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Editha will tell you that my father was Earl of Northumbria, and my mother a princess of the royal blood of Alfred." Helga uttered an exclamation of surprise and interest; but he would not deign to look at her. For a while longer Rolf hesitated, looking long and strangely at Egil, and long and keenly at Sigurd. But at last he put forth his huge paw.

All eyes turned on the speaker as fittest to undertake the abandoned mission, and Aidan sailing at their bidding fixed his bishop's see in the island-peninsula of Lindisfarne. Thence, from a monastery which gave to the spot its after name of Holy Island, preachers poured forth over the heathen realms. Aidan himself wandered on foot, preaching among the peasants of Yorkshire and Northumbria.

Then Cnut fell on York, and Utred of Northumbria, whose wife was Danish, submitted to him, and was slain by Streone's advice, as men say, though some say that he was slain by Thorkel the Jarl when he took the ships that tried to escape from the Humber. It may be thus. The shipmen fought well, and were all slain sixty ships' crews.

By this time all resistance to the Danes in Mercia had ceased. Again and again King Burhred had bought them off, but this only brought fresh hordes down upon him, and at last, finding the struggle hopeless, he had gone as a pilgrim to Rome, where he had died. The Danes acted in Mercia as they had done in Northumbria.

Caedmon was a peasant, a farm laborer in Northumbria working on the lands of the great Abbey at Whitby. Already he had passed middle life, and no spark of genius had flashed in him. He loved to go to the festive gatherings and hear the others sing their improvised poems; but, when the harp came around to him in due course, he would leave the room, for be could not sing.

The old demarcations of the heptarchy, as thou knowest, are scarce worn out; it is even now less one monarchy, than various states retaining their own laws, and inhabitated by different races, who under the sub-kings, called earls, acknowledge a supreme head in the Basileus of Britain. Mercia hath its March law and its prince; Northumbria its Dane law and its leader.

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.

Northumbria, Mercia, and East Anglia have one by one been invaded, and their kings have had to fight single-handed against them, whereas had one strong king reigned over the whole country, so that all our force could have been exerted against the invader wherever he might land, the Danes would never have won a foot of our soil.

In its complete condition it must have been at least twenty-one feet high. A runic inscription on the west side records that it was erected "in memory of Alchfrith lately king" of Northumbria. He was the son of Oswy, the friend and patron of St.

They had fattened on the contributions of princes and of the credulous people; they saw the destruction of their richest and proudest abbeys, and their lands seized by Pagan barbarians, who settled down in them as lords of the soil, especially in Northumbria. But Alfred at least arrested their further progress, and threw them on the defensive.