ENGLISH HISTORY. The general account of English his tory which follows does not cover the period anterior to the land ing of St. Augustine. For this reference should be made to the article BRITAIN. The nature of early English culture and social order, the origin of the first Germanic kingdoms founded in Eng land, and the process of conversion which brought them into the fellowship of Western peoples, form the subjects of other articles. Much of the detail of their subsequent history is described in the biographies of the leading men of this period. It remains to indicate something of the process which created the first cen tralized monarchy in western Europe out of the group of sepa rate and often hostile kingdoms between which England was divided at the beginning of the 7th century.