88 ETHELWERD'S CHRONICLE. [l.c MS—Μ*· had gained his present territories. In the same year Ethel* bald received, in the city of London, the bishopric of the city of York ; and, it appears, that the number of years completed, since Christ came in theflesh, was nine hundred full. A. 902. After two years was the battle of Holme.* .... . Five days after the festival of the blessed mother, they lock together their shields, brandish their swords, and vibrate their lances in both hands. There fell duke Siwulf and Sigelm, and almost all the Kentish nobility: and Eohric, king of the barbarians, there descended to Orcus: two princes of the English, in the flower of their youth, there yield up the breath of life, and explore the foreign regions, under the waves of Acheron, and numbers of full-grown men fall on both sides. The barbarians remain victors, and triumph on the field of battle. A. 905. At length, after three years, the number of yeart completed since the beginning of the world, was six thousand and one hundred. A. 908. After three years archbishop Plegmund inaugn* rized, in the city of Winchester, a lofty tower, which had been recently founded in honour of Mary, the mother of God. The pontiff aforesaid, in the course of the same year, carried to Borne the alms for the people, and for king Edward. A. 909. After one year the barbarians break their compact with king Edward, and with earl Ethered, who then ruled the provinces of Northumberland and Mercia. The lands of the Mercians are laid waste on all sides by the hosts aforesaid, as far as the streams of the Avon, where begins the frontier of the West-Saxons and the Mercians. Thence they pass over the river Severn into the western regions, and gained by their devastations no little booty. But when they had withdrawn homewards, rejoicing in their rich spoils, they passed over a bridge on the eastern side of the river Severn, at a place commonly called Cantabi-idge,^ the troops of the Mercians and West-Saxons met them : a battle ensued, * The particulars recorded in this passage, concerning the battle of Holme, are ascribed, by Florence of Worcester and the Saxon Chronicle, to another battle, fought three years later. This caused Pétrie to suppose, that the paragraph in question had slipped out of its real place. + Cambridge, in Gloucestershire.