ers
and reedy islets wrapped in its own dark mist-veil and tenanted only by
flocks of screaming wild-fowl. But in either quarter the new faith made
its way. In the western woods Bishop Ecgwine found a site for an abbey
round which gathered the town of Evesham, and the eastern fen-land was
soon filled with religious houses. Here through the liberality of King
Wulfhere rose the Abbey of Peterborough. Here too, Guthlac, a youth of
the royal race of Mercia, sought a refuge from the world in the solitudes
of Crowland, and so great was the reverence he won, that only two years
had passed since his death when the stately Abbey of Crowland rose over
his tomb. Earth was brought in boats to form a site; the buildings rested
on oaken piles driven into the marsh; a great stone church replaced the
hermit's cell; and the toil of the new brotherhood changed the pools
around them into fertile meadow-land.

[Sidenote: Ecgfrith]

In spite however of this rapid recovery of its strength by Mercia,
Northumbria remained the dominant state in Britain: and Ecgfrith, who
succeeded Oswiu in 670, so utterly defeated Wulfhere when war broke out
between them that he was glad to purchase peace by the surrender of
Lincolnshire. Peace would have been purchased more hardly had not
Ecgfrith's ambition turned rather to conquests over the Briton than to
victories over his fellow Englishmen. The war between Briton and
Englishman which had languished since the battle of Chester had been
revived some twelve years before by an advance of the West-Saxons to the
south-west. Unable to save the possessions of Wessex north of the Thames
from the grasp of Wulfhere, their king, Cenwealh, sought for compensation
in an attack on his Welsh neighbours. A victory at Bradford on the Avon
enabled him to overrun the country near Mendip which had till then been
held by the Britons; and a second campaign in 658, which ended in a
victory on the skirts of the great forest that covered Somerset to the
east, settled the West-Saxons as conquerors round the sources of the
Parret. It may have been the example of the West-Saxons which spurred
Ecgfrith to a series of attacks upon his British neighbours in the west
which widened the bounds of his kingdom. His reign marks the highest
pitch of Northumbrian power. His armies chased the Britons from the
kingdom of Cumbria, and made the district of Carlisle English ground. A
large part of the conquered country was bestowed upon the see o