KING EGFRID AND THREE GREAT CHURCHMEN: WILFRID THEODORE, CUTHBERT.
The purely political events of the reign of Egfrid, as far as we know
them, are soon told. Coming to the throne, as we have seen, in the year
671, he reigned for fourteen years. At the very beginning of his reign
he gained (says Wilfrid’s biographer) a great victory over “the bestial
hordes of the Picts who, chafing at their subjection to the Saxons and
hoping to throw off the yoke of servitude,” mustered “like a swarm of
ants under the leadership of an audacious chieftain named Bernhaeth,
but were attacked by Egfrid at the head of his cavalry and utterly
routed. So great was the slaughter that two rivers were filled with the
corpses of the slain, and the victorious Northumbrians passed dry-shod
over them in pursuit of the foe.” About four years later, apparently,
Egfrid fought Wulfhere, King of the Mercians, defeated him and put
him to flight, and thus won back that debatable land, the province of
Lindsey. In 679 he fought a great battle on the banks of the Trent with
Ethelred, Wulfhere’s brother and successor, who had married his sister
Osthryd. The victory in this battle perhaps remained doubtful, but it
brought sore distress in its train, for in it fell Egfrid’s brother
Alfwin, under-king of Deira, a youth eighteen years of age, who was, we
are told, “much beloved by both provinces”. It seemed as though this
calamity would cause the flame of war to burn more fiercely than ever
between the Northumbrian and the Mercian kings, but the Archbishop
Theodore interposed his peaceful counsels. The amount of _wergeld_ to
be paid as compensation for the death of Alfwin was arranged by him.
Lindsey was probably handed back to Mercia, and a treaty of peace,
which remained unbroken for many years, was concluded between the two
kingdoms.
In the year 684, against the advice of St. Cuthbert and all his best
counsellors, King Egfrid, for reasons which we can only conjecture,
sent an army to Ireland and “miserably wasted that harmless nation
which hath ever been most friendly to the nation of the English; so
that not even churches and monasteries were spared by the hostile
band”. The Irish defended themselves to the best of their ability,
but had at last to take refuge in curses and prayers to heaven
for vengeance, the answer to which, in the opinion of the English
historian, was not long in coming. For in the next year Egfrid, again
refusing to listen to Cuthbert’s counsels, rashly ventured on an
expedition against the Picts dwelling north of the Firth of Forth. The
enemy, feigning flight, drew him into the recesses of the mountainous
country, then turned and fell upon him, cutting the greater part of his
army to pieces and slaying the king himself. The scene of this battle,
which was fought on May 20th, 685, is not mentioned by Bede, but is
given by other authorities as Nechtansmere or Nechtan’s Fort (Dûin
Nechtan), and is identified with Dunnichen, about five miles east of
Forfar.
By the battle of Nechtansmere Northumbria’s fair prospects of
permanently holding the hegemony of the English states were for ever
destroyed. “From that time,” says Bede, “the hopes and the manhood
of the Anglian [Northumbrian] kingdom began to dissolve and to fall
into ruin. For the Picts recovered the lands once possessed by them,
which the Angles had held; also the Scots [men of Dalriada] who were
in Britain, and a considerable part of the Britons recovered their
freedom. Many of the English nation were slain with the sword, or bound
to slavery or else escaped by flight from the land of the Picts.”
Among the latter was Trumwine, the Northumbrian Bishop of Abercorn
on the Forth, who fled from his see and had to beg for an asylum for
himself and his followers from the monks of Whitby. Apparently the
result of this battle was the loss by Northumbria of all the territory
north of the Cheviots and the Solway as well as of the southern part
of the kingdom of Strathclyde. The Northumbrian kingdom survived
indeed for some centuries and even recovered for a short time some
part of its lost territories, but it survived for the most part in
a maimed and enfeebled condition like the Athenian state after the
battle of Aegospotami. The prestige of the kingdom was gone; no more
did any great Bretwalda issue his commands to subject princes from
his rock-built palace at Bamburgh; and soon anarchy and intestine
feuds completed the ruin which had been begun on the fatal day of
Nechtansmere.
Such, as has been here indicated, is the short and disastrous political
history of Egfrid’s reign; but to understand its true significance we
must devote some attention to the biography of three great churchmen
whose lives were closely intertwined with that of the Northumbrian
king. They are:--
Wilfrid, who lived from 634 to 709; Theodore, who lived from 602 to
690; and Cuthbert, who lived from 630 to 687.
After Bishop Colman, disheartened by the defeat of his party in the
synod of Whitby, had left Northumbria and returned to Iona, an Irishman
named Tuda, an advocate for the Roman Easter, was consecrated as his
successor, but, as has been said, died almost immediately afterwards,
a victim to the plague which was ravaging England. On his death there
was a discussion between the Northumbrian kings and the Wise Men of the
kingdoms who should be elected to the vacant see. The choice naturally
fell on Wilfrid, the champion of the Roman cause, young, noble and
victorious. At the same time it seems to have been generally agreed
that the seat of the episcopate should be removed from sea-girdled
Lindisfarne, too full perhaps of the memories of Iona, to York, the
capital of Deira, the city whose walls and palaces, even in their ruin,
testified to the greatness of that Rome with whom Northumbria was now
entering into such full and perfect fellowship. Objecting, however,
that it was difficult to find in Britain bishops to perform the act of
consecration, who were not more or less tainted with what he called
the heresy of the Quarto-decimans, Wilfrid begged that he might be
sent to Gaul to receive consecration there from bishops in undoubted
communion with the Roman see. The kings consented: a ship, a retinue
of attendants and a large store of money were placed at Wilfrid’s
disposal that so the new bishop (whose preference through life was
always strongly marked for the gorgeous and the stately) “might arrive
in very honourable style in the region of Gaul”. The journey was
successfully performed: a great assembly of twelve bishops was convened
at Compiègne (664); among them Agilbert, late bishop of Dorchester, now
of Paris, Wilfrid’s ally at the Whitby synod, doubtless now rejoicing
at finding himself once more among men to whom his speech was not
strange. These men received Wilfrid in the presence of all the people
with demonstrations of high honour: they made him sit on a golden chair
which was then, according to their usual custom, lifted on high and
borne by the hands of bishops alone into the oratory, while hymns and
canticles sounded through the choir.
