We should here bear in mind that Ethelred had fourteen years before this been expelled for cruel murders, and that he was now in the first year of his restored reign and had already sent away his first wife and taken another, a scandal so great in those days—bad as they were—that the Saxon Chronicle with remarkable particularity gives the month and the day of the gross offence, September 29. He afterwards murdered the two surviving members of the royal house. Alcuin’s letter to the king proceeds:— “It is now nearly 350 years that we and our fathers have dwelt in this most fair land, and never before has such a horror appeared in Britain as we now have suffered at the hands of pagans. And it was not supposed that such an attack from the sea was possible.[133] Behold, the church of the holy Cuthbert is deluged with the blood of the priests of God, is spoiled of all its ornaments; the place more venerable than any other in Britain is given as a prey to pagan races. From the spot where, after the departure of the holy Paulinus from York, the Christian religion took its beginning amongst us, from that spot misery and calamity have begun. Who does not fear? Who does not mourn this as if his fatherland itself was captured?” We should note Alcuin’s recognition of the fact that the restoration of Christianity in Northumbria was due not to persons of the Anglo-Saxon race and Church, but to Aidan and his monks of the Irish race and Church. “My brethren, give your most attentive consideration, your most diligent investigation, to this question,—is this most unaccustomed, most unheard-of evil, brought upon us by some unheard-of evil custom? I do not say that there was not among the people of old the sin of fornication. But since the days of King Alfwold[134] fornications, adulteries, incests, have inundated the land to such an extent that these sins are unblushingly perpetrated even among the handmaids dedicated to God. What shall I say of avarice, rapine, and judicial violence, when it is clearer than the light how these crimes have increased, and a despoiled people are the evidence of it. He who reads the Holy Scriptures, and revolves ancient history, and considers the working of the world, will find that for sins of this nature kings lose kingdoms, and peoples lose their father-land. He will find that when men in power have unjustly seized the property of others, they have justly lost their own....