Introduction.

all the predominance of power was in the hands of Angles. For the first eighty years of the seventh century, under Eadwine, Oswald, and Oswio, it was in the hands of Northhumbrian Angles, in spite of the growing Mercian rivalry and occasional Mercian victories. For the next hundred years it was in the hands of Mercia; that is, it was transferred from the northern to the southern Angle power. Meanwhile the great Saxon power, Wessex, had been steadily growing; and at the outset of the ninth century it gained the absolute dominion, which it kept with hardly a check for upwards of two hundred years.

Why Beda called his book ‘The Church History of the Angle Nation.’

It was just at the end of the period of Northhumbrian pre-eminence that Beda was born. We should not therefore be surprised to find that in his eyes the nation is a nation of Angles, inhabiting an island in which Saxons are a tribe of only secondary importance. This seems to be the true explanation of the name which he gave to his Church History—the History of the Angle Nation, ‘Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum’ Ecclesiastical History of the English People. As between the Northhumbrians and Mercians the superiority for the greater part of the period of which he writes undoubtedly lies with the Northhumbrians; though it had passed into the hands of the Mercians by the time at which his history was written.

The two great Churchmen of the age natives of Northumberland :

§ III. Meantime Christianity was bearing good fruit all over the island. But it so happened that the two greatest Churchmen of the age were both the produce of Northumberland. These two were Wilfrith of York and the Venerable Beda—as different in their lives and occupations as could be—one an active stirring missionary, a very knight-errant of the Gospel; the other a learned student, who, so far as we know, never travelled beyond his native province. It is striking to find such a pair in the very infancy of the English Church.

Wilfrith was born only seven years after the general con-