nature, could more properly be denominated the adoptive than the natural
son of God.[****] This heresy was condemned in the council of Francfort,
held in 794, and consisting of three hundred bishops. Such were the
questions which were agitated in that age, and which employed the
attention not only of cloistered scholars, but of the wisest and
greatest princes.[*****]

Egfrith succeeded to his father Offa, but survived him only five
months;[******] when he made way for Kenulph, a descendant of the royal
family. This prince waged war against Kent, and taking Egbert, the king,
prisoner, he cut off his hands, and put out his eyes; leaving Cuthred,
his own brother, in possession of the crown of that kingdom. Kenulph
was killed in an insurrection of the East Anglians, whose crown his
predecessor, Offa, had usurped. He left his son Kenelm, a minor; who was
murdered the same year by his sister Quendrade, who had entertained the
ambitious views of assuming the government.[*******]

[* Ingulph. p. 5. W. Malms, lib. i. cap. 4.]

[** Lib. i. cap. 4.]

[*** Chron. Sax. p. 65.]

[**** Dupin, cent. viii. chap. 4].

[***** Offa, in order to protect his country from
Wales, drew a rampart or ditch of a hundred miles in length,
from Basinwerke in Flintshire to the south sea near Bristol.
See Speed's Description of Wales.]

[****** Ingulph. p. 6]

[******* Ingulph, p. 7. Brompton, p. 776.]

But she was supplanted by her uncle Ceolulf; who, two years after, was
dethroned by Beornulf The reign of this usurper, who was not of the
royal family, was short and unfortunate; he was defeated by the West
Saxons, and killed by his own subjects, the East Angles.[*] Ludican, his
successor, underwent the same fate;[**] and Wiglaff, who mounted this
unstable throne, and found everything in the utmost confusion, could not
withstand the fortune of Egbert, who united all the Saxon kingdoms into
one great monarchy.

[* Ingulph. p. 7.]

[** Alured. Beverl. p. 87.]

THE KINGDOM OF ESSEX.

This kingdom made no great figure in the Heptarchy; and the history
of it is very imperfect. Sleda succeeded to his father, Erkinwin, the
founder of the monarchy; and made way for his son Sebert, who, being
nephew to Ethelbert, king of Kent, was persuaded by that prince to
embrace the Christian faith.[***] His sons and conjunct successors,
Sexted and Seward, relapsed into idolatry, and were s