238 president's address. 



" ancient god," answering, as many think, to the plural form 

 found elsewhere, " Dibus Viteribus" — to the ancient gods. This 

 may probably be taken as a proof of the contest between the 

 new Christian and the ancient Pagan religion and their adherents 

 during the second and third centimes, and perhaps still later. 

 Coccidius, a local and tutelary deity of the native Britons, if 

 Yitires was not also one, seems to have had religious honour 

 paid to him by the Eoman legionaries of Yindomora ; moved, as 

 they were elsewhere in Northern England, either by feelings of 

 fear after some check to their arms, or by the same spirit of 

 veneration which prompted the men of Athens to propitiate 

 even the " unknown God."* 



The very name of Ebchester, the castra of the royal Saxon 

 lady, Saint Elba, is significant of the downfall of Celtic and 

 Saxon Paganism and of the eventual triumph of the true faith in 

 ancient Northuinbria. Since the Constantinian coins, whereon 

 may be seen the Christian emblems, were struck and then passed 

 current in Eoman or British hands in the ancient town on South 

 Shields " Lawe," generations had lived and died. A new rac*e, 

 heathen worshippers of Wodin and Thor, had landed with King 

 Ida at Bamborough, in the sixth century, fierce, powerful, and 

 numerous enough to drive the Eomanized Celt before them into 

 the western mountains, or subject them to their sway. But 

 even these at length submitted to the victorious might of the 

 Cross. Not long after the great triumph of King Oswald, at 

 Heavenfield, over the pagan British King, Caedwalla,f on the 

 height overlooking the North Tyne, near Chollerforcl, where St. 

 Oswald's Chapel stands (within sight as I write these words) as 

 an enduring memento of that conclusive victory, his sister, the 

 Princess Ebba, probably established her monastery at Ebches- 

 ter, between the years 634 and 642. The two kingdoms of 

 Bernicia, between the Tees and the Forth, and Deira, between 

 the Tees and the Humber, were then consolidated under Os- 

 wald's rule. What his predecessor, Oswine, had attempted to 

 do by the help of the Eoman Missionary, Paulinus, with a 



* Acts xvii., 23. 

 f Bede; Eccles. Hist. (Bohn's Trans.) B. Ill,, c. 2, p. 110. 





