the champion of the ancient faith of his people, and by far the most serious obstacle to the complete Christianising of Britain. So bitter a remembrance did the Northumbrians retain of their misfortune, that they erased from their chronicles the year during which their land had been laid waste, adding it for purposes of computation to the reign of their next king, Oswald, and in the words of Bede, "holding the year accursed for the brutal impiety of the King of the Britons." Oswald himself, after an actual reign of eight years, was slain by Penda at the battle of Maserfield (probably Mirfield, three miles west of Dewsbury), in 641, and the unhappy kingdom of Northumbria was again subjugated. The hapless king was long venerated as a saint, and one of the miracles ascribed to his relics, and narrated by Bede, is so suggestive as to the condition and social manners of the time, that I cannot refrain from quoting it.

About the same time another person of the British nation as it is reported, happened to travel by the same place where the aforesaid battle was fought, and observing one particular spot of ground greener and more beautiful than any other part of the field, he judiciously concluded within himself that there could be no other cause for that unusual greenness but that some person of more holiness than any other in the army had been slain there. He therefore took with him some of that earth, tying it up in a linen cloth, supposing it would some time or other be of use for curing sick people, and proceeding on his way came at night to a certain village and entered a house where the neighbours were feasting at supper. Being received by the owners of the house, he sat down with them at the entertainment, hanging the cloth in which he had brought the earth on a post against the wall. They sat long at supper and drank hard, with a great fire in the middle of the room; it happened that the sparks flew up and caught the top of the house, which being made of wattles and thatch was presently in a flame. The guests ran out in a fright without being able to put a stop to the fire. The house was consequently burnt down, only that post on which the earth hung remained entire and untouched, on observing which they were all amazed.

Meanwhile, after defeating and dethroning the King of Wessex, Penda had committed the government of a portion of his now extensive dominions, the kingdom namely of the Middle Angles, to his son Peada, a young man of mild and benevolent disposition, and universally beloved. The account of the virtues of Peada, of his wooing of Ahlfleda, daughter of Oswy, or Oswiu, who had succeeded to the troubled throne of Northumbria, of the refusal of his suit unless he became a Christian, of the readiness with which

he listened to the expounding of the principles of the Christian faith, and of his manly declaration that he would accept them as his own, whether the hand of the maiden were granted to him or not, form a touching episode in the chronicle of Bede-brief, yet too long here to be quoted. No objection to the conversion of his son, of the people under his rule, or of individual members of his own kingdom was made by Penda. The bluff old pagan, who adhered to the faith of his ancestors probably in the main because it was most accordant with his own warlike propensities, contented himself with venting his contemptuous scorn upon those of his own subjects who, having nominally accepted Christianity, failed to carry its precepts into actual effect. As Bede says, "he hated and despised them saying they were contemptible and wretched who did not obey their God in whom they believed." The end of the last pagan monarch who was to hold noticeable sway in England was now at hand. In 655, twenty-two years after his first invasion of Northumbria, Penda prepared once more to devastate the unhappy kingdom which he appears to have held in hand as a favourable field for occasional rapine. Conscious of his probable inability to withstand his terrible enemy, Oswy had collected a large sum of money with which he vainly offered to buy off the threatened invasion. Had Penda been a careful student of human nature, a supposition which is not very likely, he might have been aware of the danger he incurred in thus driving to desperation an adversary who was not contemptible, but whose weakness reduced him to offer terms for the purchase of peace. There are few creatures so weak as not to become formidable when fairly driven to bay. There is no human resolution so bitterly immutable as the resolve of the naturally irresolute man who has been driven by Fate into a corner; and there is no courage so fierce and so untameable as the courage of the man who fights from desperation and not from choice. Left without an alternative by the insolence of a foe who would not even suffer him to buy peace by ignominy, Oswy hastily collected such forces as his shattered realm could afford him, and advanced to meet the enemy.

Of the battle which ensued, decisive and indeed momentous as

it was, we possess but very scanty details. The compiler of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle marks his sense of the fact that it commenced a new era in English history by specially computing its date from the beginning of the world; but dismisses the event in a single sentence. Bede and Florence of Worcester are fortunately more circumstantial in their narratives, but much is still left to conjecture. That the two opposing forces must have been enormously disproportioned in strength, is clear. Oswy had had little time for preparation, the condition of his kingdom could not have admitted of the perfect equipment of his forces, and his own authority must have been at a somewhat low ebb in an age when powerful subjects were practically independent, and the kingship of a king depended largely upon his ability to reward his followers from the fruits of victory. Penda, on the other hand, was perhaps the greatest military commander of his day, his rule extended from the North Sea to the frontiers of Wales, and his long and uninterrupted career of victory offered every inducement to enlistment under his banner. No less than thirty kings, as they are called by the chronicler,-Thanes that is of sufficient importance to hold themselves as semi-independent by reason of the number of the forces they held under their command-followed him in this expedition. Florence of Worcester describes Penda as having mustered thirty legions, while Oswy, with his son Alfred, had but one; a statement which may very likely be exaggerated but which expresses at any rate an extraordinary discrepancy between the two armies. They met on the 15th November, at Winwœdfeld, or Wingfield, on the northern side of the river Winwœed, now called the Aire, and at no great distance from the modern Leeds.*

* The exact locality of this battle is a point which it would be very gratifying to settle, but which at present is quite obscure.

