[98] This is not quite correct: Osbald was elected by a party to succeed him; but after a very short period he was deposed, and the government devolved on Eardulf. Eardulf after a few years was driven into exile; went to Rome, and, it would seem, was restored to his kingdom, by the influence of Charlemagne, A.D. 808. V. Sim. Dunelm. col. 117, and Eginhardi Annales, Duchesne, 2, 255.
[99] It would appear that Penda was not the first king, but the first of any note. Hen. Huntingdon assigns the origin of the kingdom to about the year 584 under Crida, who was succeeded, in the year 600, by Pybba; Ceorl came to the throne in 610, and Penda in 626. See H. Hunt, f. 181, 184—b.
[100] King of the Britons, see Bede, b. ii. ch. 20. It was by his assistance that Cadwalla defeated Edwin, king of Northumbria, at Hatfield, Oct. 12, A.D. 633.
[101] This was by paying to his relatives his weregild, or the legal price of his blood; for all, from the king to the slave, had their established value. One moiety, only, of the weregild went to the family of the murdered person; the other went into the public purse.
[102] Ethelbald had been frequently exhorted by the king to make confession of his transgressions, but had constantly declined it. At last being seized with sickness, he appears to have imagined that he saw two angels approach with a very small volume, in which were written the few good actions he had ever performed; when immediately a large company of demons advancing, display another book of enormous bulk and weight, containing all his evil deeds, which are read to him; after which, asserting their claim to the sinner against the angels, they strike him on the head and feet, as symptoms of his approaching end. Bede, b. v. c. 13.
[103] Boniface, whose original name was Winfred, after unwearied labour in the conversion of various nations in Germany, by which he acquired the honourable appellation of Apostle of the Germans, at length suffered martyrdom in Friesland. A collected edition of his works forms volumes xv. and xvi. of Patres Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ by the editor of this work. One of the original churches, built by him in Saxony, still exists in the Duchy of Gotha, at a little village called Gierstedt.
[104] See this epistle at length in Spelmanni Concilia, vol. i. page 232, and reprinted by Wilkins, Concilia, i. 87, also in Bonifacii Opera, &c.
[105] The Winedi were seated on the western bank of the Vistula, near the Baltic. In Wilkins, it is “apud Persas,” among the Persians.
[106] Lullus was appointed his successor by Boniface, on setting out for Friesland, in 755; he died A.D. 785.
[107] The value of the mancus is doubtful; sometimes it appears to mean the same with the mark, at others it is supposed equal to thirty pence of the money of that time. The gold manca is supposed to be eight to the pound, which was probably the coin sent to the pope.