anity throughout Britain. East-Anglia, conquered as it
was, had clung to its faith. Wessex quietly became Christian again.
Penda's own son, whom he had set over the Middle-English, received
baptism and teachers from Lindisfarne. At last the missionaries of the
new belief appeared fearlessly among the Mercians themselves. Penda gave
them no hindrance. In words that mark the temper of a man of whom we
would willingly know more, Baeda tells us that the old king only "hated
and scorned those whom he saw not doing the works of the faith they had
received." His attitude shows that Penda looked with the tolerance of his
race on all questions of creed, and that he was fighting less for
heathenism than for political independence. And now the growing power of
Oswiu called him to the old struggle with Northumbria. In 655 he met
Oswiu in the field of Winwaed by Leeds. It was in vain that the
Northumbrian sought to avert Penda's attack by offers of ornaments and
costly gifts. "If the pagans will not accept them," Oswiu cried at last,
"let us offer them to One that will"; and he vowed that if successful he
would dedicate his daughter to God, and endow twelve monasteries in his
realm. Victory at last declared for the faith of Christ. Penda himself
fell on the field. The river over which the Mercians fled was swollen
with a great rain; it swept away the fragments of the heathen host, and
the cause of the older gods was lost for ever.

[Sidenote: Oswiu]

The terrible struggle between heathendom and Christianity was followed by
a long and profound peace. For three years after the battle of Winwaed
Mercia was governed by Northumbrian thegns in Oswiu's name. The winning
of central England was a victory for Irish Christianity as well as for
Oswiu. Even in Mercia itself heathendom was dead with Penda. "Being thus
freed," Baeda tells us, "the Mercians with their King rejoiced to serve
the true King, Christ." Its three provinces, the earlier Mercia, the
Middle-English, and the Lindiswaras, were united in the bishopric of the
missionary Ceadda, the St. Chad to whom Lichfield is still dedicated.
Ceadda was a monk of Lindisfarne, so simple and lowly in temper that he
travelled on foot on his long mission journeys till Archbishop Theodore
with his own hands lifted him on horseback. The old Celtic poetry breaks
out in his death-legend, as it tells us how voices of singers singing
sweetly descended from heaven to the little cell beside St. Mary's Ch