of Wessex. In this addition we may probably trace the hand of his grandson, Alfred the Great, who re-edited the Chronicle, with large additions from Bede, and thus raised it from being a mere record of dates to the dignity of a history. That the Bretwaldaship was not a mere name we may see from the respect paid to Ethelbert's authority, even by the Welsh, whose bishops, in obedience to his summons, assembled to meet Augustine in Gloucestershire.1 § 17. Puffed up by his elevation to this lofty dignity, Redwald, on his return home, endeavoured, at the instigation of his wife, to combine his ancestral with his new faith. “In the same temple," says Bede," he had an altar for the sacrifice of Christ, and another small one to offer victims to devils." Such compromise was utterly opposed to the spirit in which the Gospel was preached; and Redwald's system died with him. His son and successor, Earpwald, came to the throne in 617 as an unmixed heathen, but before the termination of his reign, in 628, had been persuaded by the great Edwin of Northumbria, himself a royal convert, to accept Christianity as the religion of his people.3 § 18. The assassination of Earpwald by a certain pagan points to a heathen reaction in the land, which, in fact, remained in a state of anarchy for three years, till the crown finally fell to a truly zealous Christian-Sigbert, the brother of Earpwald, long banished to France, and there converted. On ascending the throne, he made special efforts to instruct his people in the truth, and, "being desirous to imitate the good institutions which he had seen in France, set up a school for boys to be taught in Letters." It is doubtless more than a mere coincidence that, in this introduction of Continental methods, his special assistant was a Bishop of Continental birth, 1 Bede, "Eccl. Hist.," Book II., chap. ii. 2 Ibid., Book II., chap. xv. 3 Ibid. Ibid. Felix of Burgundy, whose landing is recorded by the name of Felixstowe, on the coast of Suffolk, and who was consecrated by Honorius, Archbishop of Canterbury, as the first Bishop of the East English. The burial-place of this prelate at Soham, in our county, became the site of a famous monastery, which endured till swept away by the great Danish invasion of 870.1 § 19. This dawn of Gospel light was, however, soon to be whelmed in one last terrible tempest of heathenism. Whilst the northern and eastern parts of England were becoming Christian, the great central kingdom of Mercia remained obstinately pagan. And just at this juncture Mercia, possibly because still religiously united, rose to be the most powerful monarchy in England. Its King, Penda, though excluded from the list of the Bretwaldas, was beyond comparison the most influential sovereign seen within the four seas since Roman days. And he made it the great object of his life to uproot Christianity throughout the land. Turning his arms first against Northumbria, he successively stamped out the Roman mission of Paulinus2 and the Celtic mission of Aidan,3 crushing and slaying in turn King Edwin, the convert of the former preacher, and King Oswald,5 the disciple of the latter. Next he drove out Kenwalk, King of Wessex (who in his East Anglian exile learnt to be a Christian indeed), and finally, in 654, burst with his whole force upon East Anglia itself." 20. Sigbert was by this time dead, slain in an earlier Mercian raid, which called him from the monastery to aid his successor Egric Like the great Christian hero whither he had retired, against the heathen foe. of our own day, General Gordon, he led on his soldiers unarmed save with a wand, and, like him also, held his post to the death. Egric died with him, and the crown devolved on Anna, "a good man, and the father of an excellent family," almost every member of which attained the honours of canonization. Amongst these were Erkenwald, the great Bishop of London, and Etheldred, the foundress of Ely. This truly Christian household was brought up practically in Cambridgeshire; for, in order to be ready against the danger from Mercia, Anna fixed his royal residence at the strategic position of Exning, near Newmarket, whence he could speedily man the lines of the great dykes-now once more important for defence, as in the old days of the Iceni-and where he could best join hands with his son-in-law, Tonbert, the tributary ruler of the Fenland Girvii, the first husband of St. Etheldred, in resisting invasion from the West. § 21. All proved in vain. Neither fen nor dyke, nor the devoted valour of Anna, who, like his predecessor, died upon the field of battle, could check the overwhelming onset of Penda. He fell upon the Christian host "like a wolf, so that Anna and his folk were devoured in a moment," and scarcely a man escaped to tell the tale. The scene of this tragedy is not given by the historian, but it was almost certainly somewhere in the southeast of Cambridgeshire, on the threshold of Anna's realm. § 22. This was Penda's last victory. The next year he was himself slain, and the tide of Christian progress ran the stronger for its momentary check. Anna was gone; but throughout the whole of England the scattered members of his family proved each a centre of spiritual life. His son Erkenwald became Bishop of London;1 of 1 Bede, "Eccl. Hist.," Book IV., chap. iii. his daughters, one, Etheldred, as Queen Consort of Northumbria,1 worked along with her aunt, St. Hilda, the foundress of Whitby,2 in restoring the Faith throughout that wide realm, ere she returned to Ely; another became Abbess of Brie,3 in France, setting up there a school to which, for many decades, English girls were sent in large numbers for education; another of Barking; another of Dereham. Yet another, Sexburga, wedded the King of Kent, and not only herself did great deeds there for the Church, but left two daughters who carried on the family zeal, one being described by Bede as "the golden coin of Kent," and the other, Ermenilda, aiding, as the Queen of Wulfhere, Penda's son, in St. Chad's work of converting Mercia." Seldom, indeed, has any district sent forth so fruitful a mission, or bred such a band of saints. § 23. And though the district was as yet without a name, yet it evidently had no small local solidarity; for amongst these saintly women there was a marked tendency to drift back to the neighbourhood of their birthplace-a tendency which has given that neighbourhood a memorial worthy of their father's house, in the glorious minster of Ely. Renouncing the pomps of Northumbrian royalty, Etheldred returned to the scenes of her early life, and there, within sight of her native Exning uplands, on the Girvian isle amid the fens which had been the seat of her first husband's power and which was now her own by dowry,10 she founded one of those religious houses conducted on the system taught by St. Benedict, which met the great need of the age in affording a haven where 3 Ibid., Book III., chap. viii. 1 Bede, "Eccl. Hist.," Book IV., chap. xix. Ibid., Book IV., chap. xix. peacefully-minded souls might work out their lives in peace, sheltered from the everlasting din of arms and violence which filled the world around, and able to devote themselves to keeping alive not only the light of Religion, but that of Literature, Art, and Science also. How entirely such Houses were felt to be what the times required is shown by the number which everywhere sprang, as if by one impulse, into existence. Simultaneously with Ely, and almost within sight, there rose the four great foundations of Peterborough, Thorney, Ramsey, and Crowland, all just upon the borders of Cambridgeshire. § 24. Thorney, indeed, is actually within those borders; and the lands given to Peterborough (which are minutely specified in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle), at its foundation in 657, by King Wulfhere of Mercia (son-in-law to Anna of East Anglia), comprised Whittlesea and the adjoining fens in our county. The Abbot Sexwulf took advantage of the King's "giving mood" to procure the foundation of Thorney Abbey also. The chronicler thus describes the scene: ... "Then said the King: 'This gift is little. But it is my will they hold it so royally and so freely that neither geld nor fee be taken from it. . . . And thus free will I make this Minster, that it be under Rome alone: and my will it is that all we who may not go to Rome visit St. Peter here.' "While thus he spake, the Abbot prayed of him that he would give him whatsoever he should ask. And the King granted him. Then said the Abbot: 'Here have I God-fearing monks, who would fain live as anchorites [i.e., hermits], knew they but where. And here is an island which is called Ancarig [Thorney]. And my boon is that we might there build a Minster, to the glory of St. Mary, so that they who would lead the life of peace and rest may dwell therein.' |