Baring-Gould’s sources: Martyrology of Bede, Ado, Notkcr, Roman Martyrology, York and Hereford Calendars. Authority: — Mention by Bede. The following is a condensation from Montalembert’s “ Monks of the West.’"] Bede informs us that about a century after the first landing of the Saxons, under Hengist, in the county of Kent, their neighbours the Angles, crossing the North Sea, founded on the opposite coast of Britain two colonies, long distinct, sometimes united, but finally combined together under the name of Northumbria. The wall anciently raised by the Emperor Severus, from the mouth of the Solway to that of the Tyne, to check the Caledonian incursions, was their boundary. The oldest of the two kingdoms was that of the Bemicians to the north. Their chief, Ida — who, like Hengist, claimed to be a descendant of Odin — established his residence in a fortress which he called Bamborough, after his wife Bebba, with that conjugal reverence so often illustrated even among the most savage Germans. The British bards in return have named this queen the Fair Traitress, because she was of British origin and fought in the foremost ranks on the field of battle against her countrymen. The imposing remains of this fortress, situated on a detached rock on the coast, still surprise and arrest the traveller. From this point the invasion of the Angles spread over the fertile valleys of the Tweed and Tyne. The second colony, that of the Deirians, to the south, was concentrated principally in the valley of the Tees and in the extensive region which is now known as Yorkshire. The first chief of the Deirians of whom anything is known was that Alla or Ella, whose name — pronounced by the young slaves Oct TO.].S'. Paulinus.
…exposed for sale in the Forum — suggested to S. Gregory the hope of soon hearing the Alleluia echo through his kingdom. This region to the north of the Humber was precisely that which had suffered most from the Caledonian incursions; and according to some authors, the Saxons of Hengist, called in the character of allies by the Britons to their aid, were already established before the arrival of the Deirian colony. But Ida and his Angles would not in any character hold tenure under their Germanic compatriots from the south of the island, and instead of fighting against the Piets and Scots they leagued themselves with them to crush the ill-starred Britons.
Ida, who had twelve sons, and who reigned twelve years, used fire and sword against the natives with such animosity that the British bards sumamed him the Man of Fire, or the Great Burner. They withstood him to the last extremity, and he fell in battle against them. But his grandson, Ethelfrid, took a terrible revenge. He was Ella’s son-in-law, and at the death of the latter, and to the prejudice of the rights of the chiefs son, Ethelfrid reunited the two kingdoms of Deiria and Bemicia, and mustering to his own standard all the Anglo-Saxons of Northumbria [the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of northern England and south-east Scotland], he subdued or massacred a greater multitude of the Britons than any other of the invading chiefs. He was, says Bede [English monk and historian (d. 735)], the ravaging wolf of Holy Writ: in the morning he devoured his prey, and in the evening he divided his spoil. The vanquished, who had called his grandfather the Burner, had only too good cause to call Ethelfrid the Ravager.
He had not, however, like his predecessors, the Caledonians for auxiliaries. They had become Christians, and far from seconding the pagan invaders, the Dalriadian Scots recently established in Great Britain came to the succour of the Britons who were their fellow-Christians. Their king Aidan marched against Ethelfrid at the head of a numerous [Oct. io.
army. The Scots and the Saxons met at Degotane, near the existing frontier of England and Scotland. After a desperate struggle the Scots* army was cut to pieces, and this defeat put an end for ever to any desire on the part of the northern Celts to undertake the defence of their brethren of the south against the Teutonic conquerors.
Having conquered the Scots, the formidable heathen threw himself on the Britons of Wales. After this he completed the conquest of Northumbria, and fell, ten years later, in an encounter with his countrymen, the East Angles, under the command of King Redwald.
