In policy as in arms Offa proved himself equally successful. When he had been about ten years on the throne he made an attempt to deprive Iambertus, or Lambert, Archbishop of Canterbury, of his province, and, “contrary to the customs of antiquity,” to erect Lichfield into an Archiepiscopate. Although the clergy and natives of Kent were naturally opposed to an innovation which so materially affected their ecclesiastical importance, the king of Mercia succeeded in obtaining from Pope Adrian the First permission to prosecute his design; and the bishops of Worcester, Leicester, Chester, and Hereford, and of the East-Angles Helmham with Norfolk, and Domuck, or Donwich, with Suffolk, were, some years later, subjected to the Bishop of Lichfield: London, however, Rochester, Winchester, and Sherbourn remained in the diminished province of Canterbury.[6] [Footnote 6: V. Matth. West. A. D. 765. Tanner’s Notitia Monastica XVII. Staffordshire I. Holinshed thus writes: “Eadulphus, bishop of Lichfield, was adorned with the pall and taken for archbishop, having all those bishops within the limits of king Offa his dominion suffragans unto him; namelie, Denebertus, bishop of Worcester, Werebertus, bishop of Chester, Eadulphus, bishop of Dorchester, Wilnardus, bishop of Hereford, Halard, bishop of Eltham and Cedferth, Tedfrid, bishop of Donwich.” “But (as saith another writer, Will. of Malmsbury,) this iniquity did not long deform canonical institutions.” Kenulph, second in succession from Offa, restored Athelard, or Ethelard, to the privileges of the See of Canterbury; and the same king in a letter to Leo, the then reigning Pope, professes his sense of the impropriety of Offa’s conduct, and his willingness to submit in ecclesiastical matters to the example of antiquity and of the Pope.] A correspondence, still extant, which took place between Offa and the emperor[7] Charlemagne, serves to throw some light on the complexion of the times; and the fact of its existence may be deemed a valuable compliment to the talents, the power, and the reputation of the Anglo-Saxon. How their acquaintance commenced is uncertain: but the fact of Alcuin, an English clergyman, having been preceptor to the emperor is sufficient to account for his being favorably inclined to the nation that gave his tutor birth.[8] [Footnote 7: The following is the greeting of Charlemagne to Offa: “Karolus gratiâ Dei rex Francorum et Longobardorum et Patricius Romanorum, viro venerando, et fratri karissimo Offæ regi Merciorum, salutem.” _Cont. Hist. of Bede (incerto auctore), b. 1. ch. 14._ See also Leland’s Collectanea, vol. 1.]