a dangerous league against
him, like that by which he himself had been enabled to overthrow
Ceaulin, he had the prudence to resign the kingdom of Mercia to Webba,
the rightful heir, the son of Crida, who had first founded that
monarchy. But governed still by ambition more than by justice, he
gave Webba possession of the crown on such conditions as rendered him
little better than a tributary prince under his artful benefactor.
[FN [f] Chron. Sax. p. 21. [g] H. Hunting. lib. 2.]

But the most memorable event which distinguished the reign of this
great prince, was the introduction of the Christian religion among the
English Saxons. The superstition of the Germans, particularly that of
the Saxons, was of the grossest and most barbarous kind; and being
founded on traditional tales received from their ancestors, not
reduced to any system, nor supported by political institutions, like
that of the Druids, it seems to have made little impression on its
votaries, and to have easily resigned its place to the new doctrine
promulgated to them. Woden, whom they deemed the ancestor of all
their princes, was regarded as the god of war, and, by a natural
consequence, became their supreme deity, and the chief object of their
religious worship. They believed that, if they obtained the favour of
this divinity by their valour, (for they made less account of the
other virtues,) they should be admitted after their death into his
hall; and, reposing on couches, should satiate themselves with ale
from the skulls of their enemies whom they had slain in battle.
Incited by this idea of paradise, which gratified at once the passion
of revenge and that of intemperance, the ruling inclinations of
barbarians, they despised the dangers of war, and increased their
native ferocity against the vanquished by their religious prejudices.
We know little of the other theological tenets of the Saxons: we only
learn that they were polytheists; that they worshipped the sun and
moon; that they adored the god of thunder under the name of Thor; that
they had images in their temples; that they practised sacrifices;
believed firmly in spells and enchantments; and admitted in general a
system of doctrines which they held as sacred, but which, like all
other superstitions, must carry the air of the wildest extravagance,
if propounded to those who are not familiarized to it from their
earliest infancy.

The constant hostilities which the Saxons maintained against