ore dependent on himself than before.
He was able to plan greater designs, and to carry out military
enterprises at a greater distance. In another way he was the weaker
for the change. He had less support from the bulk of his people, and
was more likely to undertake enterprises in which they had no
interest. The over-lordships of AEthelberht and Eadwine appear very
imposing, but no real tie united the men of the centre of England to
those of Kent at one time, or to those of North-humberland at another.
Eadwine was supreme over the other kings because he had a better
war-band than they had. If another king appeared whose war-band was
better than his, his supremacy would disappear.

15. =Eadwine's Conversion and Fall.=--In =627= Eadwine, moved by his
wife's entreaties and the urgency of her chaplain, Paulinus, called
upon his Witan to accept Christianity. Coifi, the priest, declared
that he had long served his gods for naught, and would try a change of
masters. 'The present life of man, O king,' said a thegn, 'seems to me
in comparison of that time which is unknown to us like to the swift
flight of a sparrow through the room wherein you sit at supper in
winter, with your ealdormen and thegns, and a good fire in the midst,
and storms of rain and snow without.... So this life of man appears
for a short space, but of what went before or what is to follow we are
utterly ignorant. If therefore this new doctrine contains something
more certain, it seems justly to deserve to be followed.' On this
recommendation Christianity was accepted. Paulinus was acknowledged as
Bishop of York. The new See, which had been originally intended by
Pope Gregory to be an archbishopric, was ultimately acknowledged as
such, but as yet it was but a missionary station. Paulinus converted
thousands in Deira, but the men of Bernicia were unaffected by his
pleadings. Christianity, like the extension of all better teaching,
brought at first not peace but the sword. The new religion was
contemptible in the eyes of warriors. The supremacy of Eadwine was
shaken. The men of East Anglia slew their king, who had followed his
over-lord's example by accepting Christianity. The worst blow came
from Mercia. Hitherto it had been only a little state on the Welsh
border. Its king, Penda, the stoutest warrior of his day, now gathered
under him all the central states, and founded a new Mercia which
stretched from the Severn to the Fens. He first turned on the West
Sax