of God than his military powers, Penda increased the number of infernal spirits. By his queen Kyneswith his sons were Peada, Wulfhere, Ethelred, Merwal, and Mercelin: his daughters, Kyneburg, and Kyneswith; both distinguished for inviolable chastity. Thus the parent, though ever rebellious towards God, produced a most holy offspring for Heaven.
His son Peada succeeded him in a portion of the kingdom, by the permission of Oswy, advanced to the government of the South Mercians; a young man of talents, and even in his father's lifetime son-in-law to Oswy. For he had received his daughter, on condition of renouncing paganism and embracing Christianity; in which faith he would soon have caused the province of participate, the peaceful state of the kingdom and his father-in-law's consent tending to such a purpose, had not his death, hastened, as they say, by the intrigues of his wife, intercepted these joyful prospects. Then Oswy resumed the government, which seemed rightly to appertain to him from his victory over the father, and from his affinity to the son. The spirit, however, of the inhabitants could not brook his authority more than three years; for they expelled his generals, and Wulfhere, the son of Penda, being hailed as his successor, the province recovered its liberty.
Wulfhere, that he might not disappoint the hopes of the nation, began to act with energy, to show himself an efficient prince by great exertions both mental and personal, and finally to afford Christianity, introduced by his brother and yet hardly breathing in his kingdom, every possible assistance. In the early years of his reign he was heavily oppressed by the king of the West Saxons, but in succeeding times, repelling the injury by the energy of his measures, he deprived him of the sovereignty of the Isle of Wight; and leading it, yet panting after heathen rites, into the proper path, he soon after bestowed it on his godson, Ethelwalch, king of the South Saxons, as a recompence for his faith. But these and all his other good qualities are stained and deteriorated by the dreadful brand of simony; because he, first of the kings of the Angles, sold the sacred bishopric of London to one Wini, an ambitious man. His wife was Ermenhilda, the daughter of Erconbert, king of Kent, of