Were the stately ceremonies and the well-furnished episcopal dwellings
of Merovingian Gaul too attractive to the æsthetic soul of Wilfrid,
and was he loth to return to the rude wooden churches and the rough
untrained psalmody of his fatherland? This can only be conjectured,
but it seems certain that he committed one of the great errors of his
life by lingering too long, certainly for more than a year, in Gaul,
instead of returning at once to Northumbria and there beginning his
episcopal career. At last, in the year 666, he set sail for England,
accompanied, says his biographer, by 120 armed retainers besides his
clerical followers. The clergy sang loud their psalms, to cheer the
arms of the rowers, but in the midst of their psalmody a mighty tempest
arose and drove them on the coast of Sussex. The inhabitants, still
heathen and barbarous, flocked to the stranded vessel and began to
strip it of its treasures and to divide its passengers among them as
their slaves. Wilfrid offered them money and spoke words of peace and
conciliation, but the natives proudly answered, “All is ours that the
sea throws up on the shore”. Meanwhile, a priest of the Saxon idolatry,
standing on a high mound near the shore, ceased not to curse the
Christian strangers and sought by his magic arts to render vain their
efforts for deliverance. At last one of Wilfrid’s companions flung a
stone--“a stone,” says his biographer, “blessed by all the people of
God”--which hit the high priest on the head and wounded him to the
death. His fall discouraged the South Saxons; the 120 soldiers fought
bravely with the much larger forces of their foes; Wilfrid and his
clergy prayed like Moses, Aaron and Hur upon the mountain; the Saxons
were thrice repulsed, and at length victory, cheaply earned by the loss
of five of Wilfrid’s followers, crowned the exertions and the prayers
of the Northumbrians. A miraculously early tide floated the vessel off
the shore and she reached Sandwich without further misadventure.
But when at last Wilfrid reached his diocese, he found unpleasant
tidings awaiting him there. Weary of his long delay, King Oswy had
appointed Bishop Ceadda (famous in English hagiology as St. Chad) to
the bishopric of York. The act was certainly irregular, and Wilfrid had
good cause to complain, but with more meekness than might have been
looked for, he accepted the rebuff and retired to his dearly loved
monastery of Ripon, a place which more than all others, except perhaps
Hexham, was enriched by his labours and preserves his memory. Moreover,
at the request of Wulfhere of Mercia and Egbert of Kent he undertook
some volunteer episcopal work in those two kingdoms, travelling about
with his band of singers, masons, and teachers of every kind of art,
and everywhere founding monasteries or reforming them according to the
strict rule of St. Benedict which he had minutely studied at Canterbury.
After three years this parenthesis in Wilfrid’s life came to an end,
owing to the intervention of the new archbishop, Theodore, to whose
history we now turn. We have seen that the Kings of Northumbria and
Kent, taking counsel together after the death of Archbishop Deusdedit,
sent Wighard to Rome as the bearer of their request that he might be
consecrated archbishop, and that after their arrival in Rome Wighard
and nearly all of his companions fell victims to the pestilence then
raging in the Eternal City. Thereupon the Pope, Vitalian, whose courage
and skill had already been displayed on the occasion of the unwelcome
visit of the Emperor Constans to Rome, deliberated anxiously with his
council on the question whom he should send as archbishop to Canterbury
in place of the dead Englishman. After some hesitation and two refusals
of the dignity, his choice fell upon Theodore, a learned Greek monk,
who was at that time living in Rome and who had possibly come over to
Italy in the train of the Emperor Constans. Theodore, who was, like
the apostle Paul, a native of Tarsus in Cilicia, was now sixty-six
years of age, and dreaded not so much the duties of the office as the
hardships of the long journey to a remote and chilly island. However,
the abbot, Hadrian, an African, who had himself refused the offered
dignity and had recommended Theodore to the Pope, volunteered to
accompany his friend, having already twice made the journey through
Gaul; and Vitalian, who seems to have entertained some groundless fear
as to the perfect orthodoxy of this Greek monk on the great question
of the Monothelete controversy, gladly consented to this arrangement.
But however free Theodore might be from Greek errors of doctrine, the
fashion of his tonsure, which professed to be after the example of St.
Paul, and which consisted in the shaving of the whole head, declared
but too plainly to the world his Greek origin. He had therefore, after
being ordained sub-deacon, to wait four months till his hair had grown
sufficiently to enable him to receive the Roman tonsure, which made
a crown of baldness on the top of the head. He was then consecrated
archbishop by Vitalian, and set forth on May 27, 668, with his friend
Hadrian for his distant diocese. His journey through Gaul seems to
have been performed in a very leisurely manner, and we are expressly
told that he tarried for a long time with Agilbert, by whom he was
cordially received, and with whom he doubtless had much conversation
concerning affairs on the other side of the channel. Meanwhile Egbert,
King of Kent, being informed of the events which had happened at Rome,
sent his “prefect” Radfrid to escort Theodore into his kingdom. But
notwithstanding this special embassy, we are told--and the information
throws a curious light on the European politics of the time--that
Ebroin, the all-powerful mayor of the palace, would not permit
Hadrian to accompany his friend, because he suspected that he was
the bearer of some message from the Emperor to the kings of Britain,
which might be adverse to the interests of the Frankish kingdom. It
is with some surprise that we learn that a statesman of the seventh
century contemplated the possibility of a combination of England and
Constantinople against France. After a time Ebroin, having satisfied
himself that no secret embassy such as he feared had ever formed part
of Hadrian’s instructions, permitted him to follow Theodore, by whom
he was made abbot of the great monastery of St. Peter and St. Paul at
Canterbury, the Westminster Abbey of the Kentish kingdom.
