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Updated: June 20, 2025
A reconquest of Kent in 775 woke anew the jealousy of the West-Saxons; and though Offa defeated their army at Bensington in 779 the victory was followed by several years of inaction. It was not till Wessex was again weakened by fresh anarchy that he was able in 794 to seize East-Anglia and restore his realm to its old bounds under Wulfhere. Further he could not go.
But those which I met with either of the days of me, my kinsman, or of Offa, King of Mercia, or of Aethelbert, who was the first of the English who received baptism thse which appeared to me the justest I have here collected, and abandoned the others. Then I, Alfred, King of the West Saxons, showed these to all my Witan, and they then said that they were all willing to observe them."
Oswald was never heard of again; but after his supposed death, information was brought to his father that the outlaw had been married to a Danish woman, and had left a son an orphan for the mother died in childbirth. Offa resolved to seek the boy, and to adopt him, as if in reparation for the past. The effort he had made had cost him a bitter pang, and the father's heart was well-nigh broken.
It was not long ere Egbert had opportunities of displaying his natural and acquired talents. Brithric, King of Wessex, had married Eadburga, natural daughter of Offa, King of Mercia, a profligate woman, equally infamous for cruelty and for incontinence.
"He is a good prince and honourable," he said; "and if I say that, I speak of one who is the foe of our folk. He has suffered much from us, and has cause for enmity with Offa and maybe with Quendritha. I can say plainly now that her restless longing for power has kept our armies busy many a time when they had been better at rest."
Thus she has made out of the very weakness of her position a paramount tower of strength. Naval defense was taken up systematically in Great Britain in the eighth century by King Offa, to whom is credited the maxim, "He who would be secure on land must be supreme at sea"; but it must have dropped to a low ebb by 1066, for William of Normandy landed in England unopposed.
"What says he of the men?" he asked. And when I told him he was well content, saying that from high to low all had a warm welcome for our king. But even now Offa rises from the table and leaves the hall, all men rising with him. So he passes out of the door on the high place and seeks his own chamber, and there to him comes Quendritha.
"It came from the wondering why Offa let so mean a church stand, and from the horns, and from my speaking your name. Strange how things like that will weave themselves into the mind of a sleeping man to make a wonder." "It is a good dream," said Selred the priest, after a moment's thought. I doubt not that it was in your mind to give some gift to the church.
However, he asked me a few questions about the life in Carl's court, and so on, until he learned that I was a Wessex man, and that I was not going back to him. "Then you are at a loose end for the time?" he said. "Why not take service here with Offa?" "I am for home so soon as this is over," I said. "If all is well there, I have no need to serve any man."
I had no thought that Offa seemed otherwise than as we met him yesterday, and I suppose that all thought, or perhaps all remembrance, of what he and his queen had talked of last night had gone from him. Gay and friendly he was, and we heard him jesting lightly with Ethelbert as they led us.
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