64 SHje e&egnut of 



Cotswold Hills, and among the beautiful vales of Mercia, 

 were acted those scenes of misery, which the youths of 

 that day had shuddered to hear beside the blazing 

 hearth-stone, when narrated in the winter tales of their 

 grandfathers. 



The victory which Penda had gained, within sight of 

 his son's palace at Gloucester, was succeeded by the fall 

 of the brave Oswold, near Oswestry, in Shropshire. The 

 kingdom of Bernicia was added by his death to the already 

 extensive dominions of the conqueror, and with the 

 increase of his territories, increased also the sufferings of 

 the Christians, whom he persecuted with unwearied 

 malignity. Penda was born a pagan, and as such he 

 passed the period of his youth and middle age. Accord- 

 ing to the custom of his country, he worshipped images 

 of wood and stone, and joined devoutly in all the unhal- 

 lowed rites which had been established by his Saxon 

 ancestors ; like them he believed that demons of good or 

 ill presided over the fields and groves, and he sought to 

 obtain the favour of the one, and to conciliate the other, 

 by such observances and propitiations as the priesthood 

 had enjoined. To them he was devoutly attached, and 

 his temper being naturally inclined to seriousness, some- 

 what too, unyielding, with a strong bias to religion, he 

 sought to extirpate the Christian faith, which had been 

 represented to him as tending equally to overthrow the 

 altars of his ruthless deities, with the throne itself. 



But the Saviour, whose disciples he thus ignorantly 