Theodore of Tarsus arrived at Canterbury and was enthroned there on May
27, 669, thus commencing a memorable career, which lasted for more than
twenty-one years. “Soon,” says Bede, “having traversed the whole island
wherever the tribes of the English abode, and being heartily welcomed
and listened to by all, he spread abroad the right way of living and
the canonical rule for the celebration of Easter; Hadrian everywhere
appearing as his companion and helper. For he was the first of the
archbishops to whom the whole Church of the English agreed to give the
hand of fellowship.” We see at once how great a step towards national
unity, at least as far as the English people was concerned, was taken
under the guidance of this Oriental stranger, who came from under the
shadow of Mount Taurus. Unfortunately there is no evidence that he did
anything to break down the middle wall of partition which the arrogance
of Augustine had raised between the English and the Welsh Churches;
while, to the yet unreconciled Celts of Ireland and the Hebrides his
very appointment was in the nature of a challenge.
Bede proceeds to describe to us how Theodore’s copious stores of
learning, both sacred and secular, were made available for the people.
He tells us of the multitude of disciples who flocked to his daily
lectures and those of his friend Hadrian; of the knowledge “of the
metrical art, of astronomy and of ecclesiastical arithmetic,” which,
along with the sacred Scriptures, they imparted to their hearers. “A
proof hereof is,” says he, “that to this day there survive some of
their disciples, who know the Latin and Greek tongues as well as that
wherein they were born. Nor in fact were there ever happier times since
the days when the English first landed in Britain, since now, under the
leadership of most valiant and Christian kings, they were a terror to
all the barbarous nations; the desires of men were strongly directed
towards the new-found joys of the heavenly kingdom; and all who desired
to be instructed in the sacred Scriptures had teachers near at hand,
who could impart to them that knowledge.” There can be no doubt that
Theodore possessed a genius for organisation such as had not been
displayed by Augustine or any of the subsequent prelates, and that
to him more than to any other single person is due the structure of
the Anglo-Saxon Church, such as it remained till the Norman conquest.
One change which he perceived to be necessary for the good of the
Church, but which also inevitably tended towards the augmentation of
his own power, was an increase in the number of bishoprics. Hitherto
the tendency had been to have one bishopric only for each of the
English kingdoms, an arrangement quite unlike that which had generally
prevailed throughout the Roman empire, in some parts of which almost
every town that was above the rank of a village had its own episcopal
ruler. Such great unwieldy bishoprics as Northumbria, Mercia or Wessex,
were not likely to be administered efficiently by a single bishop,
while, on the other hand, their very magnitude suggested dangerous
thoughts of rivalry with a primate whose immediate sway extended only
over a part of Kent. Thus Theodore was impelled by every motive, public
and private, to strive to break up the existing bishoprics into smaller
portions. In that process the wise but masterful old man certainly did
not show himself to any undue extent a respecter of persons.
One of the first cases in which Theodore had to exert his
archiepiscopal authority was that of the bishopric of York. However
aggrieved both king and people might have been by Wilfrid’s
long-delayed return, there was no doubt that the intrusion of another
bishop into a see already filled was entirely contrary to the
canons; and, moreover, from the strict Roman point of view Ceadda’s
consecration to the episcopate was not safe from attack, inasmuch
as two “Quarto-deciman” bishops had taken part therein. When all
these various objections were stated by Theodore to Ceadda, the
simple-minded and unambitious old man at once declared his willingness
at Theodore’s call to resign a dignity of which he had never deemed
himself worthy. “No: not the episcopate,” was Theodore’s answer. “To
that I will reordain you with all due formalities; but stand aside
for the present from this see, which of right belongs to Wilfrid.”
Thus Wilfrid, after three years of suspension, was once again bishop
of the great diocese of York, extending from the Humber to the Firth
of Forth, or even beyond. For Ceadda meanwhile a place was quickly
found, the scarcely less important bishopric of Mercia; and Theodore’s
regard for the saintly old man was shown by ordering him no longer to
perform his long episcopal journeys on foot, but to ride through his
diocese. When Ceadda hesitated, mindful of his beloved Aidan’s example,
Theodore insisted, possibly himself provided him with a steed, at any
rate with his own archiepiscopal hands lifted him into the saddle.
Ceadda’s tenure of the Mercian episcopate was short, as he fell a
victim to the plague in 672. He died, however, not only in the odour
of sanctity, but, what is better, surrounded by the unfeigned love
of his monastic brethren, and able to speak even of the Angel of the
Pestilence as “that lovable guest who hath been wont of late to visit
our brotherhood”.
All the ecclesiastical events which have been described in this
chapter, save the last, took place in the reign of Oswy. In the year
671, as we have seen, a new monarch, Egfrid, ascended the Northumbrian
throne. He had already been for some years the nominal husband of
one of the saintly members of the East Anglian family, Etheldreda, a
daughter of King Anna, but she, though Egfrid was her second husband,
was at heart a devoted nun and insisted through life on keeping
her virginity unstained. Here was already cause for trouble in the
Northumbrian palace, trouble which was aggravated by the interference
of Wilfrid, who, in defiance of apostolic precept and the Church’s
law, made himself the champion of the cause of the disobedient wife,
and at last (probably in the first or second year of Egfrid’s reign)
with the hardly won consent of her husband arrayed her in the veil of
a “_sanctimonialis femina_”. She retired first to the monastery of
Coldingham, then ruled by Ebba, the aunt of Egfrid. After a year’s
residence therein she became abbess of the great convent which she
had herself founded in the Isle of Ely on lands devised to her by her
first husband. There, after bearing rule for seven years, she died. The
signal triumph of religious zeal over worldly ambition and luxury which
her life displayed was celebrated in enthusiastic and acrostic verse by
her admirer Bede. She was undoubtedly one of the most popular saints of
the Anglo-Saxon epoch, and her name in the abbreviated form of Audrey
still possesses a certain attraction for Englishmen.
