3o6 Beowulf and U^idsith 



who, after four intermediate reigns, l)eg"an to rule twenty-four 

 years later, it has heen said^ : 'Apparently he was a pious king and 

 a lover of scholars ; probably he was, as often happens with 

 princes of such a type, too feeble for the times in which his lot 

 was cast.' And Ramsay- has said of Aldf rith himself that he was 

 'perhaps better fitted to rule a convent than a kingdom.' But it 

 was more than the kingdom of Northumbria over which he was 

 called to rule. He was to succeed to the suzerainty over the rest 

 of England which had been held by his line from Edwin,^ through 

 his uncle Oswald,* his father Oswy,'"' and his brother Ecgfrith.'' 

 Ecgfrith's overthrow and death in battle with the Picts^ was a 

 terrible disaster, from which Northumbria never entirely recov- 

 ered.^ To Aldf rith fell the task of rousing his kingdom from the 

 stupor into which it must have been plunged by so unexampled a 

 defeat, and of providing for its defense against an exultant and 

 fiercely aggressive enemy. That he must have succeeded in this 

 is plain from the words of Bede,'' that he 'nobly retrieved the state 

 of a kingdom that had been ruined, though it was now less exten- 

 sive than of yore.' To his personal courage and martial vigor we 

 have, according to Stubbs, the testimony of Henry of Huntingdon 

 that he was 'strenuus in bellis'^° ; and, according to tradition, he 

 died from the effects of a wound received in battle^^ at Scamridge, 

 near Scarborough, though this tradition does not agree^- with the 



^ Oman, p. 326. 



'P. 199. 



^ Eccl. Hist. 2. 5 ; Alcuin, De Pont. 120-3 ; Plummer 2. 86. 



* Eccl. Hist. 2. 5 ; 3. 6; Plummer 2. 86; Reeves, p. 6 (Bk. i, chap. i). 



^ Eccl. Hist. 2. 5; 3. 24; 4. 3; Plummer 2. 86, 181; Green, p. 310. For 

 the last three kings, see Freeman i. 370. 



'^ Eccl. Hist. 4. 26; Plummer i. xxxiii ; Green, pp. 357-361, but see also 

 pp. 306 ff. 



'Eccl. Hist. 4. 26. 



'Green, pp. 379, 396; Oman, p. 308; Bright, p. 335. 



^ Eccl. Hist. 4. 26; cf. Green, above, p. 287; Montalembert 4. 66. Bright 

 says (p. 338) : 'This prince, the first of our literary kings, was a man of 

 practical vigor.' 



"Ed. Arnold, p. 135. 



" See below, pp. 324-5. 



"It is, however, distinctly testified to by a contemporary Irish poet 

 (Annals of Ireland: Three Fragments, ed. O'Donovan, p. iii) : The death 

 of Flann Fiona, son of Ossa, King of Saxonland, the famous wise man, the 

 pupil of Adamnan, of whom Riagail of Bcnnchair sung: 



