Oswald, his conqueror Penda, the fierce King of the
Mercians, harried Northumbria, and appearing before the walls of
Bamburgh prepared to burn it down. Piles of logs and brushwood were laid
against the city and the fire was applied. Aidan, in his little cell on
Farne Island, to which he had retired, saw the clouds of flame and smoke
rolling over the home of his beloved patron. Raising his hands to
Heaven, he exclaimed, "See, Lord, what ill Penda is doing!" Scarcely had
he uttered the words, when the wind changed, and drove the flames away
from Bamburgh, blowing them against Penda's host, who thereupon ceased
all further attempts against the city.

Not long after this, Aidan was at Bamburgh, when he was seized with
sudden illness, and died with his head resting against one of the wooden
stays of the little church. Penda came again the next year, and this
time both village and church were burnt, all except, says tradition, the
beam of wood against which Aidan had rested in his last moments.

When the Danish ships appeared off our shores, in the two centuries
following, Bamburgh was attacked and plundered several times. In the
days of William Rufus, as we have seen, Robert de Mowbray, Earl of
Northumberland, rebelled against the Red King, in company with his
uncle the Bishop of Coutances, Robert of Normandy, and William of St.
Carileph, Bishop of Durham. Rufus marched into Northumberland, but the
quarrel was adjusted for the time; though private strife between the two
Bishops led to Mowbray's driving the monks of Durham from the Priory at
Tynemouth and replacing them by monks from St. Albans.

Later, however, Mowbray disobeyed a summons from the Red King, who once
more marched into Northumberland. He reached Bamburgh, and invested it,
but failed to make any impression on that impregnable stronghold, within
whose walls were Mowbray and his young wife, the Countess Matilda, and
his nephew, who was Sheriff of Northumberland. Rufus, finding all
attempts to carry the fortress useless, began to build a wooden fort,
called a _Malvoisin_, or "Bad neighbour"; and so anxious was he to have
it speedily erected that he made knights and nobles as well as his
men-at-arms take part in the work.

Mowbray, from the battlements, called out to many of these by name,
openly taunting those who had secretly promised to join him, or had
expressed themselves as in sympathy with his disobedience. His words
gave great amusement to Rufus and the