“I confess myself greatly rejoiced to hear from Eanbald[160], of your household, of the soundness of your prosperity, so greatly desired by me. The love and faith which began long ago to dwell in my breast will never be able to leave me. The nearer the time of heavenly reward comes, the more careful should he be who is the first to leave the world that he has left in the world a friend. The sharpness of fever, and the delay of the king [Karl] in Saxony, has prevented my coming to you as I have desired to do. May the divine clemency grant to me to see thy face in joy before I die. If I come, I earnestly hope that I shall find you still in that honourable place of dignity in which you were when I left. And if some other dignity has been preferred by you,[161] I hope that you will not by any means allow violence to be done to the Church of Christ, and that the brethren may be left free to elect as your successor the best man, in the fear and by the grace of God most high. For in the sacred canons a terrible anathema is uttered against those who do any violence to the Church of Christ. You have always loved our [ecclesiastical] family of York and have done them very many kindnesses. We now need your help more than ever; and when our time of eternal rest has come, you will have us as perpetual intercessors in your behalf. “May the divine clemency grant to thee prosperous and happy days in this life, and glory eternal with His saints, my dearest lord and father.” Eanbald contemplated abdication in the end of 795, and Alcuin wrote the following anxious letter to the brethren of York, on whom the choice of a new archbishop would fall:— [Sidenote: Ep. 37. A.D. 795.] “To my best-loved friends, greeting. “I beg of you, by the faith of love, that you act faithfully and wisely in the election of a pontiff, if the election must take place before I come. Again and again I call upon you, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you by no means allow any one to obtain the bishopric by the heresy of simony; for if that takes place, it is the complete perdition of the race. This simoniacal heresy is that worst of heresies which the holy Peter condemned with an eternal anathema [Acts viii. 14, 20, seq.]. He who sells a bishopric gains gold and loses the kingdom of God.