Aidan seized the royal hand and blessed it.

"May this hand," he cried, "never grow old." Oswald's lordship stretched as widely over Britain as that of his predecessor Eadwine.

In him even more than in Eadwine men saw some faint likeness of the older Emperors; once indeed a writer from the land of the Picts calls Oswald "Emperor of the whole of Britain." His power was bent to carry forward the conversion of all England, but prisoned as it was to the central districts of the country heathendom fought desperately for life.

Penda was still its rallying-point.

His long reign was one continuous battle with the new religion; but it was a battle rather with the supremacy of Christian Northumbria than with the supremacy of the Cross.