ished the royal family, succeeded in his design
of subduing that kingdom.[**] The perfidious prince, desirous of
reestablishing his character in the world, and perhaps of appeasing
the remorses of his own conscience, paid great court to the clergy, and
practised all the monkish devotion so much esteemed in that ignorant and
superstitious age. He gave the tenth of his goods to the church;[***]
bestowed rich donations on the cathedral of Hereford, and even made a
pilgrimage to Rome, where his great power and riches could not fail of
procuring him the papal absolution. The better to ingratiate himself
with the sovereign pontiff, he engaged to pay him a yearly donation for
the support of an English college at Rome,[****] and in order to raise
the sum, he imposed a tax of a penny on each house possessed of thirty
pence a year. This imposition, being afterwards levied on all England,
was commonly denominated _Peter's pence_;[*****] and though
conferred at first as a gift, was afterwards claimed as a tribute by the
Roman pontiff.

[* Chron. Sax. p. 59.]

[** Brompton, p. 750, 751, 752.]

[*** Spell. Concil. p 308. Brompton, p. 776.]

[**** Spell. Concil. p. 230, 310, 312.]

[***** Higden, lib. v.]

Carrying his hypocrisy still further, Offa, feigning to be directed by
a vision from heaven, discovered at Verulam the relics of St Alban, the
martyr, and endowed a magnificent monastery in that place.[*] Moved by
al these acts of piety, Malmsbury, one of the best of the old English
historians, declares himself at a loss to determine[**] whether the
merits or crimes of this prince preponderated. Offa died, after a reign
of thirty-nine years, in 794.[***]

This prince was become so considerable in the Heptarchy, that the
emperor Charlemagne entered into an alliance and friendship with him;
a circumstance which did honor to Offa; as distant princes at that time
had usually little communication with each other. That emperor being a
great lover of learning and learned men, in an age very barren of that
ornament, Offa, at his desire, sent him over Alcuin, a clergyman
much celebrated for his knowledge, who received great honors from
Charlemagne, and even became his preceptor in the sciences. The chief
reason why he had at first desired the company of Alcuin, was that he
might oppose his learning to the heresy of Felix, bishop of Urgel, in
Catalonia; who maintained that Jesus Christ, considered in his human