After Wilfrith had lost favour at the Northumbrian court, and carried his grievances to Rome, King Ecgfrith secured the co-operation of Theodore, archbishop of Canterbury (669) in the organization of the Northern Church. As has been said, there are indications that church work went on busily in the district of the great Bay. St. Cuthbert, who had served his apprenticeship as a monk at Ripon, was made bishop in 685 and administered his great See from Lindisfarne. Into his charge Ecgfrith expressly gave Cartmel with its Britons, and the newly-conquered district round Carlisle. Carlisle became indeed a thriving church centre, with royal nunnery and monastery, and with missions spreading round it. Bede has drawn a striking picture of the bishop's visit to the ruined Roman city, when a vision of the king's overthrow came upon him; as well as of his last meeting with St. Herebert, the hermit of Derwentwater, who was wont every year to seek his counsel. The district of Cartmel he placed in the charge of the "good Abbot Cineferth," as if it were too distant from Lindisfarne for his immediate care. But, while his own easiest route to Carlisle would be by the straight road along the Roman Wall, he would not be ignorant of that other road striking northwards through the mountains from the great Bay. He may, indeed, have travelled this road himself on his missionary journeys, and even have halted to preach in the vale of Grasmere. It is certain at least that some of the holy men working for the Anglo-Scottish Church at this period must have done so. With the defeat and death of Ecgfrith the glory of the Northumbrian kingdom came to an end indeed; but the church continued to prosper; and in the two hundred years between that event and the final relinquishment of Lindisfarne as a See, on through the ravages of the Danes, it wrought a mighty work, not only in the old kingdoms of Bernicia and Deira, but in the region westward. Many of our existing foundations may well date back from that time; and it is probable that the ruined or entirely vanished chapels of our district were built in that age of piety.[10] We know from Bede that there was a monastery at Dacre in Cumberland, which existed at least until 926.[11] It has been suggested that a certain monastery, founded by a Northumbrian nobleman in the reign of Osred (slain in 717) was situated at Heversham in Westmorland.[12] Certainly at Heversham may be seen the fragments of a cross wrought in patterns such as experts ascribe to the Anglian school of workmanship introduced by Wilfrith.[13] [10] See "Lost Churches in the Carlisle Diocese." _Transactions_ Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian Society, vol. xv. [11] See _Victorian History of Cumberland_. [12] See Bates's _History of Northumberland_. [13] See _Sculptured Crosses of the Diocese of Carlisle_. Calverley & Collingwood.