Ealhfrith, a son of King Oswy, but not by Eanflaed, succeeded his brother Egfrith, and retrieved the ruined state of the kingdom. He had been instructed by St. Wilfrid, and was very learned in the Scriptures. Adamnan, the Abbot of Iona, was ambassador at Ealhfrith's court, and presented a book he had written on the Holy Places to that King, who sent him back to his country well rewarded. In 697 Osfrith, Queen of the Mercians, sister of Egfrith and grandchild of King Edwin, was murdered, but the circumstances are not related. Her husband Ethelred abdicated in 704 and became a monk at Bardney, where he died in 716. Their son Coelred succeeded his cousin Kenred as King of Mercia in 709, and dying in 716, he was buried at Lichfield. Coelred survived his aunt Elflaed by two years, and was thus the last descendant of King Edwin.
King Ealhfrith of Northumbria died at Driffield in 709, and was succeeded by his son Osred, who was then eight years of age. When only fifteen, he appears to have been murdered, and a usurper named Coenred, or Kenred, seized the government and held it for two years. He was followed by a king named Osric, who reigned for eleven years, when he is said to have been slain. Then, in 731, King Ceolwulf became ruler of Northumbria, and reigned until 739. He was not of the family of Oswy, but was descended directly from Ida, the first King of Bernicia. He became a monk in 739, leaving the kingdom to his cousin Eadbert, whose brother was Egbert, the Archbishop of York. This learned prelate collected a large library, and ruled the see from 729 to 776. Alcuin was his scholar. Eadbert, after a reign of twenty years, also became a monk in 757, and died in 768.
The Ecclesiastical History of the Venerable Bede is the source whence nearly all the information respecting the historical persons in this story is derived. Bede was born during the reign of King Egfrith in 673, in the country between the Tyne and the Wear. Egfrith granted a tract of land to a friend of his named Biscop in 675, on which he founded Wearmouth; and in 682 Biscop erected the monastery of Jarrow on the banks of the Tyne, and became abbot under the name of Benedict. This remarkable man travelled several times to Rome, bringing back books and works of art, masons and glaziers. Bede lived in the monastery of Jarrow all his life, from the age of seven. He received instruction in theology and the Scriptures from Trumhere, the son of Lilla and Bergliot, then very old, who thus trained him for his future historical labours. Bede was ordained priest in 705, during the reign of King Ealhfrith of Northumbria, by John, Bishop of Hexham, better known as John of Beverley. Bede seldom left his monastery, but he certainly paid a visit to Archbishop Egbert at York, and was also most probably the occasional guest of Ceolwulf, King of Northumbria, who was a man of singular learning and a great patron of literature. It was Ceolwulf who requested Bede to write the ecclesiastical history, and to whom Bede sent the sheets for his perusal. The great historian died on the 26th of May 735, four years before the retirement of King Ceolwulf into a monastery.
Bede wrote his history about a century after the death of Edwin the Great. He received his education from the son of Lilla, and derived his materials for the Northumbrian part of his history from the chronicle of Sivel. It was providential that such a man should have arisen at such a juncture, gifted with talent and ardour in the pursuit of learning, and that the times should have been favourable for the composition and preservation of his work. He lived under the reigns of enlightened Kings of Northumbria, whose culture was due to the impetus given to progress by Edwin and his paladins. To one of those kings, the good Ceolwulf, he dedicated his history. He enjoyed the friendship of the best and most learned of the Archbishops of York before the conquest, Egbert, the brother of Eadbert the King. He was furnished with materials from many quarters. But for Bede's history, written under these favourable circumstances, we should know nothing of the early proceedings of the makers of England, nothing of the story of Edwin the Great.
In spite of the excessive number of monkish miracles he records, which testify to his simplicity, and show that he was not in advance of his contemporaries in the matter of credulity, Bede is transparently honest. His authorities are perfectly safe in his hands, and he gives all his information without a word of alteration. The confidence we may justly repose in its author increases the interest as well as the value of the earliest of our histories.
THE END
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