familiar
to us.
It is in this book that we find the story of how Gregory saw the
pretty children in the Roman slave market, and of how, for love
of their fair faces, he sent Augustine to teach the heathen
Saxons about Christ. There are, too, many stories in it of how
the Saxons became Christian. One of the most interesting,
perhaps, is about Edwin, King of Northumbria. Edwin had married
a Christian princess, Ethelberga, sister of Eadbald, King of
Kent.
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