ϋ ANNALS OF BO GEE DE HOVEDEN. A.D. 764. arose among the Mercians, and Beornred being put to flight, king Offa was victorious. In the year 758, king Eadbert voluntarily resigned the kingdom, •which he had received from God, to his son Osulph, who held it but one year and then lost it, having been treacherously slain by his own servants near Mechilwongton, on the ninth day before the calends of August. In the following year, Ethelwald, who was also called Moll, began to reign on the nones of August. At the beginning of the third year of his reign a most severe battle was fought, near Edwin's Cliff, on the seventh day before the ides of August, in which, after a fight of three days, Oswin was slain, and thus king Ethelwald gained the victory. This took place on the first day of the week. In the same year, Unnust, king of the Picts, departed this life. In the year 762 king Ethclwald took Etheldreda for his queen, on the calends of November, at Cataract.21 In the third year from this, that is to say in 764, there was a great snow with intense frost, not to be compared with any in former ages. It covered the earth from the beginning of winter almost until the middle of spring, and through its rigour the trees and vegetables mostly withered away, and many marine animals were found dead. In the same year, likewise, Ceolwulph, formerly king, and afterwards a servant of our Lord Jesus Christ and a monk, departed this life. It was to this king that the truthful Bede wrote the epistle which begins thus : "To the most glorious king, Ceolwulph, Bede, servant of Christ, and priest. I formerly, at your request, most readily transmitted to you the Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation, which I had newly published, for you to read and give it your approbation ; and I now send it again to be transcribed, and more fully considered at your leisure." The king himself, after renouncing the world, became a monk in the church of Lindisfarne, and there struggled for a heavenly kingdom. His body being afterwards brought to the Saxons, who, having made a treaty of peace with Ethelhald, attacked and slew him at Seekington ; or it may allude to the version of the story that he was slain by his own subjects, headed by the rebel Beornred. Lam-barde reconciles the two versions by suggesting that Cuthred, king of Wes-sex, invaded Mercia, and conspired with some of Ethelbald's subjects, of whom Beornred was chief. 21 Catterick, in Yorkshire.