Mr. Hutton, who examined the remains of Offa’s dyke in 1803, says “the traveller would pass it unheeded if not pointed out. All that remains is a small hollow which runs along the cultivated fields, perhaps not eighteen inches deep in the centre, nor of more than twenty yards width.”—Travels in Wales, 221.
For fuller particulars of Offa’s conquests, see also Matth. Westm. 275–9. Chron. Mailros, 138. Sax. Chron., 61. Bromton, 770. Hen. Huntingdon, 343. Flor. Wig., 778. Hoveden, 409. Sim. Dunelm: 107. 118. Watts’s ed. Matth. Paris, 975. Holinshed, b. 6. ch. 4.
In policy as in arms Offa proved himself equally successful. When he had been about ten years on the throne he made an attempt to deprive Iambertus, or Lambert, Archbishop of Canterbury, of his province, and, “contrary to the customs of antiquity,” to erect Lichfield into an Archiepiscopate. Although the clergy and natives of Kent were naturally opposed to an innovation which so materially affected their ecclesiastical importance, the king of Mercia succeeded in obtaining from Pope Adrian the First permission to prosecute his design; and the bishops of Worcester, Leicester, Chester, and Hereford, and of the East-Angles Helmham with Norfolk, and Domuck, or Donwich, with Suffolk, were, some years later, subjected to the Bishop of Lichfield: London, however, Rochester, Winchester, and Sherbourn remained in the diminished province of Canterbury.[6]
[6] V. Matth. West. A. D. 765. Tanner’s Notitia Monastica XVII. Staffordshire I.
Holinshed thus writes: “Eadulphus, bishop of Lichfield, was adorned with the pall and taken for archbishop, having all those bishops within the limits of king Offa his dominion suffragans unto him; namelie, Denebertus, bishop of Worcester, Werebertus, bishop of Chester, Eadulphus, bishop of Dorchester, Wilnardus, bishop of Hereford, Halard, bishop of Eltham and Cedferth, Tedfrid, bishop of Donwich.” “But (as saith another writer, Will. of Malmsbury,) this iniquity did not long deform canonical institutions.” Kenulph, second in succession from Offa, restored Athelard, or Ethelard, to the privileges of the See of Canterbury; and the same king in a letter to Leo, the then reigning Pope, professes his sense of the impropriety of Offa’s conduct, and his willingness to submit in ecclesiastical matters to the example of antiquity and of the Pope.
A correspondence, still extant, which took place between Offa and the emperor[7] Charlemagne, serves to throw some light on the complexion of the times; and the fact of its existence may be deemed a valuable compliment to the talents, the power, and the reputation of the Anglo-Saxon. How their acquaintance commenced is uncertain: but the fact of Alcuin, an English clergyman, having been preceptor to the emperor is sufficient to account for his being favorably inclined to the nation that gave his tutor birth.[8]
[7] The following is the greeting of Charlemagne to Offa: “Karolus gratiâ Dei rex Francorum et Longobardorum et Patricius Romanorum, viro venerando, et fratri karissimo Offæ regi Merciorum, salutem.” Cont. Hist. of Bede (incerto auctore), b. 1. ch. 14. See also Leland’s Collectanea, vol. 1.
[8] The anonymous biographer of Offa, who records his miraculous metamorphosis, states that the five kings to whom Offa soon became formidable after his elevation to the crown of Mercia, sought aid from Charles the Great of France (probably Carloman, the brother and predecessor of Charlemagne is meant), who promised to protect them, and wrote to Offa accordingly. The sovereign of Mercia, however, spurned his threats, and proceeded to effect his conquests. Carloman in the meanwhile dying, left his kingdom to Charlemagne, to whom the five kings repeated their supplications for aid, which was again promised, and Charlemagne wrote enjoining Offa to desist from attacking them. “Quid nobis rex transmarinus?” was the lofty remark of the Mercian king, and he proceeded undaunted in the prosecution of his designs. Some time subsequent to these events, Offa is stated (and in this Speeds’s Chronicle follows the Monk of St. Albans) to have written to Charlemagne with the design of procuring his friendship and alliance; and to this epistle he received a favourable reply, which led to a friendship and correspondence between the two potentates. Vide also Will. Malmesbury in Savile’s Collection, 32.
The friendship of monarchs, however, from its intimate connexion with political expediency, is necessarily unstable: nor was that of Offa and Charlemagne without interruption. The Frank desired the hand of a daughter of Offa for his natural son Charles; but this the Mercian sovereign refused unless Bertha, the daughter of the emperor of the west, were bestowed upon Egfrid his own son and heir. The demand excited the anger of Charlemagne; and, in consequence, disregarding the wise remonstrances of his council, he closed the ports of Gaul against the merchants of Anglo-Saxon Britain.[9] In consequence of this hasty and decisive step, Offa was apprehensive of invasion from his indignant foe, and this anticipation of evil was increased, by the knowledge that he afforded his powerful protection to some Anglo-Saxon malcontents. Lambert, the Saxon Primate, was suspected of being privy to the emperor’s designs, and this afforded a pretext (if indeed it were not really the reason) for removing the Archiepiscopate from Canterbury to Lichfield. After some lapse of time, however, concord was restored between the regal friends, through the mediation of Alcuin and the abbot Gervald[10]. The former of these (one of the most interesting and learned characters of that age) had not escaped the imputation of treasonable designs—an imputation which he repels with great simplicity and apparent honesty in the words addressed to a friend, “Vere Offæ regi nec genti Anglorum unquam infidelis fui!” His embassy from the court of his adopted to that of his natural sovereign was accompanied by gifts which were thus symbolically interpreted;
“A Carlo dona data sunt Offæ, mucro, zona;