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The history of this kingdom contains nothing memorable except the conversion of Earpwold, the fourth king, and great-grandson of Una, the founder of the monarchy. The authority of Edwin, king of Northumberland, on whom that prince entirety depended, engaged him to take this step; but soon after, his wife, who was an idolatress, brought him back to her religion; and he was found unable to resist those allurements which have seduced the wisest of mankind. After his death, which was violent, like that of most of the Saxon princes that did not early retire into monasteries, Sigebert, his successor and half-brother, who had been educated in France, restored Christianity, and introduced learning among the East Angles. Some pretend that he founded the university of Cambridge, or rather some schools in that place. It is almost impossible, and quite needless, to be more particular in relating the transactions of the East Angles. What instruction or entertainment can it give the reader, to hear a long bead-roll of barbarous names, Egric, Annas, Ethelbert, Ethelwald, Aldulf, Elfwald, Beorne, Ethelred, Ethelbert, who successively murdered, expelled, or inherited from each other, and obscurely filled the throne of that kingdom? Ethelbert, the last of these princes, was treacherously murdered by Offa, king of Mercia, in the year 792, and his state was thenceforth [*mited] with that of Offa, as we shall relate presently.
Mercia, the largest, if not the most powerful, kingdom of the Heptarchy, comprehended all the middle counties of England; and as its frontiers extended to those of all the other kingdoms, as well as to Wales, it received its name from that circumstance. Wibba, the son of Crida, founder of the monarchy, being placed on the throne by Ethelbert, king of Kent, governed his paternal dominions by a precarious authority; and after his death, Ceorl, his kinsman, was, by the influence of the Kentish monarch, preferred to his son Penda, whose turbulent character appeared dangerous to that prince. Penda was thus fifty years of age before he mounted the throne; and his temerity and restless disposition were found nowise abated by time, experience, or reflection. He engaged in continual hostilities against all the neighboring states; and, by his injustice and violence, rendered himself equally odious to his own subjects and to strangers. Sigebert, Egric, and Annas, three kings of East Anglia, perished successively in battle against him; as did also Edwin and Oswald, the two greatest princes that had reigned over Northumberland. At last Oswy, brother to Oswald, having defeated and slain him in a decisive battle, freed the world from this sanguinary tyrant. Peada, his son, mounted the throne of Mercia in 655, and lived under the protection of Oswy, whose daughter he had espoused. This princess was educated in the Christian faith, and she employed her influence, with success, in converting her husband and his subjects to that religion. Thus the fair sex have had the merit of introducing the Christian doctrine into all the most considerable kingdoms of the Saxon Heptarchy. Peada died a violent death.[*] His son Wolfhere succeeded to the government; and, after having reduced to dependence the kingdoms of Essex and East Anglia, he left the crown to his brother Ethelred, who, though a lover of peace, showed himself not unfit for military enterprises. Besides making a successful expedition into Kent, he repulsed Egfrid, king of Northumberland, who had invaded his dominions; and he slew in battle Elswin, the brother of that prince. Desirous, however, of composing all animosities with Egfrid, he paid him a sum of money as a compensation for the loss of his brother. After a prosperous reign of thirty years, he resigned the crown to Kendred, son of Wolfhere, and retired into the monastery of Bardney.[**]
[* Hugo Candidas (p. 4) says, that he was
treacherously murdered by his queen, by whose persuasion he
had embraced Christianity; but this account of the matter is
found in that historian alone.]
[** Bede, lib. v.]
Kendred returned the present of the crown to Ceolred, the son of
Ethelred; and making a pilgrimage to Rome, passed his life there in
penance and devotion. The place of Ceolred was supplied by Ethelbald,
great-grand-nephew to Penda, by Alwy, his brother; and this prince,
being slain in a mutiny, was succeeded by Offa, who was a degree more
remote from Penda, by Eawa, another brother.
This prince, who mounted the throne in 755,[*] had some great qualities, and was successful in his warlike enterprises against Lothaire, king of Kent, and Kenwulph, king of Wessex, He defeated the former in a bloody battle, at Otford upon the Darent, and reduced his kingdom to a state of dependence; he gained a victory over the latter at Bensington, in Oxfordshire; and conquering that county, together with that of Glocester, annexed both to his dominions. But all these successes were stained by his treacherous murder of Ethelbert, king of the East Angles, and his violent seizing of that kingdom. This young prince, who is said to have possessed great merit, had paid his addresses to Elfrida, the daughter of Offa, and was invited with all his retinue to Hereford, in order to solemnize the nuptials: amidst the joy and festivity of these entertainments, he was seized by Offa, and secretly beheaded; and though Elfrida, who abhorred her father’s treachery, had time to give warning to the East Anglian nobility, who escaped into their own country, Offa, having extinguished the royal family, succeeded in his design of subduing that kingdom.[**] The perfidious prince, desirous of reestablishing his character in the world, and perhaps of appeasing the remorses of his own conscience, paid great court to the clergy, and practised all the monkish devotion so much esteemed in that ignorant and superstitious age. He gave the tenth of his goods to the church;[***] bestowed rich donations on the cathedral of Hereford, and even made a pilgrimage to Rome, where his great power and riches could not fail of procuring him the papal absolution. The better to ingratiate himself with the sovereign pontiff, he engaged to pay him a yearly donation for the support of an English college at Rome,[****] and in order to raise the sum, he imposed a tax of a penny on each house possessed of thirty pence a year. This imposition, being afterwards levied on all England, was commonly denominated Peter’s pence;[*****] and though conferred at first as a gift, was afterwards claimed as a tribute by the Roman pontiff.
[* Chron. Sax. p. 59.]
[** Brompton, p. 750, 751, 752.]
[*** Spell. Concil. p 308. Brompton, p. 776.]
[**** Spell. Concil. p. 230, 310, 312.]
Carrying his hypocrisy still further, Offa, feigning to be directed by a vision from heaven, discovered at Verulam the relics of St Alban, the martyr, and endowed a magnificent monastery in that place.[*] Moved by al these acts of piety, Malmsbury, one of the best of the old English historians, declares himself at a loss to determine[**] whether the merits or crimes of this prince preponderated. Offa died, after a reign of thirty-nine years, in 794.[***]
