TREATY OF HENGIST AND HORSA WITH VORTIGERN. (See p. [27.])

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Northumbria was also an Anglian settlement, with an admixture of Frisians, on the banks of the Forth. We know little, however, of the manner in which the two great divisions grew up—Bernicia, including the whole of the country from the Forth to the Tees, with Edinburgh as its capital; and Deira, founded by Ida in 547, answering, roughly speaking, to Yorkshire, with York as its chief town. These two kingdoms were sometimes united under one king; sometimes separate. The first king over all Northumbria was Ethelfrith (600). It is important to notice that the Lowland Scots are as purely English as the people of London; and, curiously enough, we are in ignorance of the date when the present boundary line between the two kingdoms became in any way fixed. The separation probably did not occur before the time of Canute the Dane.

The last of the English kingdoms to be formed was that of Mercia, the march or border-land. It probably owed its origin to the gradual combination of a number of smaller kingdoms, and extended over the greater part of the midlands.

Thus was founded what is sometimes called the Heptarchy; but wrongly so: in the first place, because the word does not mean "seven kingdoms," but "the rule of seven persons;" and in the second, because the number of kingdoms in England was never fixed, but was sometimes fewer than seven, sometimes more. It will be noticed that the Britons, or Welsh, still had possession of an unbroken territory, extending over the whole of the west of England and Scotland. It included Devon, Cornwall, and the greater part of Somerset, the whole of the country west of the Severn, part of Chester, Lancashire, Westmoreland, and Cumberland, and the whole of the south-west of Scotland, which was called the kingdom of Strathclyde. The Celtic inhabitants of the Scottish Highlands were also unsubdued; and for many years the English fought against the Welsh and between themselves.

The first of the Anglo-Saxon or English kingdoms (to give them the more generally accepted title) to acquire a definite superiority was that of Kent; but it soon gave way to the rising power of Northumbria. Nevertheless, the period of Kentish ascendency is one of great importance, for it witnessed the conversion of England to Christianity. Ethelbert, who reigned from 560 to 616, was the first prominent English king after the various sovereignties had taken shape and consistency. He married a Christian princess, Bertha, the daughter of Charibert, king of the Franks. But although she was allowed to exercise her religion, it does not appear that the new faith made any sensible progress until, in the year 597, Pope Gregory the Great determined to send a monk, named Augustine, to preach the Gospel in the land of the heathen English. The beautiful story of the means by which Gregory's attention was called to this distant land is well known. Before he became Pope, it chanced one day that he was walking in the market-place at Rome and saw some fair boys exposed for sale as slaves. His curiosity aroused, he asked of what nation they came. "They are Angles," was the reply. "Non Angli sed Angeli" ("They are not Angles, but angels"), said Gregory, "and should be the co-heirs of the angels in heaven. But of what tribe are they?" "Of Deira." "Then must they be delivered de ira Dei (from the wrath of God). And who is their king?" "Ella," was the answer. "Then," said Gregory, "shall Alleluia be sung in his land."

When Gregory became Pope he was not long in making good the promise, as far as in him lay.

Augustine's task was easy; Ethelbert permitted him and his comrades to dwell at Canterbury and preach to the people. After a while he went back to the Continent to be consecrated bishop; and on his return, made the church at Canterbury the cathedral of his diocese, whence Canterbury is still the metropolitan see of all England. Although Christianity had been exterminated by the invaders, its dying embers were rekindled among the Welsh by missionaries from the Continent, and an attempt was now made to agree upon a basis of union for the two churches. For this purpose a meeting was arranged between Augustine and the Welsh bishops at a spot on the banks of the Severn, and a conference was held. But although the points of difference were slight, neither side would yield; and so the two churches remained separate.

The greatness of Kent did not endure long after the landing of Augustine, for in 616 Ethelbert, who had been over-king of the whole of England as far north as the Humber, died; and his son Eadbald proved an inferior ruler, and even relapsed into paganism. It was to the north that the balance of power now inclined, where Edwin of Deira became King of Northumbria, having overthrown his rival, Ethelfrith of Bernicia, in a great battle, on the banks of the Idle (617). His marriage with Ethelberga, the daughter of Ethelbert of Kent, led to the conversion of Northumbria to Christianity. She brought with her a priest named Paulinus, and he rapidly succeeded in persuading the people to adopt Christianity. The story of the king taking counsel with his aldermen and wise men concerning the new faith which was preached in their midst, and the fine speech made by one of the thegns, in which he compared the life of man to the flight of a sparrow from the darkness into a warm room at wintertime, and thence out into the darkness and storm again, is told us by Bede in his Ecclesiastical History of the Nation of the English. "So it is," said the noble, "with the life of man; it endures but for a moment, and we know not at all of what goeth before it and what cometh after it. Therefore, if these strangers can tell us anything that we may know whence a man cometh, and whither he goeth, let us hear them and follow their law." So Northumbria became Christian for the time being, and a church was built at York with Paulinus as its bishop. But in 633 Edwin was defeated and slain at Heathfield by the King of the Welsh, and Penda the heathen king of Mercia, and the country relapsed for a time into heathendom, until Oswald, Edwin's nephew, known as St. Oswald, brought St. Aidan, a Scottish bishop, to Northumbria, and founded the see of Lindisfarne, in Holy Island, off the Northumbrian coast. There the holy St. Cuthbert lived, until his death in 687, and, going forth over all Northumbria, converted vast numbers of men and women.