King Cadwalla, though an apostle of Christianity, reflected, of course, some of the barbarism of his age. There were two lads of royal blood (brothers of the last king of Wight) who had escaped to the mainland, but whose hiding-place was unfortunately discovered. Cadwalla, who had been wounded in the wars and was resting for a time at a house not far distant, ordered that the youths should be slain; but a certain Cyniberct, abbot of the monastery of Redbridge, came to Cadwalla’s bedside and made earnest intercession, not for the lives of the hapless lads, but that before their execution “they might be imbued with the sacraments of the Christian faith”. The request was granted. The two young princes were converted and baptised, and when the executioner made his appearance “they joyfully submitted to the temporal death by which they doubted not that they should pass over into the everlasting life of the soul”. The war of Wessex with Sussex continued and soon brought in Kent also, which came to the help of its southern neighbour. After two years’ ravaging of Kent, the king’s brother Mul, by some sudden turn of fortune, fell into the hands of the men of that land (687), and they in their rage and exasperation burned him and twelve of his followers alive, a savage deed, which was like to have made a truceless war between the West Saxons and the men of Kent. Strange to say, however, this work of revenge was not long engaged in by the brother of the victim. In the year 688, after little more than two years of bloody reign, Cadwalla, stricken with satiety or remorse, went on pilgrimage to Rome. He had two great desires: “to be baptised at the threshold of the apostles and to be speedily freed from the flesh that he might pass into eternal joy”. Both desires were granted. The devout Syrian Pope, Sergius I., baptised him by the name of Peter on April 10, 689, and on the 20th, while yet wearing the white robes of a catechumen, he died of Roman fever. He was buried in the great church of St. Peter, and a Latin epitaph in twelve elegiacs was carved over his tomb. The meteoric career of “the most strenuous Cadwalla” who reigns and ravages for two years and a half, and at thirty dies “in Christ’s garments” at Rome, and is buried at St. Peter’s, forms one of the strangest pages in Anglo-Saxon history.