Edmund, and he was despatched in the sixteenth year of his reign, by Hingwar, a heathen; from which time the Angles ceased to command in their own country for fifty years. For the province was nine years without a king, owing to the continued devastations of the pagans; afterwards both in it and in East Saxony, Gothrun, a Danish king, reigned for twelve years, in the time of king Alfred. Gothrun had for successor a Dane also, by name Eohric, who, after he had reigned fourteen years, was taken off by the Angles, because he conducted himself with cruelty towards them. Still, however, liberty beamed not on this people, for the Danish earls continued to oppress them, or else to excite them against the kings of the West Saxons, till Edward, the son of Alfred, added both provinces to his own West Saxon empire, expelling the Danes and freeing the Angles. This event took place in the fiftieth year after the murder of St. Edmund, king and martyr, and in the fifteenth[113] of his own reign. CHAP. VI. _Of the kings of the East Saxons._ [A.D. 520-823.] Nearly co-eval with the kingdom of the East Angles, was that of the East Saxons; which had many kings in succession, though subject to others, and principally to those of the Mercians. First, then, Sleda,[114] the tenth from Woden, reigned over them; whose son, Sabert, nephew of St. Ethelbert, king of Kent, by his sister Ricula, embraced the faith of Christ at the preaching of St. Mellitus, first bishop of London; for that city belongs to the East Saxons. On the death of Sabert, his sons, Sexred and Seward, drove Mellitus into banishment, and soon after, being killed by the West Saxons, they paid the penalty of their persecution against Christ. Sigbert, surnamed the Small, the son of Seward, succeeding, left the kingdom to Sigebert, the son of Sigebald, who was the brother of Sabert. This Sigebert, at the exhortation of king Oswy, was baptized in Northumbria by bishop Finan, and brought back to his nation, by the ministry of bishop Cedd,[115] the faith which they had expelled together with Mellitus. After gloriously governing the kingdom, he left it in a manner still more glorious; for he was murdered by his near relations, merely because, in conformity to the gospel-precept, he used kindly to spare his enemies, nor regard with harsh and angry countenance, if they were penitent, those who had offended him. His brother Suidelm, baptized by the same Cedd in East Anglia, succeeded. On his death, Sighere, the son of Sigbert the Small, and Sebbi, the son of Seward, held the sovereignty. Sebbi’s associate dying, he himself voluntarily retired from the kingdom in his thirtieth year, becoming a monk, as Bede relates. His sons Sighard and of Sighere, governed the kingdom for a short time; a youth of engaging countenance and disposition, in the flower of his age, and highly beloved by his subjects. He, through the persuasion of Kyneswith, daughter of king Penda, whom he had anxiously