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Ethelgar  some little way off engaged in prayer for the success of their countrymen. When he was told the reason of their coming, he said: ‘If they pray to their God against us they are our enemies, even though they do not bear arms, because they fight against us with their curses,’ and he bade his men fall on them first. It is said that about twelve hundred of them were slain, and their slaughter was held to be the fulfilment of the prophecy uttered by Augustine when the abbot Dinoth and his monks refused to assent to his demands. Two Welsh kings fell in this battle (, i. 2;, sub an. 613). Æthelfrith was a heathen. He married Bebbe, from whom the town of Bamborough, the residence of the Bernician kings, is said to have taken its name, and Acha, the sister of Eadwine [q. v.], by whom he had seven sons and a daughter, Ebbe or Æbbe, founder and abbess of Coldingham. Three of his sons, Eanfrith, Oswald, and Oswin, became kings. Æthelfrith persecuted Eadwine, the representative of the royal house of Deira, and tried to persuade Rædwald, king of East Anglia, with whom he had taken refuge, to give him up. Rædwald refused, and marched against him in 617 before he had collected the whole strength of his kingdom. Æthelfrith met Rædwald's army by the river Idle, on the Mercian border, and was defeated and slain. He reigned twenty-four years, and was succeeded by Eadwine.

 ETHELGAR, ÆTHELGAR, or ALGAR (d. 990), archbishop of Canterbury, was a monk of Glastonbury, where he came under the influence of Dunstan and Æthelwold, afterwards bishop of Winchester, and formed part of the new congregation that Æthelwold gathered round him at Abingdon. When, in 964, Æthelwold turned the secular clergy out of Newminster (Hyde Abbey), near Winchester, and put monks in their place, he selected Æthelgar to be abbot of the house. Æthelgar must therefore be reckoned as one of the party that introduced the strict observance of the Benedictine rule into England, though he did not adopt the violent policy of his master Æthelwold. He enlarged his monastery, and was forced by the jealous feeling of the bishop and chapter towards the newer foundation to purchase land for the purpose at a manca of gold for each foot (Gesta Pontiff, p. 173). On 2 May 980 he was consecrated bishop of Selsey, the South-Saxon see, and did not dispossess the canons of his church. He succeeded Dunstan as archbishop of Canterbury about the middle of 988, and went to Rome for his pall either in that or the next year, visiting the abbey of St. Bertin, near St. Omer, both on his outward journey and on his return. His gifts to this monastery were so large that the abbot spoke of him as its patron, and declared that its restoration was due to his munificence. He appears to have been a man of learning and generosity. He died on 13 Feb. 990, after a pontificate of one year and three months.

 ETHELGIVA (fl. 956). [See Ælfgifu (fl.956) (DNB00).]  ETHELHARD, ÆTHELHEARD, ADELARD, or EDELRED (d. 805), archbishop of Canterbury, a Mercian either by birth or at least in feeling, was abbot of ‘Hlud’ (, p. 667), either Lydd in Kent, or more probably Louth in Lincolnshire. William of Malmesbury's assertion that he was abbot of Malmesbury and afterwards bishop of Winchester cannot be correct for chronological reasons (Ecclesiastical Documents, iii. 468). He was elected to the see of Canterbury on the death of Archbishop Jaenberht in 791, but was not consecrated until 21 July 793 (, i. 63). This delay was evidently the result of the dislike with which the Kentishmen regarded the Mercian domination. Offa, king of Mercia, who was endeavouring to strengthen his power over them, had diminished the dignity of Canterbury by persuading Pope Hadrian to erect Mercian Lichfield into a third metropolitan see, which was held by Hygberht, and he now hoped, by procuring the election of one of his own party to Canterbury, to secure the success of this arrangement, and to increase his power over Kent through the instrumentality of the archbishop. The clergy and nobles of Kent hated the Mercian rule, and their hatred was no doubt intensified by the injury Offa had done their church. It is probable, therefore, that they did all they could to hinder Æthelheard from receiving consecration from the