The place which Etheldreda had vacated by the side of Egfrid was at
once filled by a second wife named Ermenburga, who was persistently
hostile to Wilfrid, and is accordingly likened to Jezebel by his
enthusiastic biographer. There was, however, much in Wilfrid’s position
at this, the most glorious period of his career, which might well rouse
the jealousy of the secular rulers of the nation. Between 671 and 678
he was probably the foremost man in all Northumbria. He built great
basilicas, the marvels of the age, at Hexham[77] and at Ripon.[78]
At the dedication of the basilica at Ripon, Wilfrid stood before the
altar, which was draped in purple and marvellously enriched with gold
and silver, and there rehearsed, in the presence of the Northumbrian
kings, the great gifts of landed property which the royal house had
bestowed upon the Church, and also enumerated the places which had
belonged in old time to the British Church and to which, though then
desolate, it was evident that the English Church meant to assert her
claim. When his sermon was ended a great feast was spread, to which the
kings and all their followers were invited, and which lasted amid great
rejoicings for three days and nights.
Of Wilfrid’s wonderful churches no trace now remains above ground.
We are told that the church of Hexham was “supported by various
columns” (perhaps taken from Roman temples) “and many porches,
adorned with walls of wondrous length and height, and with variously
winding passages, leading now up, now down, by stately staircases”.
Both at Ripon and Hexham the crypt “carried deep down into the earth
with marvellously smoothed stones” still remains; and at Hexham
inscriptions, bas-reliefs and the shape of the stones employed show
us all too plainly that the Roman camps along the line of the wall
were the quarry from whence Wilfrid’s marvellously smoothed stones
were obtained. But the great bishop was not giving all his time to
his architectural labours. He rode from end to end of his diocese,
ordaining priests and deacons in great numbers, and attracting to
himself the love and devotion of the powerful abbots and abbesses,
who very generally, either by present transfer or by testamentary
disposition, arranged that he should become lord of the lands of
their monasteries. Many Anglian nobles also sent their sons to be
brought up in the bishop’s house, in order that they might either by
his introduction enter the life of religion, or if they preferred
the profession of arms, might by him be recommended to the king. In
everything that Wilfrid touched the same note of sumptuous magnificence
might be discerned. Thus, on the day of the dedication of the church
at Ripon, he presented to it “the four illuminated Gospels traced in
purest gold on purple parchment, which he had caused to be transcribed
for the welfare of his soul, also a bookcase for these books, all made
of the purest gold and adorned with the most precious jewels”. But all
this pomp and splendour (though coupled with personal abstinence and
the practice of monastic austerities) was rearing up for Wilfrid a host
of lifelong enemies; at their head Queen Ermenburga, who ceased not
to remind her husband of “all the worldly pomp of Bishop Wilfrid, his
riches, the multitude of his abbeys, the grandeur of his buildings, and
the numberless host of his followers adorned with royal raiment and
equipped with arms”.
The jealousy which the royal pair felt at the greatness of the Bishop
of York was powerfully aided by their alliance with Archbishop
Theodore. For the formation of this alliance it is quite unnecessary to
accept the biographer’s story of bribes out of ecclesiastical property
offered by the king and accepted by the archbishop. On the contrary,
it might almost have been foretold by any one who was acquainted with
the two men, Wilfrid and Theodore, that they must necessarily sooner
or later come into collision. They were both men of great intellectual
stature, both devoted to the Roman obedience and intent on bringing
the English Church fully into that obedience, but they would do it in
different ways. Theodore, as Metropolitan of the whole land, would
enforce Church order, subdivide the unwieldy dioceses, and make his
strong hand felt by every bishop and abbot in every corner of the
English kingdoms. Wilfrid had no thought of resigning any part of his
power over his vast diocese, in which he was virtually independent.
Nay more, faint as are the traces of such a scheme in history, it
is difficult not to suppose that Wilfrid was cognisant of Gregory’s
original plan for the establishment of two independent archbishoprics
in Britain, one at London and the other at York, and hoped to
convert--as was actually done half a century later--his bishopric into
an archbishopric. Such an arrangement would be far more in accordance
with ecclesiastical precedent throughout the Roman empire than that
which actually prevailed, since the general usage had been to place
the Metropolitan in the chief city of the province. All the venerable
associations which now cluster round the name of Canterbury should
not cause us to forget the fact that it is merely owing to a series
of accidents (foremost among them the relapse of the East Saxons
into idolatry) that the chief pastor of the English Church now bears
the title of Archbishop of Canterbury. Either Londinium or Eburacum,
pre-eminently the latter, had better right to give an archbishop to
England than the little insignificant city of Durovernis.
