<P> Irish Anglicans trace their origins back to the founding saint of Irish Christianity (St Patrick) who is believed to have been a Roman Briton and pre-dated Anglo - Saxon Christianity . Anglicans also consider Celtic Christianity a forerunner of their church, since the re-establishment of Christianity in some areas of Great Britain in the 6th century came via Irish and Scottish missionaries, notably followers of St Patrick and St Columba . </P> <P> Anglicans traditionally date the origins of their Church to the arrival in the Kingdom of Kent of the Gregorian mission to the pagan Anglo - Saxons led by the first Archbishop of Canterbury, St Augustine, at the end of the 6th century . Alone among the kingdoms then existing Kent was Jutish, rather than Anglian or Saxon . However, the origin of the Church in the British Isles extends farther back (see above). </P> <P> Æthelberht of Kent's queen Bertha, daughter of Charibert, one of the Merovingian kings of the Franks, had brought a chaplain (Liudhard) with her . Bertha had restored a church remaining from Roman times to the east of Canterbury and dedicated it to Saint Martin of Tours, the patronal saint of the Merovingian royal family . This church, Saint Martin's, is the oldest church in England still in use today . Æthelberht himself, though a pagan, allowed his wife to worship God in her own way, at St Martin's . Probably influenced by his wife, Æthelberht asked Pope Gregory I to send missionaries, and in 596 the Pope dispatched Augustine, together with a party of monks . </P> <P> Augustine had served as praepositus (prior) of the monastery of Saint Andrew in Rome, founded by Gregory . His party lost heart on the way and Augustine went back to Rome from Provence and asked his superiors to abandon the mission project . The pope, however, commanded and encouraged continuation, and Augustine and his followers landed on the Island of Thanet in the spring of 597 . </P>

Who began the religious change in england and who carried out the change over several years