A.D. 797.] KENUXF SUCCEEDS EGFRID. 167 with the greatest diligence, yet, as if by a fatality, it cannot be found. The most mighty king Offa was succeeded in the kingdom by his son Egfrid, who had reigned eight years conjointly with his father. Now Egfrid, who was an excellent and noble-minded youth, as soon as he was established in the kingdom, walked in the steps of his pious father, and devoutly conferred many lands and possessions on the church of the blessed Alban, the proto-martyr of the English, and confirmed all the other grants which his father had made to the aforesaid church, with all the royal privileges it possesses, and which are as great as can be conferred on any church; and that his donation might have the strength of perpetuity, he added thereto, according to the custom of the Roman church, the subscription of all the bishops, counts, and barons of his whole empire, together with the sign of the cross. Moreover, avoiding in all things the avarice of his father, he with a ready zeal restored whatever the former had taken from the different monasteries for the exaltation of his kingdom, and confirmed the same by his own grant to all who asked it. At the instance also of Athelhard, archbishop of Canterbury, he would willingly have restored the dignities of which archbishop Jainbert had been deprived, as has been said before, if his untimely death had not prevented him; for he died on the hundred and forty-first day after the death of his father, to the great grief of all the nations of his kingdom; wherefore I think it wrong to judge that so noble a youth was taken off for his own sins ; but because his father had shed much blood for the strengthening of his kingdom. He was succeeded in the kingdom of the Mercians by Kenulf, a noble man, son of Cuthbert and great-great-grandson of king Wibba, who reigned twenty-four years. His queen Alfritha bore him Kenelm, afterwards a saint, and his daughters Quendrida and Burgenilda. How Athelhard, archbishop of Canterbury, recovered the lost dignity. In the year of our Lord 797, Kenulf, king of the Mercians, was religious at home and victorious as a lion in war, thereby adding a lustre to the diadem of his kingdom. There came to him Athelhard and Eanbald, archbishops of Canterbury and York, to confer with him respecting the lost dignity of the church of Canterbury ; and on learning from them what