pagan Anglic king Penda and the apostate Welsh king Ceadwalla. When Christianity was again revived in Northumbria, it was in a different form, and one more assimilated to the church of Kentigern; but the Cumbrian kingdom fell, not long after, under the dominion of the Angles; and during the period of their rule there was probably no independent church there. It is to the Columban Church, established in Northumbria by King Osuald in 635, that we must look for the permanent conversion of the Angles who occupied the eastern districts between the Tweed and the Forth, and for the foundation of churches, or rather Columban monasteries, among them. The two principal of these were founded, the one by Aidan, the first of the Columban bishops; the second, in the time of Finan, his successor. Bede tells us that on the arrival of Aidan, ‘the king appointed him his episcopal see in the island of Lindisfarne, as he himself desired,’ and that ‘churches were built in several places; the people joyfully flocked together to hear the Word; possessions and lands were given of the king’s bounty to build monasteries; the younger Angles were by their Scottish masters instructed.’[380] And in another place he says that, when Aidan was first made bishop, ‘he received twelve boys of the Anglic nation to be instructed in Christ.’[381] [Sidenote: The monasteries in Lothian.] ‘Among the monasteries so founded by him was that of Mailros, situated on the banks of the Tweed not far from the later foundation at the place, and called Old Melrose, a peninsula nearly surrounded by the Tweed, which is overhung on the farther side by its lofty precipitous banks, and is strongly guarded by natural defences on every quarter except the south, where a wall was drawn across the narrow isthmus.’[382] And the first abbot we hear of in connection with this monastery was Eata, one of the twelve boys whom Aidan had instructed.[383] The other monastery was that termed by Bede _Urbs Coludi_, the Saxon equivalent of which is _Coldingaham_, now Coldingham, built on a rock overhanging the sea, a short way south of the promontory termed Saint Abb’s Head. The neck of land on which it was built stretches into the sea, having for its three sides perpendicular rocks of great elevation. The fourth side was cut off from the mainland, and rendered impregnable, by a high wall and deep trench.[384] This monastery was founded by Aebba, daughter of King Aedilfrid, and half-sister of the kings Osuald and Osuiu, who became its first abbess.[385] It was a double monastery, and contained two distinct communities of men and of women, who lived under her single government. It is from her that the promontory of Saint Abb’s Head takes its name. [Sidenote: Saint Cuthbert.]