Intent on his schemes of Church reform and full of the paramount
authority symbolised by his archiepiscopal _pallium_, Theodore visited
Northumbria and found there in the royal palace a ready acquiescence
in his grand project for the division of the diocese. He at once, in
Wilfrid’s absence, ordained three new bishops who were to divide among
themselves a large part of his diocese, leaving him probably the city
of York and a certain part of Deira as his portion.[79] It was a strong
measure to adopt, certainly, not courteous nor perhaps canonically
correct in the absence of the bishop whose diocese was thus invaded;
and it is no wonder that Wilfrid sought an interview with the king
and archbishop, and demanded by what right they, without any cause of
offence alleged against him, thus defrauded him in robber-fashion of
property given him by the king for God’s service. They answered, says
his biographer, in the presence of all the people with the memorable
words: “No accusation is made against thee of having done injury to
any man, but the decision which we have come to in thy case we will
not change”. Hereat Wilfrid signified his intention of appealing to
Rome (678) against this unjust act of spoliation. The flatterers who
surrounded the king laughed aloud at his words, but he turned round and
rebuked them sternly, saying: “You laugh now, evidently rejoicing at
my condemnation, but on the anniversary of this day bitterly shall ye
weep to your own confusion”. And in fact men noted with awe that it was
on the exact anniversary of Wilfrid’s interview with the king that the
body of the beloved under-king, Alfwin, was brought back to York from
the battlefield on the banks of the Trent, and was received by all the
people with tears and rent garments and passionate lamentations.
And now began that long duel between prelate and king, with visits
to Rome, confiscations, imprisonments, reconciliations, repentances,
which lasted with some intermissions and some changes in the person of
the royal disputant, for nearly thirty years, and which in some of its
vicissitudes reminds us of the contention between Henry Plantagenet
and Thomas Becket. It is a history with much intrinsic interest, and
rendered additionally interesting to us by the fact that the Life of
Wilfrid by Eddius, in which it is recorded, was written some years
before the Ecclesiastical History of Bede, and is probably the earliest
extant piece of Latin writing that has proceeded from an Anglo-Saxon
pen. Skilfully escaping from the toils of his enemies (whose emissaries
by a laughable mistake attacked and plundered a harmless bishop named
Winfrid instead of him), Wilfrid landed in Friesland, made friends
with the king of the Frisians, and began that career of missionary
enterprise in Germany which was continued by his disciple, Willibrord,
and in later years by the West Saxon, Boniface, with vast results
on European history. He then travelled through Gaul, visiting King
Dagobert II., whom, when an exile in Ireland, he had sped on his way to
France, and thus had helped to recover his father’s throne. Dagobert’s
gratitude now showed itself by assisting Wilfrid on his journey to
Rome. In Italy he was befriended in a similar way by the Lombard King
Perctarit, who had himself once led the life of a hunted fugitive,
and refused to surrender him to his foes. Arriving at Rome, where he
spent the winter of 679–80, he laid his complaint before the recently
consecrated Pope, Agatho the Sicilian, and claimed his protection.
A council was held in the Lateran basilica, where Theodore’s
representative, a monk named Coenred, stated the case for Canterbury.
Wilfrid’s petition was read, setting forth that he did not refuse to
consent to the division of his bishopric, but claiming that he should
be consulted as to the persons intruded upon him as colleagues; and
the synod having listened to the representations of “the most holy
Archbishop Theodore” and “the God-beloved Bishop Wilfrid” decided in
favour of the latter.
Armed with this papal decree, and not doubting of the triumph which it
would procure for him, Wilfrid presented himself at the Northumbrian
court, but was at once accused of having obtained the decree by
bribery, thrown into prison and despoiled of his personal possessions.
One of the most precious of these, a reliquary, was appropriated by
Ermenburga to her own use, and always carried about by her, whether
she abode in her bedchamber or rode abroad in her chariot. Wilfrid’s
first place of imprisonment was the royal city of Bromnis.[80] On the
refusal of the governor, whose wife had fallen dangerously ill, to act
any longer as jailer of so holy a man, Egfrid sent him to another of
his cities named Dynbaer (Dunbar), another proof, if any were needed,
how far northward at this time stretched the kingdom of Northumbria. At
last after he had undergone a rigorous imprisonment for nine months,
the dangerous illness of Ermenburga (which seemed to take the form of
demoniac possession), and the entreaties and warnings of the saintly
Ebba, brought about Wilfrid’s liberation from the dungeon, but not his
restoration to his bishopric. He went forth as an exile into Mercia,
where he was favourably entertained by a nephew of King Ethelred and
received land for the foundation of a monastery. But as Ethelred was
Egfrid’s brother-in-law, he soon ordered Wilfrid to quit his kingdom.
He turned his steps to Wessex and there for a little space had rest,
but soon was expelled thence also, King Centwine having married
Ermenburga’s sister. It is easy to see how hard the lot of a fugitive
from one of the English courts might be made by the matrimonial
alliances that were so frequent between them.
Thus expelled from Christian England the hunted fugitive turned his
thoughts to the land of the South Saxons: “a heathen province of our
race” (says the biographer) “which for the multitude of its rocks
and the density of its woods remained impregnable by all the other
provinces”. Here Ethelwalh, himself a Christian, as we have seen,[81]
was reigning over a still heathen people, and to him Wilfrid confided
the whole story of his wrongs. The king made with him a covenant of
peace so strong that, as he declared, no terror of the sword of any
hostile warrior and no gifts however costly should avail to move him
from the troth then plighted. In this inaccessible corner of the land
which we now name Sussex, Wilfrid remained for five years, preaching
the story of the creation of the world, its redemption, the day of
judgment, the rewards and punishments to come, with such eloquence and
fervour that he achieved the conversion of the entire people, thus
ending in the year 686 the long spiritual campaign for the conversion
of England which was begun in 597 by the arrival of Augustine. King
Ethelwalh gave him his own villa of Selsey for his episcopal seat,
adding to it a gift of land amounting to eighty-seven hides.
