ambuscade in some Perthshire glen, an anticipation by nearly a thousand years of the battle of Killiecrankie. Was it depression of spirits at this lamentable change in his fortunes, or was it merely that weariness of reigning which overcame so many Anglian kings, that drove Eadbert into the monastery? In the twenty-first year of his reign, notwithstanding the earnest dissuasion of his neighbour-kings, some of whom, we are told, offered to add part of their realms to his if he would continue to reign, Eadbert, “for the love of God, and desiring to take the heavenly country by storm, received on his head St. Peter’s tonsure,” and handed over his kingdom to his son Oswulf. He continued in his religious seclusion for ten years till his death in 768, and was buried at York in the same _porticus_ of the church which held his brother, the archbishop, who had died two years before him. There is some reason to suppose that after the unfortunate issue of Eadbert’s campaign in 756, the border of Bernicia being withdrawn a long way to the south, the capital of that kingdom was transferred from Bamburgh to Corbridge in the valley of the Tyne, some seventy miles south-west of Bamburgh. Corbridge was the Corstopitum of the Romans, a station on the northern Watling Street, and still shows some interesting relics of Roman occupation. About the same time we find indications that Cataractonium, now Catterick, the most northerly Roman station within the limits of Yorkshire, became a royal residence, perhaps as a supplemental palace to that at Eburacum. Thus we see that even four centuries after the departure of the legions the charm of Roman civilisation still lingered round the places where they had dwelt, though these are represented in our own day by villages whose very names are obscure except to antiquaries. In the latter half of the century the lawful line of Northumbrian kings, the sons of Ida, was frequently broken by usurpers of unknown lineage, chief among whom were a certain Ethelwald Moll and his son Ethelred. The latter, an _impiissimus rex_, in the language of the chronicler, reigned from 774 to 779, was expelled in the latter year, and returned in 790 to wreak vengeance on the princes of the lawful line. The two sons of his predecessor, when apparently little more than children, were lured from their sanctuary in the cathedral at York by promises of safety and protection, and were drowned in Windermere by order of the usurper. Their cousin Osred, who had for a short time worn the crown, was similarly enticed from the Isle of Man, captured and slain. Ethelred sought to strengthen himself by an alliance with Offa, the powerful King of Mercia, whose daughter Elfleda he married at Catterick in 792, the year of Osred’s murder. But for all his precautions he could not escape the usual fate of Northumbrian kings. In 796 he was slain “by his own people” at Corbridge.