How Edwin being slain, Paulinus returned into Kent, and had the bishopric of Rochester conferred upon him. [633 A.D.]
EDWIN reigned most gloriously seventeen years over the
nations of the English and the Britons, six whereof, as has been
said, he also was a soldier in the kingdom of Christ. Caedwalla,
king of the Britons, rebelled against him, being supported by the
vigorous Penda, of the royal race of the Mercians, who from that
time governed that nation for twenty-two years with varying
success.
A great battle being fought in the plain that is called
Haethfelth, Edwin was killed on the 12th of October, in the year
of our Lord 633, being then forty-eight years of age, and all his
army was either slain or dispersed. In the same war also, Osfrid,
one of his sons, a warlike youth, fell before him; Eadfrid,
another of them, compelled by necessity, went over to King Penda,
and was by him afterwards slain in the reign of Oswald, contrary
to his oath. At this time a great slaughter was made in the
Church and nation of the Northumbrians; chiefly because one of
the chiefs, by whom it was carried on, was a pagan, and the other
a barbarian, more cruel than a pagan; for Penda, with all the
nation of the Mercians, was an idolater, and a stranger to the
name of Christ; but Caedwalla, though he professed and called
himself a Christian, was so barbarous in his disposition and
manner of living, that he did not even spare women and innocent
children, but with bestial cruelty put all alike to death by
torture, and overran all their country in his fury for a long
time, intending to cut off all the race of the English within the
borders of Britain. Nor did he pay any respect to the Christian
religion which had sprung up among them; it being to this day the
custom of the Britons to despise the faith and religion of the
English, and to have no part with them in anything any more than
with pagans. King Edwin's head was brought to York, and
afterwards taken into the church of the blessed Peter the
Apostle, which he had begun, but which his successor Oswald
finished, as has been said before. It was laid in the chapel of
the holy Pope Gregory, from whose disciples he had received the
word of life.
The affairs of the Northumbrians being thrown into confusion at
the moment of this disaster, when there seemed to be no prospect
of safety except in flight, Paulinus, taking with him Queen
Ethelberg, whom he had before brought thither, returned into Kent
by sea, and was very honourably received by the Archbishop
Honorius and King Eadbald. He came thither under the conduct of
Bassus, a most valiant thegn of King Edwin, having with him
Eanfled, the daughter, and Wuscfrea, the son of Edwin, as well as
Yffi, the son of Osfrid, Edwin's son. Afterwards Ethelberg, for
fear of the kings Eadbald and Oswald, sent Wuscfrea and Yffi over
into Gaul to be bred up by King Dagobert, who was her friend; and
there they both died in infancy, and were buried in the church
with the honour due to royal children and to Christ's innocents.
He also brought with him many rich goods of King Edwin, among
which were a large gold cross, and a golden chalice, consecrated
to the service of the altar, which are still preserved, and shown
in the church of Canterbury.
At that time the church of Rochester had no pastor, for Romanus,
the bishop thereof, being sent on a mission to Pope Honorius by
Archbishop Justus, was drowned in the Italian Sea; and thus
Paulinus, at the request of Archbishop Honorius and King Eadbald,
took upon him the charge of the same, and held it until he too,
in his own time, departed to heaven, with the fruits of his
glorious labours; and, dying in that Church, he left there the
pall which he had received from the Pope of Rome. He had left
behind him in his Church at York, James, the deacon, a true
churchman and a holy man, who continuing long after in that
Church, by teaching and baptizing, rescued much prey from the
ancient enemy; and from him the village, where he chiefly dwelt,
near Cataract,has its name to this day. He had great skill in
singing in church, and when the province was afterwards restored
to peace, and the number of the faithful increased, he began to
teach church music to many, according to the custom of the
Romans, or of the Cantuarians. And being old and full of days, as
the Scripture says. He went the way of his fathers.