HISTORY. 253 



Painful proof of this meets us at every line of the long annals 

 of senseless slaughter, varied by milder ecclesiastical contests, 

 which make a great part of what stands for the history of Nor- 

 thumbria, through five centuries of violence and misrule. 



How feeble the influence for good of the Christianity preached 

 with so much devotion by Augustine (597) and Paulinus (601) ! 

 How slight the benefit from the sovereignty of Britain attained 

 by Edwin in 617 ! Slain at Hatfield by the merciless hands of 

 the Christian Cadwalla and the Pagan Penda, his death was at 

 last revenged by the bloody victory at Winwidfield near Leeds 

 (655), and Deira and Bernicia, which had been separated since 

 his death, were again united to pursue the same course of foreign 

 oppression and domestic wrong. 



At length the Dane fit instrument of vengeance brought 

 300 years of piratical invasion to complete the misery of the 

 brave but disunited people. We are not compelled to repeat the 

 tale of rapine and devastation which accompanied every step of 

 the ' army/ though York, the stronghold of Northumbria, occa- 

 sionally felt the fury of the Dane, and the cathedral was often 

 robbed by them. Rapine and slaughter everywhere marked the 

 path of the Danes, and these Pagan warriors spared none of 

 the monasteries in which wealth was to be had by sacrilege. But 

 there is a great difference in the aspect of their incursions 

 according as we look upon them from the Saxon or Anglian 

 districts. Sussex and Wessex, the really Saxon parts of the 

 island, were the constant opponents of the Danes through all 

 the period of these miserable wars; but in the Anglian king- 

 doms the invaders were hardly strangers. The five towns given 

 to them were in the Anglian territories York, Lincoln, Not- 

 tingham, Derby, Stamford. The settlers of East Anglia and 

 Northumberland sheltered the Danes from defeat, and furnished 

 horses and men for fresh inroads, which were again repelled by 

 the compact strength of Wessex. Thus we see continued and 

 renewed that internal feud between the north and the south, 

 which was of very early date. 



