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Twelve hundred of the student-monks of Bangor, for example, were slaughtered in 613 by the Saxon Ethelfrith; whereafter the rest fled to Bardsey Island in Cardigan Bay, and the great college at Bangor ceased to be. Augustine of Canterbury, sent by the Pope to convert the English, had summoned the Welsh bishops to a conference, and ordered them to come under his sway and conform to Rome.
"The queen," answered Bethoc, "the wife of the mighty Ethelfrith, she calleth thee, she invoketh thine aid. The strongest spirits obey thee the spirits of the earth, of the air, and of the sea. Then help me, thou that art more powerful than the kings of the earth, that art stronger than the fate of the stars; help rid me of mine enemy whom I hate, even of Agitha, the daughter of the king.
Here a pretty bridge crosses the river, and a modern church is the most prominent structure in the village. The old monastery is said to have been the home of twenty-four hundred monks, one half of whom were slain in a battle near Chester by the heathen king Ethelfrith, who afterwards sacked the monastery, but the Welsh soon gathered their forces again and took terrible vengeance.
Then there was weeping and dolor out of measure. Malory's Morte d'Arthur. Ethelfrith, who succeeded Ethelric, gave the fort to his second wife, Bebba, after whom it was named Bebbanburgh, which soon became Bamburgh.
Dismay and wonder spread over the land for a tale was told of a serpent-worm, fearful in magnitude and of monstrous form, which was seen at Spindleston, by the cave of Elgiva the worker of wonders the woman of power. The people trembled. They said of the monster "It is Agitha, the beloved! the daughter of our king, of conquering Ethelfrith.
On the accession of Edwin, Oswald, son of Ethelfrith, had fled from Bernicia and taken refuge with the monks of Iona, living with them till the time came for him to rule Northumbria in his turn.
"Yea, thy mother," answered the enchantress; "who, when her warrior husband fell, fled to the desert, to the cave, and to the forest, for protection even for protection from the love and from the wrath of Ethelfrith the fierce, the brother of thy warrior father, whose eyes were as the eagle's, and his arm great of strength. Uncouth is the habit, wild is the figure, and idle the art of thy mother.
Their reigns were as six spans from an infant's hand, and peaceful as an infant's slumber. But to them succeeded Ethelfrith the Fierce the grandson of Ida the descendant of the immortal Woden. His voice, when his ire was kindled, was like the sound of deep thunder, and his vengeance fleeter than the lightning. He overthrew princes as reeds, and he swept armies before him as stubble.
She is lovely as the moon when it blesseth the harvest fields. A king only shall possess her hand, and give a kingdom in exchange for it." Thus spoke her father, the mighty Ethelfrith, whose word was power, and whose purpose was fixed as the everlasting rocks on which the foundations of the earth are built.
After the Anglo-Saxon conquest of the North of England the country between the Tweed and the Humber was divided into two kingdoms, Bernicia to the north of the Tees, and Deira to the south. In the reign of Ethelfrith these two kingdoms were united, under the name of Northumbria. Edwin, his successor, was the most powerful king in England, and every state except Kent acknowledged his supremacy.
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