The poem describes the importance of York in the time of the Roman occupation of Britain, the residence, as Alcuin tells us, of the dukes of Britain, and of sovereigns of Rome. York was, in fact, the imperial city; it shared with Trèves the honour of being the only imperial cities north of the Alps. He speaks eloquently of its beautiful surroundings, its flowery fields, its noble edifices, its fertility, its charm as a home. This part of the poem inclines the reader to settle in favour of York the uncertainty as to the place of Alcuin’s birth. One graphic touch, and the use of a special Latin name for the river Ouse which flows through the middle of the city, goes to the heart of those who in their youth have fished in that river— Hanc piscosa suis undis interluit Usa. He goes on to speak of the persistent inroads of the Picts after the withdrawal of the Roman troops. Inasmuch as the sixth legion was quartered at York, and all of the other three legions in Britain were withdrawn before the sixth, it may be claimed that York was the last place effectively occupied by the Roman troops. This indeed is in itself probable, since York was in the best position for checking the attempts of the Picts to reach the central and southern parts of Britain. He describes how the leaders of the Britons sent large bribes to a warlike race, to bring them over to protect the land, a race, he says, called from their hardness Saxi, as though Saxons meant stones.[86] The eventual conquest of the Britons by the Saxons evidently had Alcuin’s full sympathy. The Britons were lazy; worse than that, they were wicked; for their sins they were rightly driven out, and a better race entered into possession of their cities. We would give a great deal to have had from Alcuin a few words of tradition about some details of the occupation of York by the Angles, and of the fate of the British inhabitants. Alcuin’s words would suggest that their fate was a cruel one, but we do not know anything of it from any source whatsoever. One of his remarks strikes us as curious, considering that the Britons were Christians and their conquerors were pagan: the expulsion, he says, was the work of God, that a race might enter into possession who should keep the precepts of the Lord. Clearly Alcuin held a brief for his ancestors of some five generations before his birth. He writes also in a rather lordly way of the kingdom of Kent, as though Northumbria was the really important province in the time of King Edwin, as indeed it unquestionably was. Edwin was the most prominent personage in England, the Bretwalda, at the time of the conversion of Northumbria. All that Alcuin says of Edwin’s young wife Ethelburga, and of the kingdom of Kent whence she came, is this: “He took from the southern parts a faithful wife, of excellent disposition, of illustrious origin, endowed with all the virtues of the holy faith.” We shall have, at a later stage, to remark upon the silence