[Footnote 8: The anonymous biographer of Offa, who records his miraculous metamorphosis, states that the five kings to whom Offa soon became formidable after his elevation to the crown of Mercia, sought aid from Charles the Great of France (probably Carloman, the brother and predecessor of Charlemagne is meant), who promised to protect them, and wrote to Offa accordingly. The sovereign of Mercia, however, spurned his threats, and proceeded to effect his conquests. Carloman in the meanwhile dying, left his kingdom to Charlemagne, to whom the five kings repeated their supplications for aid, which was again promised, and Charlemagne wrote enjoining Offa to desist from attacking them. “Quid nobis rex transmarinus?” was the lofty remark of the Mercian king, and he proceeded undaunted in the prosecution of his designs. Some time subsequent to these events, Offa is stated (and in this Speeds’s Chronicle follows the Monk of St. Albans) to have written to Charlemagne with the design of procuring his friendship and alliance; and to this epistle he received a favourable reply, which led to a friendship and correspondence between the two potentates. Vide also Will. Malmesbury in Savile’s Collection, 32.] The friendship of monarchs, however, from its intimate connexion with political expediency, is necessarily unstable: nor was that of Offa and Charlemagne without interruption. The Frank desired the hand of a daughter of Offa for his natural son Charles; but this the Mercian sovereign refused unless Bertha, the daughter of the emperor of the west, were bestowed upon Egfrid his own son and heir. The demand excited the anger of Charlemagne; and, in consequence, disregarding the wise remonstrances of his council, he closed the ports of Gaul against the merchants of Anglo-Saxon Britain.[9] In consequence of this hasty and decisive step, Offa was apprehensive of invasion from his indignant foe, and this anticipation of evil was increased, by the knowledge that he afforded his powerful protection to some Anglo-Saxon malcontents. Lambert, the Saxon Primate, was suspected of being privy to the emperor’s designs, and this afforded a pretext (if indeed it were not really the reason) for removing the Archiepiscopate from Canterbury to Lichfield. After some lapse of time, however, concord was restored between the regal friends, through the mediation of Alcuin and the abbot Gervald[10]. The former of these (one of the most interesting and learned characters of that age) had not escaped the imputation of treasonable designs--an imputation which he repels with great simplicity and apparent honesty in the words addressed to a friend, “Vere Offæ regi nec genti Anglorum _unquam infidelis fui_!” His embassy from the court of his adopted to that of his natural sovereign was accompanied by gifts which were thus symbolically interpreted;