Cudberct, who had accepted the bishopric with great reluctance, after he had filled the office for two years from his election, becoming aware that his end was drawing near, resolved to lay down his pastoral office and return to his solitary life; and after making a complete visitation not only of his diocese but also of all the other dwellings of the faithful, in order to confirm all with the needful word of exhortation, he, soon after Christmas in the year 686, returned to the hermit’s life he loved so well, in his cell in the island of Farne. And as a crowd of the brethren stood around him as he was going abroad, one of them asked him, ‘Tell us, lord bishop, when we may hope for your return.’ And Cudberct, who knew the truth, answered his simple question as simply, saying, ‘When you shall bring my body hither.’ ‘After he had passed nearly two months,’ says Bede, ‘greatly exulting in the repose which he had regained, he was seized with a sudden illness, and by the fire of temporal pain he began to be prepared for the joys of everlasting happiness.’ The account which Bede gives us of his death was, he says, narrated to him by Herefrid, a devout and religious priest, who at that time presided over the monastery of Lindisfarne as abbot, and was with Cudberct when he died. It is too long for insertion, but one or two incidents recorded by him throw light upon some points relevant to our inquiry. [Sidenote: A.D. 687. Death of Cudberct.] ‘After three weeks of continued wasting infirmity, Cudberct came to his end thus. He began to be taken ill on the fourth day of the week, and in like manner on the fourth day of the week, his sickness having been accomplished, he departed to the Lord.’ Herefrid visited him on the morning after he was taken ill, and when he took leave of him, and said, ‘Give us your blessing, for it is time for us to go on board and return home,’—‘Do as you say,’ he said; ‘go on board and return home safe; and when God shall have taken my soul bury me in this cell, at the south side of my oratory, opposite the east side of the holy cross which I have erected there. Now there is at the north of the same oratory a stone coffin, hidden by sods,[412] which formerly the venerable abbot Cudda presented to me. Place my body in that, and wrap it in the fine linen which you will find there.’ Herefrid was prevented from returning by a storm which lasted five days, but, when calm weather returned, he went back to the island and found that Cudberct had left his monastery and was sitting in the house built outside the enclosure for the reception of visitors, in order that any of the brethren who came to minister to him should find him there, and have no need to enter his cell. When Herefrid returned to Lindisfarne, he told the brethren that their venerable father had given orders that he should be buried in his own island; they resolved therefore to ask him to permit his body to be