Thoresby says the Wenwoed is the Aire and the place Wingfield near Leeds. Whitaker says that "Aire" is a British name and therefore not likely to have been superseded and revived again. He suggests the Wint, a much smaller stream to the S. E. of Leeds.

I venture a suggestion of my own which is at present but pure conjecture. Nennius, in his generally incoherent and valueless chronicle has a singular passage relating to this battle and seeming to point to the possession of original information. He says the Thanes and Penda had reached the city

Details of the conduct of the battle we have none, but its result could scarcely have been more conclusive. The Northumbrians must have fought with a fury which more than compensated for all the deficiency of their numbers, and which bore down all opposition. The slaughter was terrible. Nearly the whole of the thirty great thanes who had followed Penda perished, and at last the stout old heathen himself, fighting savagely as we may be sure to the last, was overthrown, and his bloody head, severed from the body, raised aloft as a token of victory to the Northumbrians, and of despair to the Mercian invaders. The rout became complete. Encumbered by their very numbers, disorganized by the loss of their commanders, and trampling each other in their confusion, the Mercians were driven back in headlong flight. Behind them was an enemy nerved by the threefold stimulus of revenge, of religious enthusiasm, and of unexpected victory;-before them the river, swollen by heavy rains, and cutting off their retreat. We may readily imagine what the pen of the chronicler could but imperfectly have depicted. Bloody as the fight had been, the broad, flooded stream of the Winwæd claimed a yet heavier tribute of death; and ere the night fell Northumbria was free, the course of Christianity in England open, and Paganism, as a power to be feared, had passed from our land for ever.

So completely was the power of Mercia broken by this crushing defeat that the entire kingdom fell for some time into the hands of Oswy, who ruled that portion which lay adjacent to his own dominions in person, and gave the Southern districts to his son-inlaw Peada, Penda's son. The conversion of Mercia followed quite as a matter of course, and with a rapidity somewhat startling to our notions. By conversion, in such a case, is meant of course principally the formal change of the government religion, the introduction of Christian teachers, the foundation of churches and of

of Judeu, and describing the battle he says "and now took place the slaughter of Gai Campus."

I have seen no endeavour to identify Judeu, and Gai Campus. May not Dewsbury represent the one, and Gawthorpe (which seems a very fair translation of Gai Campus) the other? If so the river would be the Calder, and the site close to Mirfield the supposed scene of Oswald's defeat and death.

monasteries, and other such outward changes as can be effected by authority. It seems however only fair to say that the Saxons displayed almost everywhere a remarkable and judicial calmness with regard to the introduction of the new faith, which must have freed them from much prejudice, and permitted their perception of its superiority to be unusually easy and rapid. Their race was, and is, one with remarkable capacity for solid improvement, improvement indeed perhaps sometimes all the more solid because its course is somewhat deliberate. By the end of the sixth century they would seem really to have outgrown the heathenism which so exactly suited their old life, or, to speak more correctly, which had so accurately expressed their old life; and they were ripe for the change to the more elevated beliefs of a purer faith. Willingness to be taught would seem to have been far more plentiful than opportunities to learn, and the deficiency of ecclesiastics fit to undertake responsible office is a frequent subject of complaint to the old chroniclers. Still, amidst many difficulties and much, no doubt, that was purely formal, the introduction of Christianity into Mercia seems to have been the veritable acceptance of a living faith. Here and there a great noble, or now and then even a king, might renounce his baptism and relapse into paganism,—but this was a mere expression of the fact that his life could by no manner of means be brought into decent accordance with the former. Faith was in no wise concerned in such a change, which was purely personal, and never affected the great mass of the people at all. It is a very easy thing to ridicule wholesale conversions, but when wholesale conversion means the change from a rule of life which is gross and abominable, to a rule of life which is pure and spiritual, such a change, however induced, cannot but be a source of infinite good. The conversion of a large population as the immediate result of a pitched battle, is assuredly discordant to any rational system of Christian theology: but Providence is not hampered by our prejudices, and sometimes permits great blessings to flow through unwonted channels. That the change in the Mercian national faith was a great, and an immediate blessing I cannot for a moment doubt, nor do I quite see how,-with a monarch such as