East Anglia, as the name itself indicates, was occupied by a colony of the same race as the Angles of Northumbria. On the death of the first Christian king of Kent, Redwald inherited the title of Bretwalda, which gave him a certain military supremacy over the whole Anglo-Saxon federation. He had given shelter to the son of Ella, who, while still a child, had been dethroned by his brother-in-law, the terrible Ethelfrid. This young prince, named Edwin, grew up at Redwald’s Court and had even been married to the daughter of his protector. Ethelfrid, seeing in him a rival and a successor, employed by turns threats and bribes to induce Redwald to surrender the royal exile. The East Anglian prince was on the point ot yielding, when one of the friends of Edwin came by night to apprise him of his danger, and offered to conduct him to a place of refuge, where neither Redwald nor Ethelfrid should be able to discover him. “ No,” replied the young and generous exile; “ I thank you for your goodwill, but I shall do nothing. Why should I begin again to wander a vagabond through every part of the island, as I have too much done ? If I must die, let it be rather by the hand of this great king than by that of a meaner man.” Notwithstanding, moved and agitated by the news, he went out and seated himself on a rock before the S. Paulinus.
palace, where he remained for a long time alone and unnoticed, a prey to agonizing uncertainty. All at once he beheld before him, in the midst of the darkness, a man, whose countenance and dress were unknown to him, who asked him what he did there alone in the night, and added, “ What wilt thou promise to him who shall rid thee of thy grief by dissuading Redwald from delivering thee up to thy enemies, or doing thee any harm?’ 3 “All that may ever be in my power,” answered Edwin. “ And if,” continued the unknown, “ he undertook to make thee king, and a king more powerful than all thine ancestors, and all the other kings in England?” Edwin promised anew that his gratitude would be commensurate with such a service. “ Then,” said the stranger, “ if he who shall have exactly foretold to thee such great fortunes, offers thee counsels more useful for thy welfare and thy life than any of thy fathers or kinsmen have ever received, dost thou consent to follow them ?” The exile swore that he would implicitly obey him by whom he should be rescued from such great peril and made king.
Thereupon the unknown placed his right hand upon his head, saying, “ When a like sign shall be shown thee, then recall this hour, thy words, and thy promise.” With this he disappeared so suddenly that Edwin believed he had spoken not with a man, but with a spirit. A moment after, his friend came running to announce that he had no longer anything to fear, and that King Redwald, having confided his project to the queen, had been dissuaded by her from his breach of faith.
Under the generous influence of the queen, Redwald not only refused to give up the exiled prince, but having sent back the ambassadors intrusted with the costly presents of Ethelfrid, he declared war against him. The result was that Ethelfrid having been defeated and slain, Edwin was established as king in Northumbria by his protector Redwald, who was now the chief of the Anglo-Saxon federation. The sons of Ethelfrid, although on the mother’s side nephews of the new king, were obliged to fly like Edwin himself in his youth. They went for refuge to the Dalriadian Scots. We shall presently see what resulted from this exile to Northumbria and the whole of England.
Like his brother-in-law Ethelfrid, Edwin reigned over the two united kingdoms of Dcira and Bernicia; and, like him, he waged a vigorous war against the Britons of Wales. Having thus become the dreaded chief of the Angles of the North, he found himself esteemed and sought after by the East Angles, who, on the death of their king, Redwald, offered him the sovereignty. But Edwin preferred to repay the protection which he had received from Redwald and his wife by leaving the kingdom of East Anglia to their son. He reserved, however, the military supremacy which Redwald had exercised, as well as the title of Bretwalda, which had passed from the King of Kent to the King of East Anglia, but which, after being held by Edwin, was to remain always attached to the Northumbrian monarchy. Thus then was accomplished the mysterious prediction of Edwin’s nocturnal visitor. He was now a king, and more powerful than any of the English kings before him. For the supremacy of the Bretwalda, added to the vast extent of country occupied by the Angles of the north and east, secured to the King of Northumbria a preponderance altogether different from that of the petty kings of the south who had borne the title before him. Having reached this unhoped-for elevation, and having lost his first wife, a daughter of the King of East Anglia, he sought a second bride, and asked in marriage the sister of the King of Kent, the daughter of Ethelbert and Bertha, a descendant of Hengist and Odin through her father, and of S. Clotild through her mother. ligitized by Oct TO.] S. Paulinus.
