?6 HISTORY O F ENGLAND.

Chap.

I.

tragical incident, joined to her other crimes, render,ed Eadburga so odious , that she was obliged to flyinto France; whence Egbert was at the fame timerecalled by the nobility, in order to ascend thethrone of his ancestors IJ! . He attained that dig-nity in the last year of the eighth century.

. In the kingdoms of the heptarchy, an exactrule of succession was either unknown or notstrictly observed; and thence the reigning prince•was continually agitated with jealousy against allthe princes of the blood, whom he still consideredas rivals, and whose death alone could give himentire security in his possession of the throne.From this fatal cause, together with the admira-tion of the monastic life, and the opinion ofmerit, attending the preservation os chastity evenin a married state, the royal families had beenentirely extinguished in all the kingdoms exceptthat of Wessex; and the emulations, suspicions,and conspiracies, which had formerly been con-fined to the princes of the blood alone , werenow diffused among all the nobility in the severalSaxon states. Egbert was the sole descendant osthose first conquerors who subdued Britain , andwho enhanced their authority by claiming a pe-digree from Woden, the supreme divinity of theirancestors. But that prince, though invited bythis favourable circumstance to make attempts onthe neighbouring Saxons, gave them for sometime no disturbance, and rather chose to turn his

L !l! Chron. Sax. A. D. 800. Brompton, p. 8or.