Edwin no sooner found himself firmly seated on the throne of Northumbria, than he sent into Kent, and solicited the hand of Edilburga in marriage. She was the daughter of the late Ethelbert, so distinguished for his kindness to the Christian missionaries. Probably Edwin had become acquainted with her while he wandered "homeless, amid a thousand homes." Her brother Eadbald had, by this time, become a Christian, had hurled down his heathen idols and pagan altars, and established himself beside the church at Canterbury, which had long been the metropolis of Kent. Eadbald justly argued, that it was wrong for a Christian maiden to become the wife of a pagan husband, of one who could neither share with her the holy sacrament, nor kneel down to worship before the altar of the same Holy God. Edwin bound himself by a solemn promise that he would offer no obstacle to the royal lady following her own faith, but that all who accompanied her, whether women, priests, or laymen, should have full liberty to follow their own form of religion; and that if, upon close examination by the wise and good men of his own faith, he found the Christian creed better than that of Odin, he might at last adopt it. The Saxon princess had the fullest confidence in the promise of the pagan king, and with a long train of noble and lowly attendants, headed by Paulinus, who was by this time created a bishop, she left the home of her fathers in Kent, and as Rowena had beforetime done, went to sojourn among strangers. Many a prayer was offered up by the way, and the holy rites of the church to which she belonged were daily celebrated. Timidly must the maiden's heart have beaten when she first set foot within that pagan land; but she probably remembered the time when many of her father's subjects were idolaters.