to every species of torment ; he caused the beards of such as were more religious to be smeared with wax and pitch, and then to be set on fire : the monks he compelled to take wives, and the nuns to receive husbands. Numbers who refused compliance attained the palm of martyrdom, nor was there a greater number who thus suffered under any heathen persecution. In this year too, earl Sigar, who had unworthily slain the blessed king Alfwold, came to an end he well merited. Leo sat in the Roman chair. In the year of our Lord 796, on the death of pope Adrian, Leo succeeded liim, and occupied the see twenty years, five months, and sixteen days, after which it remained vacant three days. In the same year small globes were seen about the sun, signifying perhaps the death of many kings and nobles who in that year departed out of this world ; for in the same year Ethelred, king of the Northumbrians, forsaking liis own wife, took to himself another, for which he was put to death by his own people. Osred succeeded him in the kingdom, but dying on the twenty-fifth day of his reign, he was succeeded in the kingdom by Eardulf, who reigned ten years. In this same year Eanbald, archbishop of York, died, and was succeeded by another Eanbald. In these days also Ethelbert, king of Kent, died, and was succeeded by Eadbert ; at the same time Athelhard succeeded in the rule of the archbishopric after Jainbert, archbishop of Canterbury. Death and burial of Offa, king of the Mercians. In the same year, Offa, the magnificent king of the Mercians, having nearly completed his most noble monastery, died, according to the opinion of many, in the town of Ofiiey, and his body is said to have been conveyed to the town of Bedford, and to have been buried in a royal manner in a certain chapel outside of the city, situate on the bank of the river Usk. It is reported by nearly all the people of that neighbourhood, even to the present day, that the aforesaid chapel, from decay and the violence of that river, was precipitated, together with the king's tomb, into the stream ; and that the sepulchre is now seen by bathers in the summer time deep beneath the waters, but though it has been sough'