Before proceeding to examine Alcuin’s letter to a Mercian nobleman on the death of Offa and his son Ecgfrith, it should be remarked that we of the diocese of Bristol must not allow the mention of this poor young king Ecgfrith to pass without our acknowledgement for a deed of justice done. When Offa defeated the West Saxon king at Bensington, he took possession of a good deal of the border land, including two tracts of land which King Cadwalla of Wessex had given to Malmesbury, namely Tetbury in Gloucestershire and Purton in Wilts. William of Malmesbury naturally reports the iniquity of Offa in thus pillaging the abbey which was the home of William’s life and studies. Offa gave Tetbury to the Bishop of Worcester. Purton was the subject of a deed by Ecgfrith during his reign of a few months. The deed has remarkable interest for us in this diocese, in that it is doubly dated; first as in the seven hundred and ninety-sixth year from the Incarnation, and next, with a very interesting recognition of our own Aldhelm, due to the fact that the theft had been from Aldhelm’s own Malmesbury, “in the eighty-seventh year from the passing of father Aldhelm.” The deed restores land of thirty-five families at Piritune, on the east side of Braden Wood, to the abbat and brethren of Malmesbury, for the repose of the soul of his father Offa who had taken it from them, and in order that the memory of Ecgfrith might always be preserved in their prayers. As a sort of unimportant afterthought he adds that the abbat and brethren have given him two thousand shillings of pure silver, probably as many pounds of our money. The deed was signed by Athelhard of Canterbury, not by Lichfield. The reason no doubt is that Tetbury and Purton are south of the Thames, and so outside the Province of Lichfield and within the diminished Province of Canterbury. When the death of Offa’s son, the youthful Ecgfrith, king of Mercia, occurred in this same year 796 in which year his father Offa had died,[113] and a distant cousin Kenulf succeeded, Alcuin, as has been said, wrote a very serious letter to one of the chief officers of Mercia. [Sidenote: Ep. 79. A.D. 797.] “These are times of tribulation everywhere in the land; faith is failing; truth is dumb; malice increases; and arrogance adds to your miseries. Men are not content to follow in the steps of our early fathers, in dress, or food, or honest ways. Some most foolish man thinks out something unsuited to human nature, and hateful to God; and straightway almost the whole of the people set themselves busily to follow this above all. “That most noble youth [Ecgfrith] is dead; not, as I think, because of his own sins alone, but also because the vengeance of his father’s bloodshedding has reached the son. For you know best of all how much blood the father shed that the kingdom might be safe for the son. It proved to be the destruction, not the confirmation, of his reign.