ings of peace and good government. In 805 died Cuthred, king of Kent, probably the successor of Egbert's own father, Almund. In the following year King Ardwolf was expelled from Northumberland. With the exception of these and other unimportant facts, such as the death or appointment of several obscure bishops, abbats, and other ecclesiastics, the Saxon Annalists display a remarkable dearth of incidents for some years, and, to fill up the void, they give us notices of natural phænomena, some of which do as much credit to the liveliness of their imagination, as to the profundity of their scientific knowledge. In 806 the moon was eclipsed on the 1st of September, and in 809 the sun was obscured on the 16th of July. In the former year a cross is said to have appeared in the moon on the 4th of June, and the sun to have been surrounded by a miraculous circle on the 30th of August. If these and similar prodigies foretold wars and tumults, their prophetic force was not immediately evident to the Anglo-Saxons who witnessed them; for eleven years passed away after Egbert's coronation without intestine broils or foreign warfare.

The first military exploit which engaged Egbert's attention was a campaign against the Britons of Cornwall, or, as they were termed by the Saxons, the WestWelch, to distinguish them from the North-Welch, who inhabited the country now called Wales. His invasion of this district was so impetuous, that nothing could resist his progress, and he probably compelled the inhabitants of that rugged peninsula to be in future tributary to the kingdom of Wessexi.

Sax. Ch. Ethel. Flor. Hunt.

h Saxon Chron.

Sax. Chron. Ethel. Flor. Hunt.

A year or two after this campaign died the great Charlemagne, who had for many years attracted the attention, and made himself the focus, of all Western Europe. His ally, also, the spiritual head of his extensive empire, Leo III., died not long afterwards, leaving the Papal throne to Stephen IV., who, however, did not outlive the year of his consecration.

In the natural course of human things the disruption which befel the continent of Europe, after the death of Charlemagne, diverted the attention of the world from the point on which it had hitherto been fixed; other actors appeared upon the stage, and the drama of nations was found to be conducted according to the same rules as those by which the fortunes of individuals are regulated in private life.

The deceased emperor had chosen Offa, the contemporary king of Mercia, for his friend and correspondent: but a greater than Offa was now reigning in Wessex; whose fame, passing beyond the narrow limits of his native island, spread through the whole of Europe, and filled the void which had been occasioned by the death of Charlemagne. For if among nations, which have already attained a high degree of civilization, fortune is rarely found to smile for a long time together on the same people, this is still more forcible in the case of nations which have recently emerged into political life, and are not yet established on a firm and settled basis.

That Britain, separated from the rest of civilized Europe, should have at this time attracted the notice of the continental nations, might seem at first sight to require explanation. But the influence of the Church, continually increasing from the fifth to the twelfth Charlemagne died Jan. 28, A.D. 814.

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century, and grasping at every thing which seemed to confirm or maintain the false position which she had assumed, was readily lent to give importance to an island, which from its easy conversion by the agency of the Pope himself, seemed peculiarly to be an appanage of the Apostolic See. The readiness with which Ethelbert and his whole kingdom had submitted to the spiritual control of a terrified' body of monks, led the Popes of Rome for many hundred years to pride themselves on the strength which had accrued to the whole of Christianity by the exertions of their predecessor Gregory: they looked upon Britain as one of the brightest gems in their triple crown, and repeatedly in after-ages shewed an inordinate desire to rivet the chains which bound this distant insular province more closely to the capital of St. Peter's sovereignty. At a very early period we read of a school having been established at Rome, for the education of the young princes and nobles, who in those days flocked in large numbers out of Britain, to pay their vows at the "thresholds of the apostles St. Peter and St. Paul." Large contributions were also levied in Britain for the benefit of the Eternal City and God's Vicegerent upon earth,-furnishing to our simple ancestors, if they could have been enlightened sufficiently to use their common sense, a conclusive argument against the pretensions of the foreigners, who preached so loudly of the glory of the Heavenly Kingdom, but in their own practice readily

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St. Augustine and his companions were more than once almost induced to abandon their mission to Britain, from alarm at the supposed dangers which they would have to encounter. See the history of their journey and mission in Venerable Bede.

This school was burnt down in the year 816. SAX. CH. FLOR.

exchanged all its most brilliant promises for that dross which is only of value in the kingdom of this world. But the low condition of the human intellect, which prevailed among the people of the Heptarchy, encouraged the Heads of the Roman Church to carry on a more wholesale system of extortion in Britain, it is believed, than in any other country of Europe. Neither can it be said that the Anglo-Saxons were unwilling victims, for during the two hundred years which passed immediately before the accession of Egbert, the whole history of the English nation is merged in the pilgrimages which were daily made by all classes to Rome, for the purchase of pictures, reliques, and rubbish, which the ecclesiastics exchanged for the more substantial payment of gold and silver tendered to them by the pilgrims”.

Thus a perpetual stream of travellers kept up a connection between Rome, the centre of European civilization, and the country of the Anglo-Saxons; by which all the political questions that arose in this distant island became known to the Papal Court, and were spread by means of the ecclesiastics and men of letters, there assembled, through the whole of Europe. That the empire of Rome over England would be strengthened by the consolidation of the Heptarchy into one monarchy, and be maintained with less trouble to the reigning Pontiff, was a view likely to be entertained in that age of limited intercourse between nations, and we may easily conceive that, when Egbert at length set about his work of conquest in good

See Bede's Lives of the Abbats of Jarrow and Wearmouth: his letter to Egbert, and the whole mass of ecclesiastical legends of the seventh and eighth centuries.

earnest, there were many eyes directed upon his arms from abroad, and many bosoms that expanded with satisfaction, as they watched the rapidity of his conquests.

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In 819 a revolution took place in Mercia, which still further smoothed for Egbert the path of ambition which he was to follow. Kenwolf, the king of that province, died this year, leaving the throne to his son Kenelm, a boy only seven years old. But the proverb which augurs evil to the country whose sovereign is a child, came true in the case of the hapless infant. The princess Quendreda, sister to Kenelm, inflamed with the desire to reign, concerted a plot against her brother's life, and within a few months after the death of the late king, the innocent youth was murdered by his tutor Ascebert in a wood, where he was walking to enjoy the coolness of the evening breezes. His lifeless body was found, we are told, by the aid of a heavenly light, and buried at Winchelcombe near the body of his father: so remarkable an interposition of the Deity gave a hint to the piety of the Church, and the loss of temporal sovereignty was compensated to the murdered boy by a place in the calendar of the Romish Church, which is still adorned by the name and virtues of St. Kenelm. Keolwolf, who had perhaps been in some way privy to the death of the young king his nephew, succeeded to the throne: of which, however, he did not long maintain the possession: he was driven from his kingdom in 821 P and Bernwolf,

Florence of Worcester alone relates this story: the Saxon Chronicle, Ethelwerd, and Henry of Huntingdon, place Keolwolf in immediate succession to Kenwolf. See also J. Brompton. Saxon Ch. Ethel. Flor. Hunt.