First among English scholars, first among English theologians, first among English historians, it is in the monk of Jarrow that English literature strikes its roots.  In the six hundred scholars who gathered round him for instruction he is the father of our national education.  In his physical treatises he is the first figure to which our science looks back.  But the quiet tenor of his scholar’s life was broken by the growing anarchy of Northumbria, and by threats of war from its Mercian rival.  At last AEthelbald marched on a state which seemed exhausted by civil discord and ready for submission to his arms.  But its king Eadberht showed himself worthy of the kings that had gone before him, and in 740 he threw back AEthelbald’s attack in a repulse which not only ruined the Mercian ruler’s hopes of northern conquest but loosened his hold on the south.  Already goaded to revolt by exactions, the West-Saxons were roused to a fresh struggle for independence, and after twelve years of continued outbreaks the whole people mustered at Burford under the golden dragon of their race.  The fight was a desperate one, but a sudden panic seized the Mercian King.  He fled from the field, and a decisive victory freed Wessex from the Mercian yoke.  AEthelbald’s own throne seems to have been shaken; for three years later, in 757, the Mercian king was surprised and slain in a night attack by his ealdormen, and a year of confusion passed ere his kinsman Offa could avenge him on his murderers and succeed to the realm.

But though Eadberht might beat back the inroads of the Mercians and even conquer Strathclyde, before the anarchy of his own kingdom he could only fling down his sceptre and seek a refuge in the cloister of Lindisfarne.  From the death of Baeda the history of Northumbria became in fact little more than a wild story of lawlessness and bloodshed.  King after king was swept away by treason and revolt, the country fell into the hands of its turbulent nobles, its very fields lay waste, and the land was scourged by famine and plague.  An anarchy almost as complete fell on Wessex after the recovery of its freedom.  Only in Mid-England was there any sign of order and settled rule.  The crushing defeat at Burford, though it had brought about revolts which stripped Mercia of all the conquests it had made, was far from having broken the Mercian power.  Under the long reign of Offa, which went on from 758 to 796, it rose again to all but its old dominion.  Since the dissolution of the temporary alliance which Penda formed with the Welsh King Cadwallon the war with the Britons in the west had been the one great hindrance to the progress of Mercia.  But under Offa Mercia braced herself to the completion of her British conquests.  Pushing after 779 over the Severn, and carrying his ravages into the heart of Wales, Offa drove the King of Powys from his capital, which changed its old name of Pengwern for the significant English title of the Town in the Scrub or Bush, Scrobbesbyryg, Shrewsbury.