She was called Ethelburga, that is, “ noble protectress.” Her brother Eadbald at first refused the demand of the King of Northumbria. He answered that it was impossible for him to betroth a Christian virgin to a pagan, lest the faith and the sacraments of the true God should be profaned by making her live with a king who was a stranger to His worship. Far from being offended at this refusal, Edwin promised that, if the princess were granted to him, he would do nothing against the faith which she professed, but, on the contrary, she might freely observe all the rites of her religion, along with all who might accompany her to his kingdom— men or women, priests or laymen. He added, that he would not himself refuse to embrace his wife's religion, if, after having had it examined by the sages of his council, he found it to be more holy and more worthy of God than his own.
It was on these conditions that her mother Bertha had left her country and her Merovingian family, to cross the sea and wed the King of Kent. The conversion of that kingdom had been the reward of her sacrifice. Ethelburga, destined like her mother, and, still more than she, to be the means of introducing a whole people to the knowledge of Christianity, followed the maternal example.
But the royal virgin was intrusted to the Northumbrians only under the guardianship of a bishop, charged to preserve her from all pagan pollution by his exhortations, and also by the daily celebration of the heavenly mysteries. This bishop, by name Paulinus, was one of those still surviving Roman monks who had been sent by S. Gregory to the aid of S. Augustine. He had been twenty-five years a missionary in the south of Great Britain before he was consecrated Bishop of Northumbria by the third successor of Augustine at Canterbury. Having arrived with Ethelburga in Edwin's kingdom, and having married them, he longed to see the whole of the unknown nation amongst whom he had [Oct. xo.
come to pitch his tent, espoused to Christ. Unlike Augustine, after his landing on the shores of Kent, it is expressly stated that Paulinus was disposed to act upon the Northumbrian people before attempting the conversion of the king. He laboured with all his might to add some Northumbrian converts to the small company of the faithful that had accompanied the queen. But his efforts were for a long time fruitless; he was permitted to preach, but no one was converted. Pope Boniface V., at the suggestion, no doubt, of Paulinus, addressed two letters to the King and Queen of Northumbria. He exhorted the glorious king of the English, as he calls him, to follow the example of so many other emperors and kings, and especially of his brother-in-law Eadbald, in submitting himself to the true God, and not to let himself be separated, in the future, from that dear half of himself who had already received in baptism the pledge of eternal bliss. He conjured the queen to neglect no effort to soften and inflame the hard and cold heart of her husband, to make him understand the beauty of the mysteries in which she believed, and the rich reward which she had found in her own regeneration, to the end that they twain, whom human love had made one flesh here below, might dwell together in another life, united in an indissoluble union. But neither the letters of the Pope nor the sermons of the bishop, nor the importunities of the queen, prevailed to triumph over the doubts of Edwin. A providential event, however, occurred to shake, without absolutely convincing him. On the Easterday after his marriage, an assassin, sent by the King of the West Saxons, made his way to the king, and, under the pretext of communicating a message from his master, tried to stab him with a double-edged poisoned dagger, which he held hidden under his dress. Prompted by that heroic devotion for their princes which among all the Germanic barbarians co-existed with continual revolts against them, a Oct. ia] S. Paulinus.
