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I thought that the Princess Etheldrida would be there also, for beside the king was Ecgfrith the atheling; but she was not. They say that she had some maidenly fear of meeting this husband of hers, who was to be, in the open court thus.
To this island came King Ecgfrith of Northumbria with Archbishop Trumwine and other representatives of the Synod to beg the hermit to accept the Bishopric of Hexham; and it was on this island that St. Cuthbert died, the monks who had gone to look after him signalling the news of his death to his brethren at Lindisfarne by means of torches.
In spite however of this rapid recovery of its strength by Mercia, Northumbria remained the dominant state in Britain: and Ecgfrith, who succeeded Oswiu in 670, so utterly defeated Wulfhere when war broke out between them that he was glad to purchase peace by the surrender of Lincolnshire.
I heard the same good words of her only brother, Ecgfrith, and I suppose that those two bore more likeness to their mighty father than to the queen. All this half-stifled talk of untold ill from Quendritha lay heavy on my mind; and it came to me that Sighard was a true man, and that to him I might tell the tale Thrond told me.
Oswin, conspicuous on its bold headland, could not hope to escape their ravages. It was destroyed by the fierce invaders; but King Ecgfrith of Northumbria restored the shattered shrine. Again, in the year 865, it was sacked and burnt, and the poor nuns of St. Hilda, who had already fled from Hartlepool to Tynemouth hoping to find safety, were ruthlessly slain and earned the crown of martyrdom.
"If this young king were to die, the crown he wears with so good a grace would then fall to you," says the queen, coldly enough. "Heaven forbid that so fair a life were cut short! Do not speak so of what may not be for many a long year, as one may hope." "Then if he outlives you, he will make a bid for Mercia." "Nay, but he is loyal, and Ecgfrith will be his brother.
A quarrel in the Northumbrian kingdom was the cause which sent a missionary to Sussex in 680 A.D. Ecgfrith and his witan had banished #Wilfrith#, Archbishop of York, from his see. The unfortunate exile wandered some time in search of welcome. Eventually he found his way to Sussex, where Aethelwealh and his Christian wife offered him a new field for his energies.
Three kings sat on the high place, for Ecgfrith reigned with his father; and there was the queen, and she who should be a queen before many days had gone by. It was the word of all that those two, Ethelbert and the princess, were the most royal of all who were present, whether in word or in look, and in all the wide hall there was not one who did not hail the marriage with pleasure.
It may have been the example of the West-Saxons which spurred Ecgfrith to a series of attacks upon his British neighbours in the west which widened the bounds of his kingdom. His reign marks the highest pitch of Northumbrian power. His armies chased the Britons from the kingdom of Cumbria, and made the district of Carlisle English ground.
In a few days more a solitary fugitive escaped from the slaughter told that the Picts had turned desperately to bay as the English army entered Fife; and that Ecgfrith and the flower of his nobles lay, a ghastly ring of corpses, on the far-off moorland of Nectansmere.
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