Hither came Charlemagne, and many other great ones, both before and after him, some worthy of Heaven’s favour, some in the rebellious attempt to enslave the Church and make her work for them instead of for Christ. But most entered St. Peter’s with humble and sincere hearts and it is noticeable that, of the famous royal pilgrims, the larger part came from Britain. One of the first was Cadwalla, King of the Saxons, an ardent convert who travelled to Rome to be baptised at St. Peter’s tomb, and was rewarded for his faith by dying immediately afterwards, “spotless among the sheep of Christ.” Then we are told of the holy Cenred, who had renounced the throne of Mercia to become a monk in Rome and who, as a sign of his sincerity, cut off his flowing locks and laid them at the shrine of the Apostle; another Briton, good King Ina of Wessex, comes to pray, and to found a Church in honour of the Mother of God, so that his subjects who come on pilgrimage may have their own sanctuary to pray in and their own ground to receive their bodies should they die in Rome; Offa, the Saxon, comes to ask St. Peter to consider him as his vassal and Offa’s realm as a loyal tributary of his own; and, almost greatest of all, in the year 854, our Holy Father, St. Leo IV, being the reigning Pope, there walks one day into Constantine’s Basilica a big fair-haired Englishman called Ethelwulf, leading a little boy, six years old, bright of eye and sturdy of limb, by the hand. Behind them, in awed silence, comes a group of the white and ruddy warriors of the North, gazing in wonder at the splendid Church, full of treasures from East and West, such as they have never beheld before. They voice their admiration in gruff whispers in a strange tongue, unintelligible to the scattered worshippers around them, who, doubtless, watch them with some apprehension, asking themselves whether their coming be the herald of another Gothic invasion of Rome. But the leader of the strangers goes up to the High Altar and kneels for a space, the child kneeling too, but clinging tightly to his father’s hand. Then the father stands up, and, addressing one of the attendant priests in clear Latin, asks to be taken to the Pope. It is Ethelwulf, King of the Anglo-Saxons; he has come to ask the Holy Father to crown him; and the little boy, on whom the Pope smiles, and who receives the pontifical blessing so blithely, grows up to be Alfred the Great.