[****] 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.[*******]
[* Ingulph. p. 5. W. Malms, lib. i. cap. 4.]
[** Lib. i. cap. 4.]
[*** Chron. Sax. p. 65.]
[**** Dupin, cent. viii. chap. 4].
[***** Offa, in order to protect his country from
Wales, drew a rampart or ditch of a hundred miles in length,
from Basinwerke in Flintshire to the south sea near Bristol.
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