The career of Æthelbald is, of course, more widely known, holding, as it does, a prominent place in the general history of the times. His reign extended from A.D. 716 to 755, and was chiefly employed in extending his sovereignty by the subjugation of neighbouring kingdoms, and by his munificent patronage of the church. In the first year of his reign, he at once showed a disposition to commemorate his own friends, by dedicating churches in their names, by using this method of perpetuating, at Croyland, the recent memory of Guthlac, his kinsman and protector in exile. It seems, however, that the pagan manners of the northern mythology are not purged for several generations after conversion: but, as appears from another example, of the practical paganism of the Dukes of Normandy, down to our William the Mamzer, unless attended with more than the average cruelty and injustice of the times, meet with only a qualified reproach, until they are in conflict with church discipline and law. The celebrated severe, but friendly and respectful epistolary rebuke from Bonifatius,[11] Archbishop of Mainz, contains a heavy indictment against both Æthelbald and his predecessor Coelred, and their courts, while it acknowledges his prosperity, munificence to the church, and his just administration. * * * * * Having these specially national or tribal circumstances in view, it is thought that the six dedications of St. Werburgh that are found beyond the original Mercia must have had special causes, which it is believed can be found in the transactions that are recorded in the three successive Annals of the Chronicle above recited; and that the dedications and the Annals will therefore be found to mutually account for each other. The seven churches within Mercia, without any doubt each has its own history, mostly connected with Æthelbald: perhaps all except the present Chester Cathedral, which arose out of the translation, nearly two hundred years later, of her relics to that place, from her original shrine in one of her three convents. But these home dedications do not fall within our purview, which is limited to the wanderers.