than any English historian has yet ascribed,--and they are easily held
in mind together, for Clovis ascended the Frank throne in the year of
St. Benedict's birth, 481. Theodoric fought the battle of Verona, and
founded the Ostrogothic Kingdom in Italy twelve years later, in 493,
and thereupon married the sister of Clovis. That marriage is always
passed in a casual sentence, as if a merely political one, and while
page after page is spent in following the alternations of furious
crime and fatal chance, in the contests between Fredegonde and
Brunehaut, no historian ever considers whether the great Ostrogoth who
wore in the battle of Verona the dress which his mother had woven for
him, was likely to have chosen a wife without love!--or how far the
perfectness, justice, and temperate wisdom of every ordinance of his
reign was owing to the sympathy and counsel of his Frankish queen.

You have to recollect, then, thus far, only three cardinal dates:--

449. Saxon invasion.
481. Clovis reigns and St. Benedict is born.
493. Theodoric conquers at Verona.

Then, roughly, a hundred years later, in 590, Ethelbert, the fifth
from Hengist, and Bertha, the third from Clotilde, are king and queen
of Kent. I cannot find the date of their marriage, but the date, 590,
which you must recollect for cardinal, is that of Gregory's accession
to the pontificate, and I believe Bertha was then in middle life,
having persevered in her religion firmly, but inoffensively, and
made herself beloved by her husband and people. She, in England,
Theodolinda in Lombardy, and St. Gregory in Rome:--in their hands,
virtually lay the destiny of Europe.