During Wilfrid’s sojourn in Sussex his unreconciled enemy King Egfrid
died. The story of his death brings us into close relation with our
third great churchman, Cuthbert, to whose life we now turn. Born
somewhere about 630 in the region of the Lammermoor Hills, the young
Cuthbert, when he was tending sheep by the River Leader, saw one
night in a vision angels carrying a holy soul into heaven. He found
afterwards that it was on the same night, August 31, 651, that the
venerable saint, Aidan, had died. He waited not, however, for this
confirmation of his faith, but at once transferred the sheep to their
owners and descended into the valley of the Tweed to seek admission
into the recently founded monastery of Melrose. After some years’
residence there, he went in the train of the Abbot Eata to Ripon; but
on the arrival of Wilfrid at that place fresh from Rome, and with a
grant from King Alchfrid in his hand, the whole party of Celtic-trained
monks, Cuthbert among them, were forced to leave the pleasant valley of
the Nidd and return to Melrose on the Tweed. There, however, ended his
antagonism to the new teaching. Whether actually present or not at the
synod of Whitby, he certainly accepted its decisions, and after some
years was sent by his friend, Eata, to govern as prior the monastery
at Lindisfarne. It was not altogether an easy task to rule the monks
on Holy Island after the revolution which the decrees of the synod had
caused, but more by gentleness than by sternness Cuthbert succeeded
in enforcing discipline, all the more readily perhaps as in food, in
vigils, in dress, he set an example of rigorous austerity. But after
all, neither as prior nor afterwards as bishop did he ever care for
the possession of power. In character he much more closely resembled
Aidan than either Theodore or Wilfrid. He loved to be alone with Nature
and with God, and was ever moving about among the country folk and
“stirring them up” by his conversation rather than by set sermons “to
seek after the heavenly crown”. There is still shown in a cleft of the
basaltic range of low hills on the mainland overlooking the winding
shore of Holy Island a cave, affording bare shelter from the rain and
none from the wind, where the saint is said to have passed some months
of his life. “Cuddy’s Hole” is to this day the name given to it by the
neighbouring farmers.
Often, too, he seems to have retired to the little island which still
bears his name and which lies at a short distance from the ruined abbey
on Holy Island, being like Lindisfarne itself island or peninsula
according to the state of the tide. There, while apparently still
holding the office of prior, he “began to learn the rudiments of a
solitary life,” and when his education was completed and his spirit
braced for the great renunciation, he gave up his office of prior
(676) and withdrew to the more utter seclusion which was afforded by
one of the little group of Farne Islands, about five miles from Holy
Island and two or three miles from the rock of Bamburgh. These rocky
islets, some thirty or forty in number, are now furnished with two
lighthouses; and the memory of Grace Darling, the courageous daughter
of an old lighthouse keeper, rivals but does not eclipse the fame of
St. Cuthbert. Countless flocks of sea-birds make these rocks their
breeding place; and there are seen the eider ducks, bold in their
gentleness, which calmly hatch their young within a few feet of the
intruding wayfarer, and whose tameness, attributed to the miraculous
working of the saint, has procured for them the name of “Saint
Cuthbert’s Chickens”. Was it the loneliness of these weather-beaten
rocks or the sad cry of the sea-birds that procured for them the evil
reputation of being “unfit for human habitation by reason of the number
of malign spirits by whom they were haunted”? Howsoever that may be,
it is admitted that at the approach of the man of God the evil spirits
departed and the place at his prayer became completely habitable. Here
then Cuthbert built for himself a little round cell made of large
unwrought stones and turf, and so constructed that he could see from it
nothing of earth or sea, but was forced to keep his eyes ever fixed on
the heaven above him. Here, after dismissing the few brethren who had
helped him in his labours, Cuthbert lived absolutely alone for eight
years, enjoying the heavenly visions, but also wrestling with the awful
spiritual terrors, which have ever been the portion of the anchorite.
At length in 684, Tunberct, Bishop of Hexham, one of Theodore’s
intruding prelates, having been for some reason deposed from his see, a
synod was held at “Twyford” on the Alne (probably the modern Alnmouth)
to consider the question of the appointment of his successor. In this
synod, at which Theodore himself presided, the name of Cuthbert was
suggested and received with unanimous approval. It was, however, no
easy matter to induce the anchorite thus to return to the common abodes
of men. At last a deputation of nobles and ecclesiastics, headed by
King Egfrid himself and by Trumwine, Bishop of Pictland, accomplished
the difficult task, and on March 26, 685, Cuthbert received at York
the episcopal charge at the hands of Theodore and six other bishops.
He still, however, remained so far faithful to the wind-swept shores
of the North Sea that he chose Holy Island for his episcopal seat,
persuading his old friend Eata to migrate from thence to the busier
diocese of Hexham.
It must have been during the long negotiations which preceded the
consecration of St. Cuthbert that he pressed upon the unwilling king
his vain dissuasions against the barbarous Irish expedition. Equally
vain, as we have seen, was his attempt to dissuade Egfrid from that
disastrous expedition against the Picts, which was undertaken in the
very first months of Cuthbert’s episcopate. At the time of Egfrid’s
invasion of Scotland Cuthbert was abiding at the Roman city of
Luguvallium (Carlisle), which had been bestowed upon him by the king
at his consecration. There also was dwelling the queen, Ermenburga,
Wilfrid’s enemy, who had gone for shelter during this warlike time
to a convent ruled by her sister. While Cuthbert was going round the
walls of the city on the afternoon of Saturday, May 20, escorted by the
king’s reeve, Paga, and by a multitude of the citizens, he suddenly
stood still, leaning on his staff. With downcast face he gazed upon the
ground, then looked up at the darkening sky and said with a deep groan:
“Perhaps even now the conflict is decided”. He would not more plainly
impart his fears, even to his own clerical companions, but hastening to
the convent warned the queen to be ready to depart on the Monday for
York “lest haply the king should have fallen”. On Sunday he preached a
sermon which hinted at some coming trouble. On Monday came the tidings
of the fatal field of Nechtansmere, fought on the very day and hour
when Cuthbert had his telepathic warning of the disaster.
