Cynegils, at his capital of Dorchester, on the Thames, his sponsor being
Oswald of Northumbria. A year later, Felix, a Burgundian, "preached the
faith of Christ to the East Anglians," who had indeed been converted by
the Augustinian missionaries, but afterwards relapsed. Only Sussex and
Mercia still remained heathen. But, in 655, Penda made a last attempt
against Northumbria, which he had harried year after year, and was met
by Oswiu at Winwidfield, near Leeds; the Christians were successful, and
Penda was slain, together with thirty royal persons–petty princes of
the tributary Mercian states, no doubt. His son, Peada, the Christian
ealdorman of the Middle English, succeeded him, and the Mercians became
Christians of the Pictish or Irish type. "Their first bishop," says
Bæda, "was Diuma, who died and was buried among the Middle English. The
second was Cellach, who abandoned his bishopric, and returned during his
lifetime to Scotland (perhaps Ireland, but more probably the Scottish
kingdom in Argyllshire). Both of these were by birth Irishmen. The third
was Trumhere, by race an Englishman, but educated and ordained by the
Irish." Thus Roman Christianity spread over the whole of England south
of the Wash (save only heathen Sussex): while the Irish Church had made
its way over all the north, from the Wash to the Firth of Forth. The
Roman influence may be partly traced by the Roman alphabet superseding
the old English runes. Runic inscriptions are rare in the south, where
they were regarded as heathenish relics, and so destroyed: but they are
comparatively common in the north. Runics appear on the coins of the
first Christian kings of Mercia, Peada and Æthelred, but soon die out
under their successors.

Heathendom was now fairly vanquished. It survived only in Sussex, cut
off from the rest of England by the forest belt of the Weald. The next
trial of strength must clearly lie between Rome and Iona.