RUIN OF NORTHUMBRIA--AETHELWULF'S PILGRIMAGE--DANISH INVASIONS OF SOUTHERN ENGLAND; THE PEACE OF WEDMORE--ALFRED'S WORK--CHARACTER OF THE CHURCH IN THE TENTH CENTURY--REORGANIZATION--REVIVAL--ODA--DUNSTAN--SECULARS AND REGULARS--DUNSTAN'S ECCLESIASTICAL ADMINISTRATION--CORONATIONS--DUNSTAN'S LAST DAYS--AELFRIC THE GRAMMARIAN. [Sidenote: Ruin of Northumbria.] Before the end of the eighth century the Northmen laid waste Lindisfarne, Jarrow, and Wearmouth. Civil disorder, however, was well nigh as fatal to the Church in the north as the ravages of the heathen. In 808 Archbishop Eanbald joined the Mercian king, Cenwulf, in dethroning Eardulf of Northumbria. Eardulf sought help from the Emperor, Charles the Great, and laid his case before Leo III. A papal legate and an imperial messenger were sent to England to summon Eanbald to appear either before the Pope or the Emperor. He defended himself by letter; his defence was pronounced unsatisfactory, and the Emperor procured the restoration of the king. For the next sixty years anarchy and violence prevailed in the north. Then the Scandinavian pirates invaded the country and overthrew York. Nine years later Halfdene desolated Bernicia, so that not a church was left standing between the Tweed and the Tyne. The bishop of Lindisfarne and his monks fled from their home, carrying with them the bones of St. Cuthberht. They found shelter at Chester-le-Street, which for about a century became the see of the Bernician bishopric. Northumbria became a Danish province, and when it was again brought under the dominion of an English king it had fallen far behind the rest of the country in ecclesiastical and intellectual matters. The Danish conquest had a marked effect upon the position of the northern metropolitan. Cut off from communication with the rest of England, the Northumbrians became almost a distinct nation. The extinction of the native kingship and a long series of revolutions threw political power into the hands of the archbishops, and when the Church of York again emerges from obscurity we find them holding a kind of national headship. Their position was magnified by isolation. While the sees of Hexham and Withern had been overthrown, and the Church of Lindisfarne was in exile, the see of York remained to attract the sympathies and, in more than one instance, direct the action, of the northern people. [Sidenote: AEthelwulf's pilgrimage, 855.]