suffer exile by way of doing penance. After making the aforesaid grant, having confessed to the pope and received absolution from his sins, together with the blessing of the supreme pontiff, the noble king returned home. He next summoned a council of nobles and bishops at Verolamium, and with the unanimous consent and good will of all, he conferred ample lands and possessions on the blessed Alban, and ennobled them with a multiplicity of liberties. He then brought together a convent of monks from the most religious houses to the martyr's tomb, and set over them an abbat named Willegod, to whom he granted the monastery with all royal rights. Now the great king Offa reigned over twenty-three provinces, which the English call " shires," viz. Herefordshire, whose bishop's see is in the city of that name ; Worcestershire and Gloucestershire, whose bishop's see is in Worcester; Warwickshire, Cheshire, Staffordshire, Shropshire, and Derbyshire, whose bishop's see is in Lichfield ; Leicestershire, whose bishop's see is in the city of that name ; Lincolnshire, whose bishop's see is in Lindesey; Northamptonshire, Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire, Huntingdonshire, Cambridgeshire, and half of Hertfordshire, whose bishop's see is at Dorchester ; Essex, and Middlesex, and the half of Hertfordshire, whose bishop's see is in the city of London ; Norfolk and Suffolk, which have two bishops, one in Helmham, the other in Dommuc ; he also reigned over Nottinghamshire, which was subject to the archbishop of York. From all these provinces the king granted the blessed Peter's penny, as has been said before, which the English call " Romescot." Possessions conferred by Offa on the monastery of St. Alban. Moreover the most mighty king Offa conferred on Alban, the blessed proto-martyr, his own royal vili called Wunceslaw, about twenty miles from Verolamium, with the land around it, as the king's writings testify, which are to this day preserved in the church aforesaid; and so exceeding great are the privileges of this church, that it alone is quit from the payment of the apostolical custom or rent, called Romescot, from - which neither king, nor archbishop or bishop, abbat or prio*, nor any other in the kingdom, is exempt; moreover tne abbat, or one of the monks, his archdeacon, exercises ponti