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to lay aside his crown and make a pilgrimage to the city of Rome with her. He did so, and they lived as ordinary persons in that city all the days of Ina's life, endowing a school there wherein Anglo-Saxon children might become acquainted with the usage of foreign countries. Ethelburh returned to Wessex and died in a Saxon monastery. Ina is famous also for having established a written code of Saxon laws in which, as in the earlier laws of Ethelbert, we can plainly trace the handiwork of the clergy. The provinces of Northumbria, Essex, East Anglia, Mercia, and Kent, each contributed their quota of penitential kings, and their example was followed by many queens and noblemen and ladies, who, by virtue of their position, often became rulers of the religious houses which they had themselves built and endowed.

9. Decadence of Religious Purity.-The early part of the 8th century has been called the "Golden Age" of the Church in Britain, because it was then more prosperous than it had ever been before or has been since, but carelessness, indifference, and vice, followed swiftly in the wake of its prosperity. Intemperance, impurity, and greed of gold soon became rampant. The mixed company of worldly minded and criminal persons, whose professed penitence gained them admission to those once pure homes of Christian love, defiled the monastic abodes which sheltered them. Many still more worthless men, with no knowledge of or care for the religious life, obtained grants of land from kings on the pretence of founding monasteries, so as to have the estates made over to them and their heirs for ever, gathering together in the buildings they erected all sorts of worthless persons; much scandal and vice resulting. A letter written by Bede, just at the close of his life, explains the extent to which these evils had even then come; also, a chapter in his Ecclesiastical History relates how Adamnan, a member of the Celtic Church, discovered to the abbess of Coldingham Monastery the evils which abounded in her house, the inmates either sleeping idly, or being awake to sin. Stringent measures had to be adopted to reform these abuses, which necessitated a liberal interpretation of the 3rd canon of the synod of Hertford, for the monasteries which in many cases had been independent of episcopal jurisdiction, under the rule of their abbots alone, were now obliged to submit to a regular periodical visitation from their bishop. It is necessary here to state that although

the monastic clergy very often went out on preaching tours, the ordinary parochial ministrations were usually left to the seculars, that is, the clergy who lived amongst the people, usually as chaplains in the landed proprietors' families, in which position they would be able to meet with the peasantry who gained their livelihood on the estate and were fed for the most part in the great hall of the Thane. They were called secular clergy, because they lived "in seculo," or after the manner of the world, free to marry if they chose, and live much as the parochial clergy do in the present day. All who lived in the religious houses had literally to "renounce the world" and live according to the Benedictine regulations, hence they were known as regulars. The seculars had no other chief than their bishop, but the regulars occuiped positions of orderly gradation from the novices to the abbots, much in the same way as our army is regulated now, from the privates in the ranks to the generals of the staff. place them under a new chief, by giving bishops the power of visiting monasteries, created an ill-feeling between the two classes of clergy, to which we shall refer again later on; for it resulted in a struggle for supremacy, in which first one and then the other was successful, for eight hundred years.

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10. Offa, King of Mercia.—Meanwhile, the strife amongst the Anglo-Saxon princes for the rank of Bretwalda continued; it had been borne, as we have seen, by Kentish and Northumbrian kings, but in the second half of the 8th century, Offa, king of Mercia, successfully contended with the kings of Wessex for this overlordship. We have nothing to do with his civil struggles, but as he was the most powerful of the English kings and a friend of Charlemagne, the Frankish king who was winning for himself a still greater supremacy in eastern Europe, his influence upon the Church was correspondingly great. He left no way untried to make his kingdom in every respect as great as, if not greater than, any of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms which he had subdued or surpassed. Kent had long enjoyed an archbishop. In 734, after the publication of Bede's History which made known the original intentions of Gregory the Great, the see of York was raised to a like dignity. Why, thought Offa, should not the churches in his still more powerful kingdom be similarly encouraged? Accordingly, he would have the bishopric of Lichfield made a metropolitan see. and, when the archbishops of Canterbury and York protested, be

sent bribes to Pope Hadrian to obtain the requisite permission and the pall. Hadrian was glad of an opportunity to meddle in the affairs of the English Church, and sent two legates here, who held a council at Chelsea, A.D. 787, and persuaded Jaenbert, archbishop of Canterbury, to surrender control of the five bishoprics of Mercia, and the two of East Anglia, to Higbert, who was now made archbishop of Lichfield, and by reason of Offa's position as overlord took precedence of the other archbishops on important occasions. This dignity for Lichfield only lasted a short time, for after the

death of Offa, Aldulf who succeeded Higbert, himself requested that the archbishopric might be abolished. It was in Offa's reign, that an Englishman, whose literary reputation was world-wide, received an invitation from Charlemagne to take up his abode in France, as the director of that great monarch's educational enterprises. His name was Alcuin, he was born at York, and had been instructed by archbishop Egbert there. Having successfully conducted great schools in Northumbria, he was considered the fittest man to revive the almost extinct learning of Europe. Here is another instance of the influence of British Christianity over the fortunes of the Church abroad; for Alcuin, besides his educational work, took part in the religious controversies of the Continent, and formed the policy of the Western Church in its early struggle for

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ST. ALBAN'S MONASTERY GATE,

independence against the Eastern Branch. The reign of Offa is marked by two other important events. One was his conquest of considerable British territory west of the river Severn, to maintain which a huge wall of earth was thrown up, from the mouth of the Wye to that of the Dee (parts of it are still pointed out as Offa's dyke), thus forming what has since been the boundary between England and Wales. The other noteworthy circumstance was the murder of Ethelbert, king of East Anglia, whilst he was a guest in Offa's palace. Traditional accounts state that, in expiation of this crime, and annexation of Ethelbert's kingdom, the King of Mercia made a tardy penance by visiting the city of Rome, and on his return imposing on each family in his dominion a small tax of a penny for the maintenance and support of Ina's school there. He certainly gave large benefactions to Hereford Cathedral and Bath Abbey, and also founded the great monastery of St. Albans. There had been a church in the neighbourhood of Verulam ever since Alban was martyred, but Offa, who desired to excel all previous efforts in the foundation of religious houses, built and endowed a more magnificent one than the country had then seen. In after years, when bishops of Rome acquired an usurped authority over the Church in Britain, special privileges of exemption from all Episcopal authority save that of the popes were granted to St. Alban's Abbey. Offa died A.D. 796, and the civil supremacy passed into the hands of Egbert, king of Wessex, to whom all the other Anglo-Saxon kings paid homage, and by whom the country was called for the first time England, although it was not yet one kingdom. The AngloSaxon tribes were henceforth known as the English people, and their tongue the English language, but the divisions of the Heptarchy were still observed, with a king over each, who governed absolutely; the difference was that they had now to fight for the overlord, or at least, not to fight against each other.

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CHAPTER VIII. (A.D. 787-1066).

THE COMING OF THE NORTHMEN.

"Dissension checking arms that would restrain
The incessant rovers of the Northern main;
Helps to restore and spread a pagan sway :-

The woman-hearted confessor prepares

The evanescence of the Saxon line."-Wordsworth.

1. The First Danish Invasions.-In the year 787 three strange ships found their way to this country, not loaded with merchandise, but carrying fierce bands of pirates, who had come from Scandinavia. "They were the first ships of Danish men who sought

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the land of the English nation." Piracy was accounted by them as an honourable employment. Their greatest ambition was to be. Seakings. They were of the same Teutonic race as the " English ;"

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