of their idols, and the tabernacles wherewith they were compassed about?  He answered, that himselfe would doo it.  “For what is more meet (saith he) than that I, which thorough foolishnesse haue worshipped them, should now for example sake destroie the same, thorough wisedome giuen me from the true and liuing God?” And streightwaies throwing awaie the superstition of vanitie, required armour and weapon of the king, with a stoned horsse, vpon the which he being mounted, rode foorth to destroie the idols.

This was a strange sight to the people:  for it was not lawfull for the bishop of their law to put on armour, or to ride on anie beast, except it were a mare.  He hauing therefore a swoord gird to him, tooke a speare in his hand, and riding on the kings horsse, went to the place where the idols stood.  The common people that beheld him had thought he had beene starke mad, and out of his wits:  but he without longer deliberation, incontinentlie vpon his comming to the temple, began to deface the same, and in contempt threw his speare against it, & reioising greatlie in the knowledge of the worshipping of the true God, commanded his companie to destroie & burne downe the same temple with all the altars.  This place where the idols were sometime worshipped was not farre from Yorke, towards the east part of the riuer of Derwent, and is called Gotmundin Gaham, where the foresaid bishop by the inspiration of God defaced and destroied those altars, which he himselfe had hallowed.

[Sidenote:  King Edwin with his people receive the christian faith. Beda. lib. 2. cap. 14. 627.] King Edwin therefore with all the nobilitie, and a great number of his people, receiued the faith and were baptised, in the yeere of our Lord 627, in the tenth yeere of his reigne, and about the 178 yeere after the first comming of the Englishmen into this land.  He was baptised at Yorke on Easter daie (which fell that yeere the day before the Ides of Aprill) in the church of S. Peter the apostle, which he had caused to be erected and built vp of timber vpon the sudden for that purpose, and afterwards began the foundation of the same church in stone-woorke of a larger compasse, comprehending within it that oratorie which he had first caused to be built:  but before he could finish the woorke, he was slaine (as after shall be shewed) leauing it to be performed of his successor Oswald.

Pauline continued from thencefoorth during the kings life, which was six yeeres after, in preaching the gospell in that prouince, conuerting an innumerable number of people to the faith of Christ, among whom were Osfride and Eadfride the two sonnes of Edwin, whom he begot in time of his banishment of his wife Quinburga, the daughter of Cearlus king of Mercia.  Also afterwards he begot children on his second wife Ethelburga, that is to say, a sonne called Edilhimus, [Sidenote:  Ediltrudis.] and a daughter named Ediltrudis, and another sonne called Bustfrea, of the which the two first died in their cradels, and