[*** Spell. Concil. p 308. Brompton, p. 776.]
Carrying his hypocrisy still further, Offa, feigning to be directed by a vision from heaven, discovered at Verulam the relics of St Alban, the martyr, and endowed a magnificent monastery in that place.[*] Moved by al these acts of piety, Malmsbury, one of the best of the old English historians, declares himself at a loss to determine[**] whether the merits or crimes of this prince preponderated. Offa died, after a reign of thirty-nine years, in 794.[***]
This prince was become so considerable in the Heptarchy, that the emperor Charlemagne entered into an alliance and friendship with him; a circumstance which did honor to Offa; as distant princes at that time had usually little communication with each other. That emperor being a great lover of learning and learned men, in an age very barren of that ornament, Offa, at his desire, sent him over Alcuin, a clergyman much celebrated for his knowledge, who received great honors from Charlemagne, and even became his preceptor in the sciences. The chief reason why he had at first desired the company of Alcuin, was that he might oppose his learning to the heresy of Felix, bishop of Urgel, in Catalonia; who maintained that Jesus Christ, considered in his human nature, could more properly be denominated the adoptive than the natural son of God.[****] This heresy was condemned in the council of Francfort, held in 794, and consisting of three hundred bishops. Such were the questions which were agitated in that age, and which employed the attention not only of cloistered scholars, but of the wisest and greatest princes.[*****]
Egfrith succeeded to his father Offa, but survived him only five months;[*****] when he made way for Kenulph, a descendant of the royal family. This prince waged war against Kent, and taking Egbert, the king, prisoner, he cut off his hands, and put out his eyes; leaving Cuthred, his own brother, in possession of the crown of that kingdom. Kenulph was killed in an insurrection of the East Anglians, whose crown his predecessor, Offa, had usurped. He left his son Kenelm, a minor; who was murdered the same year by his sister Quendrade, who had entertained the ambitious views of assuming the government.[