where did the anglican church start?
Archbishop of Canterbury
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 Christianity was carried to England by the Romans and spread throughout Britain , until the 5th century , when it waned through the departure of the Romans and the invasion by Saxons . In 597 Pope Gregory sent Augustine as a missionary from Rome to Canterbury where a church was established and run initially by secular canons , then Benedictine monks from the late Saxon period until 1540 . The present cathedral church at Canterbury is the seat of the Archbishop of Canterbury , Primate of All England . 

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 Several Christian saints preached the Gospel in the north of England in the late 6th and early 7th centuries AD ; in Keswick and the surrounding area the most important figures were St Herbert of Derwentwater and his contemporary St Kentigern . The former , the pupil and friend of St Cuthbert of Lindisfarne , lived as a hermit on an island in Derwentwater , now named after him . Kentigern , who lived and preached in the area before moving to Wales , is traditionally held to have founded Crosthwaite Church , which was the parish church of Keswick until the 19th century . 

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 Christianity had been the official imperial religion of the Roman Empire , and the first churches were built in England in the second half of the 4th century , overseen by a hierarchy of bishops and priests . Many existing pagan shrines were converted to Christian use and few pagan sites still operated by the 5th century . The collapse of the Roman system in the late 5th century , however , brought about the end of formal Christian religion in the east of England , and the new Germanic immigrants arrived with their own polytheistic gods , including Woden , Thunor and Tiw , still reflected in various English place names . Despite the resurgence of paganism in England , Christian communities still survived in more western areas such as Gloucestershire and Somerset . 

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 The Church in England was a major landowner throughout the medieval period and played an important part in the development of agriculture and rural trade in the first two centuries of Norman rule . The Cistercian order first arrived in England in 1128 , establishing around 80 new monastic houses over the next few years ; the wealthy Augustinians also established themselves and expanded to occupy around 150 houses , all supported by agricultural estates , many of them in the north of England . By the 13th century these and other orders were acquiring new lands and had become major economic players both as landowners and as middlemen in the expanding wool trade . In particular , the Cistercians led the development of the grange system . Granges were separate manors in which the fields were all cultivated by the monastic officials , rather than being divided up between demesne and rented fields , and became known for trialling new agricultural techniques during the period . Elsewhere , many monasteries had significant economic impact on the landscape , such as the monks of Glastonbury , responsible for the draining of the Somerset Levels to create new pasture land . 

entailment
 The movement towards Christianity began again in the late 6th and 7th centuries , helped by the conversion of the Franks in Northern France , who carried considerable influence in England . Pope Gregory I sent a team of missionaries to convert King Æthelberht of Kent and his household , starting the process of converting Kent . Augustine became the first Archbishop of Canterbury and started to build new churches across the South @-@ East , reusing existing pagan shrines . Oswald and Oswiu , kings of Northumbria , were converted in the 630s and 640s , and the wave of change carried on through the middle of the 7th century across the kingdoms of Mercia , the South Saxons and the Isle of Wight . The process was largely complete by the end of the 7th century , but left a confusing and disparate array of local practices and religious ceremonies . This new Christianity reflected the existing military culture of the Anglo @-@ Saxons : as kings began to convert in the 6th and 7th centuries , conversion began to be used as a justification for war against the remaining pagan kingdoms , for example , while Christian saints were imbued with martial properties . 