lord named Lilia, having no shield at hand, threw himself between his king and the assassin, who struck with such force that his weapon reached Edwin even through the body of his faithful friend. The same night, the night of the greatest of Christian festivals, the queen was delivered of a daughter. While Edwin was rendering thanks to his gods for the birth of his first-born, the Bishop Paulinus began, on his part, to thank the Lord Christ, assuring the king that it was he who by his prayers to the trtie God had obtained that the queen should bear her first child without mishap, and almost without pain. The king, less moved by the mortal danger that he had just escaped than by the joy of being a father without peril or hurt to his beloved Ethelburga, was charmed by the words of Paulinus, and promised to renounce his idols for the service of Christ, if Christ granted him life and victory in the war which he was about to wage against the king who had tried to procure his assassination. As a pledge of his good faith he gave the new-born child to the bishop, that he might consecrate her to Christ. This first child of the king, the first native Christian of the Northumbrian nation, was baptized on Whitsunday along with seven persons of the royal household. She was named Eanfleda, and was destined, like most of the Anglo-Saxon princesses, to exercise an influence over the destiny of her country. Edwin came back victorious from his struggle with the guilty king. On his return to Northumbria, though since giving his promise he had ceased to worship idols, he would not at once, and without further reflection, receive the sacraments of the Christian faith. But he made Paulinus give him more fully the reasons of his belief. He frequently conferred with the wisest and best-instructed of his nobles upon the part which they would counsel him to take. Finally, being by nature a man sagacious and reflective, he passed long hours in solitude, his lips indeed closed, but discussing [Oct ia many things in the depth of his heart, and examining, without intermission, which religion he ought to prefer. Meanwhile, Paulinus saw time passing away without the Word of God which he preached being listened to, and without Edwin being able to bow the pride of his intelligence before jhe divine humility of the Cross. Being informed of the prophecy, and the promise which had put an end to the exile of the king, he believed that the moment for recalling them to him had come. One day, when Edwin was seated by himself, meditating in the secret of his own heart upon the religion which he ought to follow, the bishop entered suddenly, and placed his right hand on his head, as the unknown had done in the vision, asking him if he recognized that sign. The king, trembling, would have thrown himself at the feet of Paulinus; but he raised him up, and said gently, “Thou art now delivered, by God's goodness, from the enemies that thou fearedst. He has given thee the kingdom which thou desiredst. Remember to accomplish thy third promise, which binds thee to receive the faith and to keep its commandments. It is thus only that, after being enriched with the divine favour here, thou wilt be able to enter with God into the fellowship of the eternal kingdom.” “Yes,” answered Edwin, at length, “ I feel it; I ought to be, and I will be, a Christian.” But, always true to his characteristic moderation, he stipulated only for himself. He said that he would confer with his great nobles, his friends, and his councillors, in order that, if they decided to believe as he did, they should all together be consecrated to Christ in the fountain of life.
Paulinus having expressed his approval of this proposal, the Northumbrian parliament was assembled near to a sanctuary of the national worship, already celebrated in the time of the Romans and Britons, at Godmundham, hard by the gates of York. Each member of this great national council S. Paulinus..
was, in his turn, asked his opinion of the doctrine and worship. The first who answered was the high priest of the idols, by name Coifi, a singular and somewhat cynical personage. “ My opinion,” said he, “ is most certainly that the religion which we have hitherto followed is worth nothing; and this is my reason: Not one of thy subjects has served our gods with more zeal than I have, and notwithstanding, there are many of thy people who have received from thee far greater gifts and dignities. But if our gods were not good for nothing, they would have done something for me who have served them so well. If then, after ripe examination, thou hast found this new religion which is preached to us more efficacious, let us* hasten to adopt it.” One of the great chiefs held different language, in which is revealed to us that religious elevation and poetic melancholy wherewith the minds of these Germanic heathens were often imbued. “Thou rememberest, perhaps,” said he to the king, “ what sometimes happens in the winter evenings, whilst thou art at supper with thine ealdormen and thanes: while the good fire bums within, and it rains and snows, and the wind howls without, a sparrow enters at the one door and flies out quickly at the other. During that rapid passage it is sheltered from the rain and cold; but after that brief and pleasant moment it disappears, and from winter returns to winter again. Such seems to me to be the life of man, and his career but a brief moment between that which goes before and that which follows after, and of which we know nothing. If then the new doctrine can teach us something certain, it deserves to be followed.”
