tive of the whole English nation led the way by
their example to our national parliaments. The canons which these synods
enacted led the way to a national system of law.

[Sidenote: Wulfhere]

The organization of the episcopate was followed by the organization of
the parish system. The mission-station or monastery from which priest or
bishop went forth on journey after journey to preach and baptize
naturally disappeared as the land became Christian. The missionaries
turned into settled clergy. As the king's chaplain became a bishop and
the kingdom his diocese, so the chaplain of an English noble became the
priest and the manor his parish. But this parish system is probably later
than Theodore, and the system of tithes which has been sometimes coupled
with his name dates only from the close of the eighth century. What was
really due to him was the organization of the episcopate, and the impulse
which this gave to national unity. But the movement towards unity found a
sudden check in the revived strength of Mercia. Wulfhere proved a
vigorous and active ruler, and the peaceful reign of Oswiu left him free
to build up again during fifteen years of rule (659-675) that Mercian
overlordship over the tribes of Mid-England which had been lost at
Penda's death. He had more than his father's success. Not only did Essex
again own his supremacy, but even London fell into Mercian hands. The
West-Saxons were driven across the Thames, and nearly all their
settlements to the north of that river were annexed to the Mercian realm.
Wulfhere's supremacy soon reached even south of the Thames, for Sussex in
its dread of West-Saxons found protection in accepting his overlordship,
and its king was rewarded by a gift of the two outlying settlements of
the Jutes--the Isle of Wight and the lands of the Meonwaras along the
Southampton water--which we must suppose had been reduced by Mercian
arms. The industrial progress of the Mercian kingdom went hand in hand
with its military advance. The forests of its western border, the marshes
of its eastern coast, were being cleared and drained by monastic
colonies, whose success shows the hold which Christianity had now gained
over its people. Heathenism indeed still held its own in the wild western
woodlands and in the yet wilder fen-country on the eastern border of the
kingdom which stretched from the "Holland," the sunk, hollow land of
Lincolnshire, to the channel of the Ouse, a wilderness of shallow wat