ts, he was seized by Offa,
and secretly beheaded; and though Elfrida, who abhorred her father's
treachery, had time to give warning to the East Anglian nobility, who
escaped into their own country, Offa, having extinguished the royal
family, succeeded in his design of subduing that kingdom [e]. The
perfidious prince, desirous of re-establishing his character in the
world, and perhaps of appeasing the remorses of his own conscience,
paid great court to the clergy, and practised all the monkish devotion
so much esteemed in that ignorant and superstitious age. He gave the
tenth of his goods to the church [f]; bestowed rich donations on the
cathedral of Hereford, and even made a pilgrimage to Rome, where his
great power and riches could not fail of procuring him the papal
absolution. The better to ingratiate himself with the sovereign
pontiff, he engaged to pay him a yearly donation for the support of an
English college at Rome [g]; and, in order to raise the sum, he
imposed the tax of a penny on each house possessed of thirty pence a
year. This imposition being afterwards levied on all England, was
commonly denominated Peter's Pence [h]: and though conferred at first
as a gift, was afterwards claimed as a tribute by the Roman pontiff.
Carrying his hypocrisy still farther, Offa, feigning to be directed by
a vision from heaven, discovered at Verulam the relics of St. Alban,
the martyr, and endowed a magnificent monastery in that place [i].
Moved by all these acts of piety, Malmesbury, one of the best of the
old English historians, declares himself at a loss to determine [k]
whether the merits or crimes of this prince preponderated. Offa died
after a reign of thirty-nine years, in 794 [l].
[FN [d] Chron. Sax. p. 59. [e] Brompton, p. 750, 751, 752. [f] Spell.
Conc. p. 308. Brompton, p. 776. [g] Spell. Conc. p. 230, 310, 312.
[h] Higden, lib. 5. [i] Ingulph. p. 5. W. Malmes. lib. 1. cap. 4.
[k] Lib. 1. cap. 4.]

This prince was become so considerable in the Heptarchy, that the
Emperor Charlemagne entered into an alliance and friendship with him;
a circumstance which did honour to Offa, as distant princes at that
time had usually little communication with each other. That emperor
being a great lover of learning and learned men, in an age very barren
of that ornament, Offa, at his desire, sent him over Alcuin, a
clergyman, much celebrated for his knowledge, who received great
honours from Charlemagne, and even became