Egfrid’s widow, Ermenburga, according to her enemy Eddius, “after the
slaughter of the king, from a she-wolf became one of God’s lambs and
was changed into a perfect abbess and a most excellent mother of her
[monastic] family”. Apparently there was no issue of her marriage with
Egfrid, who was succeeded by his half-brother or nephew Aldfrid, either
a son or grandson of King Oswy. He had been for some years an exile
in Ireland and the Hebrides, and had acquired a considerable store of
learning in the Celtic monasteries, so that he was generally known as
Aldfrid the Learned. The twenty years’ reign of Aldfrid (685–705) was
marked by few striking events. Northumbria, as we have seen, was now
shorn of her greatness and was no longer the leading power in Britain.
It was probably as much as Aldfrid could do to preserve his weakened
and diminished kingdom from conquest by its Pictish and Mercian
neighbours. It will suffice briefly to indicate the further fortunes
of the three great Churchmen whose lives had been of late so closely
intertwined with that of Egfrid.
The newly consecrated bishop Cuthbert did not long sustain the weight
of the uncongenial mitre. In 686 he made another journey to Carlisle,
on which occasion he gave the nun’s veil to the widowed Ermenburga.
Here also he received a visit from an old friend of his named Herbert,
who like him led the life of an island-hermit but amid far different
scenes from the stormy Farnes. Herbert dwelt on an island of “that
very large lake from which the young waters of the Derwent issue
forth”--in other words, on St. Herbert’s Isle in Derwent-water--and
had been accustomed to pay a yearly visit to Cuthbert and to hear from
him counsels concerning the life eternal. He now besought his friend,
whose whole soul was filled with thoughts of his coming end, to pray
that they might both die at the same time, a longing which was in
fact fulfilled. Soon after Christmas Cuthbert returned to his lonely
dwelling on the Farnes: at the end of February he was seized by his
last illness. The monks of Holy Island prayed to be allowed to minister
to him in his extreme weakness, but it was not till near the very end
that he suffered them to enter his cell. In the morning of March 20,
687, after many faintly uttered words of advice and farewell, the great
anchorite passed away. There was no English saint, till Thomas Becket
was slain before the altar in Canterbury, who filled half as large a
space in the memories of the English people, at any rate in the North
of England, as Cuthbert of Lindisfarne. The strange migrations of his
corpse in later centuries, the magnificence of its final resting-place,
the wide domains and princely revenues of the Bishops of Durham, whose
chief claim to lordship was derived from the fact that they were the
guardians of his tomb--all these things fixed deep in the mind of the
medieval Englishman the greatness and the glory of the shepherd of the
Lammermoors. Eight centuries after his death we find the soldiers of
“the bishopric” rejoicing over the fall of James IV. on the field of
Flodden, and tracing therein the manifest workings of the anger of the
saint, whom he had offended by the demolition of his castles at Ford
and Norham.
We pass from the hermit to the archbishop. Of Theodore of Tarsus there
is little more which need be related here save that soon after Egfrid’s
death he became reconciled to Wilfrid; asked him to come to London to
meet him, and (according to Eddius) made him a full apology for all
the injustices which he had committed towards him, even expressing a
desire that Wilfrid might succeed him in his archbishopric. He died
on September 19, 690, in the eighty-eighth year of his age after an
archiepiscopate of twenty-two years, and was laid to rest in the abbey
of St. Peter and St. Paul, along with many other primates and princes
of Kent.
The long exiled Bishop Wilfrid was at last, soon after the death of
Egfrid, permitted to return home and restored to some portion of his
lost grandeur (686–87). The death of the hostile king, interpreted by
Wilfrid’s partisans as the judgment of heaven on his despoiler, had
probably something to do with this change of policy, to which also his
reconciliation with the archbishop largely contributed. His restoration
was not, however, by any means to all his old dignities, though he
was once again in possession of his favourite abbeys of Hexham and
Ripon. And even this restoration was only for a time. After five years
of peace the eternal dispute broke out again on Wilfrid’s refusal to
acknowledge the lawfulness of some of the acts of Theodore. He was
banished from Northumbria and took refuge in Mercia, where he dwelt for
ten years (692–702). Then came one more journey to Rome, undertaken
by the brave old man in the sixty-ninth year of his age. His appeal
succeeded, but, as before, the decree in his favour failed to change
the purpose of the Northumbrian king. Aldfrid was still immutably
fixed in his determination to modify nothing in that decision “which
formerly the kings, my predecessors, and the archbishop with their
councillors did form, and which afterwards we, with the archbishop
sent us from the apostolic see and with almost all the [spiritual]
rulers of our race in Britain, confirmed. That decision,” said he to
Wilfrid’s messengers, “so long as I live I will never change for the
writings which, as you say, you have received from the apostolic see.”
Scarcely had this answer been returned when the Northumbrian king was
stricken with mortal sickness, an event in which the partisans of
Wilfrid not unnaturally thought that they could trace the vengeance of
Heaven for his audacious contempt of the papal mandate. It was believed
that on his death-bed he repented of his behaviour towards Wilfrid and
expressed his intention of being reconciled with him in the event of
his recovery, but he died in 705 after lying speechless for many days,
and was unable to give effect to his intentions if such intentions ever
existed.
On the death of Aldfrid a certain Eadulf, of whose relationship to the
royal family nothing is known, usurped the throne. Aldfrid’s son Osred
was a boy of eight years old, but the faithful friends of his father,
headed by Berthfrid, who is described as “a noble next in dignity to
the king,” gathered round him in the fortress-city of Bamburgh. To
quote Berthfrid’s words, as related to us by Wilfrid’s biographer
who, of course, views all events in relation to the fortunes of his
hero: “When we were besieged in the city which is called Bebbanburg
and everywhere girt round by the forces of the enemy, having only
that narrow rock on which to dwell, we came to the conclusion amongst
ourselves that if God would grant to our royal boy the kingdom of his
father, we would promise God to fulfil those things which the apostolic
authority had ordained concerning Bishop Wilfrid. No sooner had we made
this vow than the hearts of our enemies were changed: with quickened
steps they turned towards us swearing to be our friends; the doors were
opened; we were freed from that narrow dwelling; our enemies fled and
we recovered the kingdom.”
