rland. In =655= Oswiu and Penda met to fight, as it
seemed for supremacy over the whole of England, by the river Winwaed,
near the present Leeds. The heathen Penda was defeated and slain.

20. =The Three Kingdoms and the Welsh.=--For a moment it seemed as if
England would be brought together under the rule of Oswiu. After
Penda's death Mercia accepted Christianity, and the newly united
Mercia was split up into its original parts ruled by several kings.
The supremacy of Oswiu was, however, as little to be borne by the
Mercians as the supremacy of Penda had been borne by the men of
North-humberland. Under Wulfhere the Mercians rose in =659= against
Oswiu. All hope of uniting England was for the present at an end. For
about a century and a half longer there remained three larger
kingdoms--North-humberland, Mercia, and Wessex, whilst four smaller
ones--East Anglia, Essex, Kent, and Sussex--were usually attached
either to Mercia or to Wessex. The failure of North-humberland to
maintain the power was no doubt, in the first place owing to the
absence of any common danger, the fear of which would bind together
its populations in self-defence. The northern Kymry of Strathclyde
were no longer formidable, and they grew less formidable as years
passed on. The southern Kymry of Wales were too weak to threaten
Mercia, and the Welsh of the south-western peninsula were too weak to
threaten Wessex. It was most unlikely that any permanent union of the
English states would be brought about till some enemy arose who was
more terrible to them than the Welsh could any longer be.

21. =The English Missionaries.=--Some preparation might, however, be
made for the day of union by the steady growth of the Church. The
South Saxons, secluded between the forest and the sea, were the last
to be converted, but with them English heathenism came to an end as an
avowed religion, though it still continued to influence the multitude
in the form of a belief in fairies and witchcraft. Monasteries and
nunneries sprang up on all sides. Missionaries spread over the
country. In their mouths, and still more in their lives, Christianity
taught what the fierce English warrior most wanted to learn, the duty
of restraining his evil passions, and above all his cruelty. Nowhere
in all Europe did the missionaries appeal so exclusively as they did
in England to higher and purer motives. Nowhere but in England were to
be found kings like Oswald and Oswini, who bowed thei