After much discourse of the same tendency, for the assembly seems to have been unanimous, the high priest Coifi spoke again with a loftier inspiration than that of his first words. He expressed the desire to hear Paulinus speak of the God whose envoy he professed to be. The bishop, with iji.gi [Oct. ia permission of the king, addressed the assembly. When he had finished, the high priest cried, “ For a long time I have understood the nothingness of all that we worshipped, for the more I endeavoured to search for truth in it the less I found it; but now I declare, without reserve, that in this preaching I see the shining of the truth which gives light and salvation and eternal blessedness. I vote then that we give up at once to fire and to the curse the altars which we have so uselessly consecrated.” The king immediately made a public declaration that he adhered to the gospel preached by Paulinus — that he renounced idolatry and adopted the faith of Christ. “ But who,” asked the king, “will be the first to overthrow the altars of the ancient gods, and to profane their sacred precincts?” “I,” replied the high priest; whereupon he prayed the king to give him arms and a stallion, that he might the more thoroughly violate the rule of his order, which forbade him to carry arms and to mount aught but a mare. Mounted on the king’s steed, girt with a sword, and lance in hand, he galloped towards the idols, and in the sight of all the people, who believed him to be beside himself, he dashed his lance into the interior of their temple. The profaning steel buried itself in the wall; to the surprise of the spectators, the gods were silent and the sacrilege remained unpunished. Then the people, at the command of the high priest, proceeded to overthrow and bum the temple. These things occurred in the eleventh year of Edwin’s reign. The whole Northumbrian nobility and a large part of the people followed the example of the king, who was baptized with much solemnity on Easter-day (627) by Paulinus at York, in a wooden church, built in haste while the catechumens were prepared for baptism. Immediately afterwards he built around this improvised sanctuary a large church in stone, which he had not time to finish, but which has since become the splendid minster of York, and the Oct xo.] •S'. Paulinus.
metropolitan [the archbishop who heads a group of dioceses] church of the north of England. The town of York had been already celebrated in the time of the Romans. The Emperors Severus and Constantius Chlorus had died there. The Northumbrians had made it their capital, and Edwin there placed the seat of the episcopate, filled by his teacher Paulinus.
The king and the bishop laboured together for six years for the conversion of the Northumbrian people, and even of the English population of the neighbouring regions. The chiefs of the nobility and the principal servants of the king were the first to receive baptism, together with the sons of Edwin’s first marriage. The example of a king was, however, far from being enough, among the Anglo-Saxons, to determine the conversion of a whole people; and the first Christian king and the first bishop of Northumbria did not think of employing undue constraint. Doubtless it required more than one effort on their part to overcome the roughness, the ignorance, the indifference of the heathen Saxons. But they had, at the same time, much encouragement, for the fervour of the people and their anxiety for baptism were often wonderful. Paulinus having gone with the king and queen, who several times accompanied him on his missions, to a royal villa far to the north, they remained there, all three, for thirty-six days together, and during the whole of that time the bishop did nothing else from morning till night than catechize the crowds that gathered from all the villages around, and afterwards baptize them in the river which flowed close by. At the opposite extremity of the country, to the south, the name of Jordan is still given to a portion of the course of the river Derwent, near the old Roman ford of Malton, in memory of the numerous subjects of Edwin that were there baptized by the Roman missionary. Everywhere he baptized in the rivers or streams, for there was no time to build churches. How[Oct. nx ever, he built near Edwin’s principal palace a stone church, whose calcined ruins were still visible after the Reformation, as well as a large cross with this inscription: Paulinus hie prcedicavit et edebravit.
Passing the frontiers of the Northumbrian kingdom, Paulinus continued his evangelistic course among the Angles settled to the south of the Humber, in the maritime province of Lindsey. There also he baptized many people in the Trent; and long afterwards old men, who had in ' their childhood received baptism at his hands, recalled with | reverent tenderness the venerable and awe-inspiring stranger, | whose lofty and stooping form, black hair, aquiline nose, and emaciated, but imposing features, impressed themselves on every beholder, and proclaimed his southern origin. The i beautiful monastic church of Southwell consecrates the \ memory of the scene of one of those multitudinous baptisms, ! and it is to the mission of Bishop Paulinus on this side the I Humber that we trace the foundation of the magnificent cathedral of Lincoln.
