A few years later, after Augustine's death, this prediction was verified by AEthelfrith of Northumbria, whose massacre of the monks of Bangor has already been noticed.
It was in return for the destruction of Chester and the slaughter of the monks that Cadwalla joined the heathen Penda against his fellow Christian Eadwine.

But the death of Eadwine left the throne open for the house of AEthelfrith, whose place Eadwine had taken.

After a year of renewed heathendom, however, during part of which the Welsh Cadwalla reigned over Northumbria, Oswald, son of AEthelfrith, again united Deira and Bernicia under his own rule.

Oswald was a Christian, but he had learnt his Christianity from the Scots, amongst whom he had spent his exile, and he favoured the introduction of Pictish and Scottish missionaries into Northumbria.

The Italian monks who had accompanied Augustine were men of foreign speech and manners, representatives of an alien civilisation, and they attempted to convert whole kingdoms _en bloc_ by the previous conversion of their rulers.