void for one month and six days. He ordered that if any men or women should be godfather or godmother to their own children, or if any woman should marry her gossip (i. e. the man who had been godfather with her), they should be separated ; but the woman should recover her dowry, and after a year be at liberty to marry another, if she pleased. The same year Cinegils, king of the West-Saxons, admitted his son Quichelm to a share of the kingdom. In the year of grace 615, as Clodesuida of Metz was fleeing from her affianced husband, a veil was sent to her from heaven by an angel, on which she dedicated herself and her substance unto God. Death of Athelbert, king of Kent. In the year of grace 616, Athelbert, king of Kent, after a glorious temporal reign of fifty-six years, entered on the everlasting joys of the kingdom of heaven. He died twentyone years after he had received the faith, and was buried in the portico of St. Martin, within the church of the apostles Peter and Paul, which he had founded. His son Eadbald's accession to the throne proved very prejudicial to the infant state of the church ; for he not only refused to embrace the faith of Christ, but was stained with fornication, inasmuch as he unwisely kept his father's wife. The confusion was increased by the death of Sebert, king of the East-Saxons, who, in departing to an everlasting kingdom, left his three sons, who continued pagans, heirs of his temporal kingdom. They presently began openly to devote themselves to idolatry, which, during their father's life, they seemed in a measure to have forsaken, and gave their people perfect liberty to serve idols. ' On seeing the bishop, while celebrating solemn mass in the church, give the eucharist to the people, they, filled with brutish folly, said to him, " Why do you not give us the white bread, which you used to give to our father Sebert, and still give to the people in the church ?" Mellitus answered, " If you will be washed in that fountain of salvation in which your father was washed, you may partake of that holy bread ; otherwise you may not receive the bread of life." On which they said, " If you will not comply with us in so small a matter, you shall not stay in our kingdom." Being, therefore, banished from thence, Mellitus came into ρ 2