Southern Kingdoms generally were converted by missionaries
from France or Rome, or native preachers of the first or
second Christian generation; those of Northumbria recognise
as their Apostles St. Aidan and St. Cuthbert, two Fathers
from Iona. The Kingdom of Northumbria, as the name
implies, embraced nearly all the country from the Humber
to the Pictish border. York was its capital, and the
seat of its ecclesiastical primacy, where, at the time
we speak of, the illustrious Wilfrid was maintaining,
with a wilful and unscrupulous king, a struggle not unlike
that which Becket maintained with Henry II. This Prince,
Egfrid by name, was constantly engaged in wars with his
Saxon cotemporaries, or the Picts and Scots. In the summer
of 683 he sent an expedition under the command of Beort,
one of his earls, to ravage the coast of Leinster. Beort
landed probably in the Boyne, and swept over the rich
plain of Meath with fire and sword, burning churches,
driving off herds and flocks, and slaughtering the clergy
and the husbandmen. The piety of an after age saw in the
retribution which overtook Egfrid the following year,
when he was slain by the Picts and Scots, the judgment
of Heaven, avenging the unprovoked wrongs of the Irish.
His Scottish conquerors, returning good for evil, carried
his body to Iona, where it was interred with all due
honour.

Iona was now in the zenith of its glory. The barren rock,
about three miles in length, was covered with monastic
buildings, and its cemetery was already adorned with the
tombs of saints and kings. Five successors of Columbkill