XX. How Edwin being slain, Paulinus returned into Kent, and
had the bishopric of Rochester conferred upon him. [633 A.D.]
CHAP. XX.
EDWIN reigned most gloriously seventeen years over the nations of the English
and the Britons, six whereof, as has been said, he also was a soldier in the
kingdom of Christ. Caedwalla, king of the Britons, rebelled against him, being
supported by the vigorous Penda, of the royal race of the Mercians, who from
that time governed that nation for twenty-two years with varying success.
A great battle being fought in the plain that is called Haethfelth, Edwin was
killed on the 12th of October, in the year of our Lord 633, being then
forty-eight years of age, and all his army was either slain or dispersed. In the
same war also, Osfrid, one of his sons, a warlike youth, fell before him;
Eadfrid, another of them, compelled by necessity, went over to King Penda, and
was by him afterwards slain in the reign of Oswald, contrary to his oath. At
this time a great slaughter was made in the Church and nation of the
Northumbrians; chiefly because one of the chiefs, by whom it was carried on, was
a pagan, and the other a barbarian, more cruel than a pagan; for Penda, with all
the nation of the Mercians, was an idolater, and a stranger to the name of
Christ; but Caedwalla, though he professed and called himself a Christian, was
so barbarous in his disposition and manner of living, that he did not even spare
women and innocent children, but with bestial cruelty put all alike to death by
torture, and overran all their country in his fury for a long time, intending to
cut off all the race of the English within the borders of Britain. Nor did he
pay any respect to the Christian religion which had sprung up among them; it
being to this day the custom of the Britons to despise the faith and religion of
the English, and to have no part with them in anything any more than with
pagans. King Edwin's head was brought to York, and afterwards taken into the
church of the blessed Peter the Apostle, which he had begun, but which his
successor Oswald finished, as has been said before. It was laid in the chapel of
the holy Pope Gregory, from whose disciples he had received the word of life.
The affairs of the Northumbrians being thrown into confusion at the moment of
this disaster, when there seemed to be no prospect of safety except in flight,
Paulinus, taking with him Queen Ethelberg, whom he had before brought thither,
returned into Kent by sea, and was very honourably received by the Archbishop
Honorius and King Eadbald. He came thither under the conduct of Bassus, a most
valiant thegn of King Edwin, having with him Eanfled, the daughter, and
Wuscfrea, the son of Edwin, as well as Yffi, the son of Osfrid, Edwin's son.
Afterwards Ethelberg, for fear of the kings Eadbald and Oswald, sent Wuscfrea
and Yffi over into Gaul to be bred up by King Dagobert, who was her friend; and
there they both died in infancy, and were buried in the church with the honour
due to royal children and to Christ's innocents. He also brought with him many
rich goods of King Edwin, among which were a large gold cross, and a golden
chalice, consecrated to the service of the altar, which are still preserved, and
shown in the church of Canterbury.
At that time the church of Rochester had no pastor, for Romanus, the bishop
thereof, being sent on a mission to Pope Honorius by Archbishop Justus, was
drowned in the Italian Sea; and thus Paulinus, at the request of Archbishop
Honorius and King Eadbald, took upon him the charge of the same, and held it
until he too, in his own time, departed to heaven, with the fruits of his
glorious labours; and, dying in that Church, he left there the pall which he had
received from the Pope of Rome. He had left behind him in his Church at York,
James, the deacon, a true churchman and a holy man, who continuing long after in
that Church, by teaching and baptizing, rescued much prey from the ancient
enemy; and from him the village, where he chiefly dwelt, near Cataract,has its
name to this day. He had great skill in singing in church, and when the province
was afterwards restored to peace, and the number of the faithful increased, he
began to teach church music to many, according to the custom of the Romans, or
of the Cantuarians. And being old and full of days, as the Scripture says. He
went the way of his fathers.
