mankind. After his
death, which was violent, like that of most of the Saxon princes that
did not early retire into monasteries, Sigebert, his successor and
half brother, who had been educated in France, restored Christianity,
and introduced learning among the East Angles. Some pretend that he
founded the university of Cambridge, or rather some schools in that
place. It is almost impossible, and quite needless, to be more
particular in relating the transactions of the East Angles. What
instruction or entertainment can it give the reader, to hear a long
bead-roll of barbarous names, Egric, Annas, Ethelbert, Ethelwald,
Aldulf; Elfwald, Beorne, Ethelred, Ethelbert, who successively
murdered, expelled, or inherited from each other, and obscurely filled
the throne of that kingdom? Ethelbert, the last of these princes, was
treacherously murdered by Offa, King of Mercia, in the year 792, and
his state was thenceforth united with that of Offa, as we shall relate
presently.

[MN The kingdom of Mercia.]
Mercia, the largest if not the most powerful kingdom of the Heptarchy,
comprehended all the middle counties of England, and as its frontiers
extended to those of all the other six kingdoms, as well as to Wales,
it received its name from that circumstance. Wibba, the son of Crida,
founder of the monarchy, being placed on the throne, by Ethelbert,
King of Kent, governed his paternal dominions by a precarious
authority, and after his death, Ceorl, his kinsman, was, by the
influence of the Kentish monarch, preferred to his son Penda, whose
turbulent character appeared dangerous to that prince. Penda was thus
fifty years of age before he mounted the throne, and his temerity and
restless disposition were found nowise abated by time, experience, or
reflection. He engaged in continual hostilities against all the
neighbouring states, and by his injustice and violence rendered
himself equally odious to his own subjects and to strangers.
Sigebert, Egric, and Annas, three kings of East Anglia, perished
successively in battle against him, as did also Edwin and Oswald, the
two greatest princes that had reigned over Northumberland. At last
Oswy, brother to Oswald, having defeated and slain him in a decisive
battle, freed the world from this sanguinary tyrant. Peada, his son,
mounted the throne of Mercia in 655, and lived under the protection of
Oswy, whose daughter he had espoused. This princess was educated in
the Christian faith,