This is all the information that we possess concerning a domestic
revolution which, probably on account of its extremely short duration,
is unnoticed by Bede. It seems to be clear that during the two
months of his usurped reign Eadulf absolutely refused to redress the
grievances of Wilfrid, but that in the early months of Osred’s reign
a great synod was held near the river Nidd in Yorkshire to settle
finally the wearisome business. The boy-king presided: Bertwald of
Canterbury was there with all the bishops and abbots in his obedience.
There, too, was Elfleda, the daughter long ago vowed by Oswy to the
service of God, now and for many years past sitting in the seat of
the venerated Hilda as abbess of Whitby: “a most wise virgin,” says
the biographer, “ever the best consoler and counsellor of the whole
province”. She was a great friend of Cuthbert, and had probably at one
time shared the general Northumbrian or, at least, Bernician dislike
to the all-grasping Bishop of York; but the letter which the aged
Theodore had written, almost from his death-bed, beseeching her to
become reconciled to Wilfrid had perhaps changed her mind towards him,
and she now strongly pressed his claims and vouched for the fact that
her step-brother Aldfrid on his death-bed declared his intention of
complying with all the demands made on his behalf by the apostolic see.
The result of the deliberation which followed was that the king, his
nobles and all the bishops swore to maintain peace and concord with
Wilfrid, and on that same day gave him the kiss of peace and broke the
bread of communion with him. At the same time the abbeys of Ripon and
Hexham, with all their revenues, were restored to him, and the thirty
years’ war was at an end. This result was after all a compromise,
and, as has been well pointed out by Dr. Bright, a compromise less
favourable to Wilfrid than that which had been made before. He had lost
the bishopric of York and had to be content with the less important
bishopric of Hexham, but he recovered possession of all his domains and
monasteries in Northumbria and Mercia.
Wilfrid had now four years of peace at the end of his stormy life.
Not long before his death he “invited two abbots and certain very
faithful brethren, to the number of eight in all, to meet him at
Ripon, and commanded the key-bearer to open his treasury, and to set
forth in their sight all the gold and silver with the precious stones,
and then ordered them to be divided into four parts according to his
judgment”. He explained that it had been his intention to make yet
another journey to Rome and offer one of these four portions at the
shrines of the Virgin and the saints. Should death prevent him from
carrying this design into effect, he charged them to send messengers
to offer the gifts in his stead. Of the remaining portions one was to
be given to the poor for the redemption of his soul; another was to
be divided between the rulers of his two beloved abbeys Hexham and
Ripon, “that they may be able by their gifts to win the friendship of
kings and bishops”; the last was to be distributed among the friends
and companions of his exile to whom he had not yet given landed
possessions. From the minute account which the biographer gives of the
whole scene, it seems probable that he was one of the six faithful
brethren permitted to gaze on the opened treasury, and one of the
companions of the exile who received a share in the bequest.
After some further arrangements about the future government of the
abbey of Ripon, Wilfrid journeyed into Mercia, on an invitation from
King Ceolred, reached the monastery of Oundle in Northamptonshire,
and there, in 709, after a short sickness, ended his days, in the
seventy-sixth year of his age. In the forty-six years of his episcopate
he had dedicated churches and ordained bishops, priests and deacons
past counting. His body was taken to Ripon and there interred with
great solemnity. The abbots of his two chief monasteries believed that
they had secured in the departed saint a heavenly intercessor of equal
power with their apostolic patrons St. Peter and St. Andrew, and their
faith was confirmed when, at a great meeting on the anniversary of his
death, they beheld at night a white circle in the heavens reaching all
round the sky and seeming to encompass the monastery of St. Peter at
Ripon with its protecting glory.
The life of Wilfrid with all its strange vicissitudes of triumph
and disgrace is confessedly one of the most difficult problems in
early Anglo-Saxon history. The enthusiastic panegyric of Eddius, the
conventional praise and strange reticence of Bede, leave us still
greatly in the dark as to the real cause of the hostility of the
leading men of Northumbria, both in Church and State, towards one
who seemed made to be a victorious leader of men. The vast blanks
in the history can now be supplied only by conjecture, and any such
conjectural emendation would probably be unjust to one or other of
the disputants, to Wilfrid, to Theodore or to Egfrid. Only this much
may with confidence be asserted, that the dispute, bitter as it was,
turned on no question of doctrine or of morals; hardly in the end on
any question of Church government. It is the possession of the great
monastic properties, both in Northumbria and Mercia, which seems to
be the real bone of contention between Wilfrid and his foes, and when
we read of the large possessions wherewith these were endowed, ten
“families” to one monastery and thirty to another (domains probably
equivalent to at least 1,200 and 3,400 acres), and when we see the
well-filled treasury blazing with gold and jewels, which after all his
reverses gladdens the aged eyes of Wilfrid at the close of his career,
we are, perhaps, enabled to understand a little more clearly what was
the unexpressed grievance in the mind of the Northumbrian kings and
bishops against their greatest ecclesiastic. With justice he exclaimed
again and again, “What are the crimes of which you accuse me?” They
had, it would seem, no crimes to allege against him, but the king felt
that the vast wealth which he had accumulated made him a dangerous
subject, and the bishops thought that he had abused the great position
which he had achieved by his victory at Whitby, to secure for himself
an unfair share of the new riches of the Church. Whatever view may
be taken of the struggle, the very fact of its existence and of the
somewhat sordid interests at stake shows us how far we have already
travelled in less than two generations from the days of Oswald and
Aidan. The victory of the Roman Easter was not all pure gain to the
churches of northern Britain.