Introduction.

both the thane who was the spokesman of Eadwine’s gemót assembly, and Cefig the high-priest, declared themselves dissatisfied with the popular religion, and willing to receive any other which contained fairer promises. Eadwine of Northhumbria was baptized A.D. 627 ; and Blæcca the ealdorman nobleman/magistrate of Lindsey about A.D. 630. Mercia, the heathen power which longest resisted the Gospel, fell under its sway in A.D. 656.

The Saxons were less eager in receiving Christianity.

Among the Saxons Christianity did not meet with so eager a reception. As early as A.D. 604, Augustinus had attacked them by consecrating Mellitus to be Bishop of the East Saxons. Sæberht, their king, Æthelberht’s nephew, was baptized ; but under his sons the kingdom fell away, and was not recovered till A.D. 653. This was not an encouraging beginning, and seems to have checked the zeal of the Archbishops of Canterbury, so that no other effort of any magnitude was made in the direction of the Saxons. Wessex, Sussex, and Essex were in total darkness till almost the middle of the seventh century. When Wessex was converted, A.D. 634, it was not by the efforts of its Christian neighbours in Kent, but by a fresh mission from Rome. Nay, it seems as if Birinus himself had intended to penetrate into Mercia, and was only stopped among the Gewissas the West Saxons by the fact of finding them ‘paganissimi’ most pagan. Sussex, the latest heathen country in England, was not converted till Bishop Wilfrith preached there in A.D. 681.

The Angles at this time the more politically powerful of the two.

The Angle tribes also were more politically powerful in England, as it began to be called from them, than their Saxon neighbours, as well as more widely extended, and more eager in the reception of Christianity. Roughly speaking, we may call the three hundred and fifty years which commonly are known as the ‘Period of the Heptarchy,’ by the name of the ‘Period of Angle dominance.’ With the exception of one or two detached Saxon kings (such as were Ælle of Sussex, and Ceaulin of Wessex),