Page:The golden days of the early English church from the arrival of Theodore to the death of Bede, volume 1.djvu/197



uncertainty of some of these entries makes it necessary to annotate the lists.

For the Archbishops of Canterbury we have in each case the irreproachable evidence of Bede. For Rochester the date of the death of Ithamar (an. 665) is only a probable inference from Bede, iii. 20. The date of Damian's accession is dependent on the same evidence. For the date of Damian's death we only have Bede's words that the see had been vacant some time (episcopatus jam diu cessaverat) before Putta was appointed by Theodore in 669. As Bede says, Putta fled when Æthelred of Mercia took Rochester in 676. Of his successor, Cwichelm, we are told that he abandoned the see on account of its poverty after a very short tenure (post non multum temporis). Bede does not mention the date of Gebmund's death, but implies that his successor Tobias was consecrated in 693 by Archbishop Beorhtwald, in which year it is put by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and Florence of Worcester. Bede says Tobias died in 726, after which there was a vacancy in the see till 731, when his successor Aldwulf was consecrated by Archbishop Tatwine.

Turning to London, the date of St. Cedde's appointment is not definitely fixed by Bede, and it is only a probable conjecture. Florence of Worcester dates his death on the 26th of October 664, which may be confidently accepted. The same respectable author puts Wini's expulsion from Wessex in 666, so that the see of London was vacant for two years after Cedde's death. How long Wini lived we do not know. Bede merely says that Earconwald (who was Wini's successor) was appointed during the reigns of Sebbi and Sighere, kings of the East Saxons. This is repeated by Florence of Worcester, who puts his accession under the year 675. Neither Bede nor Florence of Worcester tell us when he died. Mr. Plummer says he certainly lived till

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