It was in the stone church built by Paulinus at Lincoln, after the conversion of the chief Saxon of that town, with all his house, that the metropolitan bishop of York had to proceed to the consecration of the fourth successor of Augustine in the metropolitan see of Canterbury [a bishop’s “see” is his diocese, named from his seat (Latin sedes)]. Honorius was, like Paulinus, a monk of Mount Coelius at Rome, and one of the first companions of S. Augustine in his mission to EnglandHe was a disciple of S. Gregory, and had learned from the great pontiff the art of music, and it was he who led the choir of monks on the occasion of the first entrance of the missionaries, thirty years before, at Canterbury. The Pope then reigning was also named Honorius, first of that name. He sent the pallium [a woolen band the pope gives to archbishops as a sign of their authority] to each of the two metropolitans, and ordained that when God should take to Himself one of the two the other should appoint a successor, in order to avoid - Dicfitizt Oct. xo.] S. Paulinus.
the delay of a reference to Rome, so difficult by reason of the great distance to be travelled by sea and land. The Pope also wrote to King Edwin to congratulate him on his conversion and on the ardour and sincerity of his faith, and to exhort him to read much in the works of S. Gregory, whom he calls the Preacher of the English, and whom he recommends the king to take for his perpetual intercessor with God. But when this letter reached England Edwin was no more.
The six years which passed between his conversion and his death may certainly be reckoned among the most glorious and happy that it was ever given to any Anglo-Saxon prince to know. He speedily raised Northumbria to the head of the Heptarchy. On the south his ardent zeal for the faith which he had embraced after such ripe reflection extended its influence even to the populations which, without being subjected to his direct authority, yet belonged to the same race as his subjects. The East Angles, as we have seen, had offered him their crown, and he had refused it. But he used his influence over their young king, who owed to him his elevation to the throne, to induce him to embrace the Christian religion, with all his subjects. Edwin thus paid the ransom of the generous pity that the royalty of East Anglia had lavished on his youth and his exile. On the north he extended and consolidated the AngloSaxon dominion as far as the isthmus which separated Caledonia from Britain; and he has left an ineffaceable record of his reign in the name of the fortress built upon the rock which commanded the entrance of the Forth, and which still lifts its sombre and Alpine front — true Acropolis of the barbarous north — from the midst of the great and picturesque city of Edinburgh {Edwin's burgh).
On the west he continued, with less ferocity than Ethelfrid, but with no less valour and success, the contest with the Britons of Wales. He pursued them even into the islands of the channel which separates Great Britain from Ireland; and took possession of the Isle of Man, and another isle, which had been the last refuge of the Druids from the Roman dominion, and which, after its conquest by Edwin, took the name of the victorious race, Anglesey.
Within his own kingdom he secured a peace and security so unknown both before and after his reign that it passed into a proverb. It was said that in the time of Edwin a woman with her new-born child might traverse England from the Irish Channel to the North Sea without meeting any one who would do her the least wrong. It is pleasant to trace his kindly and minute care of the well-being of his subjects in such a particular as that of the copper cups which he had suspended beside the fountains on the highways, that the passers-by might drink at their ease, and which no one attempted to steal, whether from fear or from love of the king. Neither did any one ever reproach him for the unwonted pomp which distinguished his train, not only when he went out to war, but when he rode peacefully through his towns and provinces, on which occasions the lance, surmounted with a large tuft of feathers, which the Saxons had borrowed from the Roman legions, and which they had made the sacred standard of the Bretwalda, and the ensign of the supreme sovereignty in their confederation, was always carried before him in the midst of his military banners. But all this grandeur and prosperity were about to be engulfed in a sudden and great calamity.
