Offa promised that he would do these things, and when he returned to England he gave orders that the two buildings should be begun without delay. Very soon afterwards he died, and it fell to the lot of one of his Viceroys, whose name was Milfred, to carry out his plans at Fernlege, and to build an ‘admirable stone church’ there. And so King Offa vanishes from history, and although we cannot doubt that his penitence was very deep, and that his great sin was forgiven, it is very striking to read how Bishop Eadwulf’s words were fulfilled, and how the glory did indeed ‘depart from his house.’ We have seen how his wife died, and how his youngest and fairest daughter became a nun. Then he himself died and was buried, not in either of the two great Minsters which he had caused to be erected, but in a little chapel on the banks of the Ouse, near Bedford. One day a dreadful flood came, and the Ouse overflowed its banks and washed away the chapel, and King Offa’s bones along with it, and no one ever knew what became of them. Soon afterwards his only son, Prince Ecgfrith, died, and slowly the Kingdom of Mercia grew less and less important, and the little Kingdom of Wessex grew greater and greater, until its King, King Ecgbert, great-grandfather of Alfred the Great, became ‘Overlord’ of the whole of England. As for King Offa’s eldest daughter, Eadburh, her story is the saddest of all, for she was a wicked woman like her mother; and she did one bad thing after another, until at last she had neither money nor friends left; and the old chroniclers tell us that, ‘in the days of Alfred, who reigned over the West Saxons, and who was Overlord of all the Kingdoms of England, there were many men yet living who had seen Eadburh, daughter of Offa, and wife of Beorhtric, begging her bread.’ But it is pleasant to think that if Eadwulf’s words came true in such a terrible way, the dream or vision which poor King Ethelbert had on the last night of his life came true also, but in a much happier and sweeter manner. For, as I have said, under the direction of Milfred, King Offa’s Viceroy, a noble stone church replaced the little wooden one at Fernlege, or, as it soon began to be called, ‘Hereford,’ which means ‘The Ford of the Army,’ because, when the Mercian soldiers wished to pass into Wales, they crossed the River Wye at this point. This new church was dedicated to ‘St. Ethelbert and the Blessed Virgin,’ and into it, when it was finished, the Bishop’s chair was carried. For, although the young King could not be called a martyr, he certainly left the record of a pure and brave and noble life behind him, and it seemed fitting--and we are glad that it did so--that the memory of his name should linger, all down the ages, round the stately Cathedral which was built as an expiation of his death, and in which, for half a century at least, his body rested.