The Northumbrian ravages of Penda may possibly have been of frequent occurrence. Besides that just mentioned there was at least one more in the lifetime of the saint, possibly soon after the death of Oswald. In this expedition also he sought by the aid of fire to achieve the conquest of the fortress which, in fact, remained impregnable till the invention of gunpowder. Destroying all the hamlets in the immediate neighbourhood of the royal city, he collected their ruins together, an immense mass of wooden beams, brushwood, straw-thatch and other inflammable materials, and piling them up against the lowest end of the cliff, waited for a favourable breeze to kindle his fire. It happened that at this time Aidan had retired from monastic Lindisfarne to the yet more solitary Farne Islands, where, but for the myriads of sea-fowl which resort thither in the breeding season, he could be alone with his Creator. Looking across the two miles of sea which separated him from Bamburgh, the saint saw clouds of smoke arising and balls of fire flying high over the castle walls. With hands and eyes uplifted towards heaven he cried: “See, O Lord, what ills Penda worketh”. Thereat, says the legend, the wind changed, the flames beaten back from the fortress were driven upon the besiegers, who, with some of their number badly burned and all utterly affrighted, at once desisted from the siege of the city. But there must have been peaceful intervals in the long duel between Mercia and Northumbria. In one of these intervals, Alchfrid, Oswy’s son, sought and obtained the hand of Penda’s daughter, Cyneburga, in marriage. This led to a similar request from Penda’s son, Peada, King of the Middle Angles, for the hand of Alchfleda, daughter of Oswy. He was told that the only terms on which his suit could be successful were that he and all his people should receive the Christian faith. His brother-in-law, Alchfrid, strongly urged him to the same conclusion, and he consented to listen to the teaching of the Christian priests. When he heard of the promise of a heavenly kingdom, the hope of a resurrection and of future immortality, he declared that he would gladly accept such a religion as that, even though no virgin-bride was to be the prize of his conversion. He came in 653 with a long train of thegns, soldiers and servants, and was baptised by Finan, Aidan’s successor, at a royal _villa_ called Ad Murum, close to the Roman wall, and twelve miles from the sea. The conversion of Peada was followed by the mission of four priests to the Middle Angles, that is the inhabitants of Leicestershire. The preaching of these men, seconded by the royal influence, was most successful, and practically the whole of that tribe came over to the new faith. Mercia, properly so called, on the west of the country of the Middle Angles, was still heathen, but even there Penda did not prohibit the preaching of Christianity. He does not seem to have had any deep-rooted objection to the doctrine of