232 HUMPHREY OF GLO'STER. 



and destroy the army under Boedicea, and 

 took ample vengeance for the massacre of 

 their countrymen. 



In the time of the heptarchy, St. Albans 

 became a considerable town that part of 

 the community whom the fury of the Saxons 

 had spared removing to a hill which after- 

 wards bore the same name the Abbey be- 

 ing founded and built there by Offa, King 

 of Mercia, in the ninth century though the 

 British proto- martyr, to whom it was de- 

 dicated, was beheaded on the spot some 600 

 years before. 



The court was frequently held here in the 

 time of the Plantagenets, and sometimes 

 the parliament of those days sat here the 

 family residence of the mitred abbot, the 

 monastery, and the neighbouring nunnery 

 of Sopwell, affording ample accommoda- 

 tion. One of the most enlightened of our 

 Princes, Humphrey, Duke of Glo'ster, who 

 was much in advance of his age, was in- 



