Source, in full
Aphorism, summarising words reported to have been spoken by Gregory when he first encountered pale-skinned English boys at a slave market, sparking his dispatch of St. Augustine of Canterbury to England to convert the English, according to Bede. He said: "Well named, for they have angelic faces and ought to be co-heirs with the angels in heaven." Discovering that their province was Deira, he went on to add that they would be rescued de ira, "from the wrath", and that their king was named Aella, Alleluia, he said.
Notes from Wikiquote
William Hunt; Reginald Lane Poole, The Political History of England, Vol. 2 (Longmans, Green & Co., 1905), p. 115