hich in such an age could
scarcely have been expected, sought to supply by artificial means for
the natural nourishment of which they had been deprived.

Venerable Bede mentions this pestilence, and gives honorable testimony
to the charity of the Irish, not only to their own people, but even to
strangers. He says: "This pestilence did no less harm, in the island of
Ireland. Many of the nobility and of the lower ranks of the English
nation were there at that time, who, in the days of Bishop Finan and
Colman, forsaking their native land, retired thither, either for the
sake of divine studies, or for a more continent life. The Scots
willingly received them all, and took care to supply them with food, as
also to furnish them with books to read and their teaching gratis."[181]

In 673 Finnachta Fleadhach, or the Hospitable, began his reign. He
yielded to the entreaties of St. Moling, and remitted the Boromean
Tribute, after he had forced it from the Leinster men in a bloody
battle. In 687 he abdicated, and showed his respect for religion still
further by embracing the monastic state himself. In 684 the Irish coasts
were devastated, and even the churches pillaged, by the soldiers of
Egfrid, the Saxon King of Northumbria. Venerable Bede attributes his
subsequent defeat and death, when fighting against the Picts, to the
judgment of God, justly merited by these unprovoked outrages on a nation
which had always been most friendly to the English (_nationi Anglorum
semper amicissimam_).

It has been supposed that revenge may have influenced Egfrid's conduct:
this, however, does not make it more justifiable in a Christian king.
Ireland was not merely the refuge of men of learning in that age; it
afforded shelter to more than one prince driven unjustly from his
paternal home. Alfred, the brother of the Northumbrian monarch, had fled
thither from his treachery, and found a generous welcome on its
ever-hospitable shores. He succeeded his brother in the royal dignity;
and when St. Adamnan visited his court to obtain the release of the
Irish captives whom Egfrid's troops had torn from their native land, he
received him with the utmost kindness, and at once acceded to his
request.

St. Adamnan, whose fame as the biographer of St. Columba has added even
more to the lustre of his name than his long and saintly rule over the
Monastery of Iona, was of the race of the northern Hy-Nials. He was born
in the territory of Tir-Connell, about the