not of Mercia only
but of East-Anglia and Kent, as well as of the West-Saxons, that
AEthelbald marched against the Welsh on his western border.

[Sidenote: Baeda]

In so complete a mastery of the south the Mercian King found grounds for
a hope that Northern Britain would also yield to his sway. But the dream
of a single England was again destined to be foiled. Fallen as
Northumbria was from its old glory, it still remained a great power.
Under the peaceful reigns of Ecgfrith's successors, Aldfrith and
Ceolwulf, their kingdom became the literary centre of Western Europe. No
schools were more famous than those of Jarrow and York. The whole
learning of the age seemed to be summed up in a Northumbrian scholar.
Baeda--the Venerable Bede as later times styled him--was born nine years
after the Synod of Whitby on ground which passed a year later to Benedict
Biscop as the site of the great abbey which he reared by the mouth of the
Wear. His youth was trained and his long tranquil life was wholly spent
in an offshoot of Benedict's house which was founded by his friend
Ceolfrid. Baeda never stirred from Jarrow. "I spent my whole life in the
same monastery," he says, "and while attentive to the rule of my order
and the service of the Church, my constant pleasure lay in learning, or
teaching, or writing." The words sketch for us a scholar's life, the more
touching in its simplicity that it is the life of the first great English
scholar. The quiet grandeur of a life consecrated to knowledge, the
tranquil pleasure that lies in learning and teaching and writing, dawned
for Englishmen in the story of Baeda. While still young he became a
teacher, and six hundred monks besides strangers that flocked thither for
instruction formed his school of Jarrow. It is hard to imagine how among
the toils of the schoolmaster and the duties of the monk, Baeda could have
found time for the composition of the numerous works that made his name
famous in the West. But materials for study had accumulated in
Northumbria through the journeys of Wilfrid and Benedict Biscop and the
libraries which were forming at Wearmouth and York. The tradition of the
older Irish teachers still lingered to direct the young scholar into that
path of Scriptural interpretation to which he chiefly owed his fame.
Greek, a rare accomplishment in the West, came to him from the school
which the Greek Archbishop Theodore founded beneath the walls of
Canterbury. His skill in the ecc