“For the English race is vexed with tribulations by reason of its many sins. The goodness of kings, the preaching of the priests of Christ, the religious life of the people, can raise it to the height of its ancient honour; so that a blessed progeny of our fathers may deserve to possess perpetual happiness, stability of the kingdom, and fortitude against any foe; that the Church of Christ, as ordained by holy fathers, may grow and prosper. Always have in honour, most illustrious ruler, the priests of Christ; for the more reverently you are disposed to the servants of Christ, and the preachers of the word of God, the more will Christ, the King pious and true, exalt and confirm your honour, on the intercession of His saints.” When Kenulf, this distant cousin of Ecgfrith, came to the throne, he looked into the matter of the archbishopric of Lichfield, and he took a view adverse to Offa’s action. He wrote to Pope Leo III a letter,[118] in which he put the points very clearly. His bishops and learned men had told him that the division of the Province of Canterbury into two provinces was contrary to the canons and apostolical statutes of the most blessed Gregory, who had ordered that there should be twelve bishops under the archbishop of the southern province, seated at London. On the death of Augustine of Canterbury, it had seemed good to all the wise men of the race, the Witangemote, that not London but Canterbury should be the seat of the Primacy, where Augustine’s body lay. King Offa, by reason of his enmity with the venerable archbishop Jaenbert and the people of Kent, set to work to divide the province into two. The most pious Adrian, at the request of the said king, had done what no one before had presumed to do, had raised the Mercian prelate to the dignity of the pallium. Kenulf did not blame either of them; but he hoped that the Pope would look into the matter and make a benign and just response. He had sent an embassy on the part of himself and the bishops in the previous year by Wada the Abbat; but Wada, after accepting the charge, had indolently—nay foolishly—withdrawn. He now sent by the hands of a presbyter, Birine, and two of his officers, Fildas and Cheolberth, a small present, out of his love for the Pope, namely, 120 mancuses,[119] some forty to fifty pounds, say not far off £1000 of our time.