ing Penda himself obstructed not these missionaries in
preaching the faith in other parts of Mercia, but hated and despised
such as embraced the gospel, yet lived not up to it, saying, "Such
wretches deserved the utmost contempt, who would not obey the God in
whom they believed." St. Cedd, after laboring there some time with great
success, was called from this mission to a new harvest. Sigbercht, or
Sigebert, king of the East-Saxons, paying a visit to Oswy, in {104}
Northumberland, was persuaded by that prince to forsake his idols, and
was baptized by bishop Finan. When he was returned to his own kingdom,
he entreated king Oswy to send him some teachers, who might instruct his
people in the faith of Christ. Oswy called St. Cedd out of the province
of the midland English, and sent him with another priest to the nation
of the East-Saxons. When they had travelled over that whole province,
and gathered numerous churches to our Lord, St. Cedd returned to
Lindisfarne, to confer with bishop Finan about certain matters of
importance. That prelate ordained him bishop of the East-Saxons, having
called two other bishops to assist at his consecration. St. Cedd going
back to his province, pursued the work he had begun, built churches, and
ordained priests and deacons. Two monasteries were erected by him in
those parts, which seem afterwards to have been destroyed by the Danes,
and never restored. The first, he founded near a city, called by the
English Saxons, Ythancester, formerly Othona, seated upon the bank of
the river Pante, (now Froshwell,) which town was afterwards swallowed up
by the gradual encroaching of the sea. St. Cedd's other monastery was
built at another city called Tillaburg, now Tilbury, near the river
Thames, and here Camden supposes the saint chiefly to have resided, as
the first English bishops often chose to live in monasteries. But others
generally imagine, that London, then the seat of the king, was the
ordinary place of his residence, as it was of the ancient bishops of
that province, and of all his successors. In a journey which St. Cedd
made to his own country, Edilwald, the son of Oswald, who reigned among
the Deiri, in Yorkshire, finding him to be a wise and holy man, desired
him to accept of some possessions of land to build a monastery, to which
the king might resort to offer his prayers with those who should attend
the divine service without intermission, and where he might be buried
when he died. The k