There were other Angles than those who, in Northumbria and East Anglia, were already subdued and humanized by the influence of Christianity: there remained the Angles of Mercia [the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the English Midlands], the great central region stretching from the Humber to the Thames. The kingdom of Mercia was the last state organized out of the Anglo-Saxon conquest. It had been itized by Goo?
founded by that portion of the invaders who, finding all the eastern and southern shores of the island already occupied, were compelled to advance into the interior. It became the centre of the Pagan resistance to, and occasional assaults upon, the Christian Propaganda, which was henceforth to have its head-quarters in Northumbria. The Pagans ol Mercia found a formidable leader in the person of Penda, who was himself of royal extraction, or, as was then believed, of the blood of Odin, and had reigned for twenty-two years, but who was inflamed by all the passions of a barbarian, and, above all, devoured with jealousy of the fortunes of Edwin and of the power of the Northumbrians. Since Edwin’s conversion these wild instincts were intensified by fanaticism. Penda and the Mercians remained faithful to the worship oi Odin, whose descendants all the Saxon kings believed themselves to be.
Edwin and the Northumbrians were, therefore, in their eyes, no better than traitors and apostates. But, more surprising still, the original inhabitants of the island — the Christian Britons, who were more numerous in Mercia than in any other Anglo-Saxon kingdom — shared and excited the hatred of the Pagan Saxons against the converts of the same race. The Welsh Britons, who maintained their independence, but who for more than a century had been constantly menaced, defeated, and humiliated by Ida, Ethelfrid, and Edwin, professed and nourished their antipathy with even greater bitterness. Their chief, Ceadwalla or Cadwallon, the last hero of the Celtic race in Britain, at first overcome by Edwin, and forced to seek refuge in Ireland and in Armorica [Brittany in north-west France], had returned thence with rage redoubled, and with auxiliaries from the other Celtic races, to recommence the struggle against the Northumbrians. He succeeded in forming an alliance with Penda against the common enemy. Under these two chiefs an immense army, in which the British Lives oj the Saints.
Christians of Wales jostled the Pagans of Mercia, invaded Northumbria. Edwin awaited them at Hatfield, on the southern frontier of his kingdom. He was there disastrously defeated, and perished gloriously, sword in hand, scarce forty-eight years of age, dying a death which entitled him to be ranked amongst the martyrs. His eldest son fell with him; the younger, taken prisoner by Penda, who swore to preserve his life, was infamously murdered. Northumbria was ravaged with fire and sword, and its recent Christianity completely obliterated.
It is not known why Northumbria, after the death of Edwin and his son, was not subjugated, and shared among the conquerors; but it remained divided, enslaved, and was plunged once more into Paganism. Deira fell to Osric. cousin-german of Edwin; Bemicia to Eanfrid, one of the sons of Ethelfrid, who had returned from his exile in Scotland. Both had received baptism — the one with his cousin at York, the other at the hands of the Celtic monks of Iona. But a Pagan reaction was the inevitable consequence of the overthrow of the first Christian king of Northumbria. The two princes yielded to that reaction, and renounced their baptism, but without gaining anything thereby. The King of Deira was killed in battle with the Britons; and the King of Bemicia was murdered at an interview which he had sought with the savage Cadwallon.
Bishop Paulinus did not consider himself called upon to remain a witness of such horrors. His one thought was to place in safety the widow of King Edwin, that gentle Ethelburga who had been confided to him by her brother for a different destiny. He brought her back by sea to her brother's kingdom, with the daughter and the two youngest sons whom she had borne to Edwin. Even beside her brother, the King of Kent, she was afraid to keep them in England; and, wishing to devote her own widowhood to Oct. io.] *S\ Tancha.
God, she entrusted them to the King of the Franks [the Germanic people who ruled Gaul and gave France its name], Dagobert, her cousin, at whose court they died at an early age. As to Paulinus, who had left in charge of his church at York only a brave Italian deacon, he found the episcopal see of Rochester vacant, in consequence of the death of the Roman monk, who was the titular bishop, and who, sent by the primate [the leading bishop of a country] to the Pope, had just been drowned in the Mediterranean. Paulinus was invested with this bishopric by the king and by the Archbishop Honorius, whom he had himself consecrated at Lincoln. And there he died, far from his native land, after having laboured during forty-three years for the conversion of the English.
