The folk-moot had grown into the witena-gemot, or assembly of wise men.

Eadwine assembled such a meeting on the banks of the Derwent--for moots were always held in the open air at some sacred spot--and there the priests and thegns declared their willingness to accept the new religion.

Coifi, chief priest of the heathen gods, himself led the way, and flung a lance in derision at the temple of his own deities.

To the surprise of all, the gods did not avenge the insult.

Thereupon "King AEduin, with all the nobles and most of the common folk of his nation, received the faith and the font of holy regeneration, in the eleventh year of his reign, which is the year of our Lord's incarnation the six hundred and twenty-seventh, and about the hundred and eightieth after the arrival of the English in Britain.
He was baptized at York on Easter-day, the first before the Ides of April (April 12), in the church of St.Peter the Apostle, which he himself had hastily built of wood, while he was being catechised and prepared for Baptism; and in the same city he gave the bishopric to his prelate and sponsor Paulinus.