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XXXIV. How Ethelfrid, king of the Northumbrians, having vanquished the nations of the Scots,
CHAP. XXXIII. How Augustine repaired the church of our Saviour, and built the
monastery of the blessed
Peter the Apostle; and concerning Peter the first abbot of the same.
Augustine having had his episcopal see granted him in the royal city, as has
been said, recovered therein, with the support of the king, a church, which he
was informed had been built of old by the faithful among the Romans, and
consecrated it in the name of the Holy Saviour, our Divine Lord Jesus Christ,
and there established a residence for himself and all his successors.’ He also
built a monastery not far from the city to the eastward, in which, by his
advice, Ethelbert erected from the foundation the church of the blessed
Apostles, Peter and Paul, and enriched it with divers gifts; wherein the bodies
of the same Augustine, and of all the bishops of Canterbury, and of the kings of
Kent, might be buried. Nevertheless, it was not Augustine himself who
consecrated that church, but Laurentius, his successor.
The first abbot of that monastery was the priest Peter, who, being sent on a
mission into Gaul, was drowned in a bay of the sea, which is called Amfleat, and
committed to a humble tomb by the inhabitants of the place; but since it was the
will of Almighty God to reveal his merits, a light, from Heaven was seen over
his grave every night; till the neighbouring people who saw it, perceiving that
he had been a holy man that was buried there, and inquiring who and whence he
was, carried away the body, and interred it in the church, in the city of
Boulogne, with the honour due to so great a person.
CHAP. XXXIV. How Ethelfrid, king of the Northumbrians, having vanquished the
nations of the Scots,
expelled them from the territories of the English. [603 A. D.]
At this time, the brave and ambitious king, Ethelfrid, governed the kingdom of
the Northumbrians, and ravaged the Britons more than all the chiefs of the
English, insomuch that he might be compared to Saul of old, king of the
Israelites, save only in this, that he was ignorant of Divine religion. For he
conquered more territories from the Britons than any other chieftain or king,
either subduing the inhabitants and making them tributary, or driving them out
and planting the English in their places. To him might justly be applied the
saying of the patriarch blessing his son in the person of Saul, "Benjamin shall
ravin as a wolf; in the morning he shall devour the prey, and at night he shall
divide the spoil." Hereupon, Aedan, king of the Scots that dwell in Britain,
being alarmed by his success, came against him with a great and mighty army, but
was defeated and fled with a few followers; for almost all his army was cut to
pieces at a famous place, called Degsastan, that is, Degsa Stone. In which
battle also Theodbald, brother to Ethelfrid, was killed, with almost all the
forces he commanded. This war Ethelfrid brought to an end in the year of our
Lord 603, the eleventh of his own reign, which lasted twenty-four years, and the
first year of the reign of Phocas, who then was at the head of the Roman empire.
From that time, no king of the Scots durst come into Britain to make war on the
English to this day.
