york00orns

INTRODUCTOEY. 9
of the great capital of the northern province, and,
however stubborn the resistance of the Britons, they
were finally obliged to yield, overpowered by numbers
and by the tenacity with which the invaders would
hold every post which they had once captured. The
progress of the conquerors was, no doubt, slow, but
they were continually reinforced, and the Britons
sullenly withdrew before them into the shelter of the
deep forests and the fastnesses of the far off hills.
The stubbornness with which they stood out against
the invaders may be measured to some extent by
the fact that as late as the seventh century an independent
British kingdom named Elmete existed not
many miles west of the city of York.
The district between the Humber and the Firth of
Forth comprised tv/o distinct kingdoms, Deira and
Bernicia ; the former embracing the large tract of
country between the first-mentioned river and the Tees,
the latter that which lay between the Tees and the
Forth. Ida, the Flame-bearer, whose stronghold was
planted on the basaltic rock of Bebbanburg, or Bamburgh,
may be regarded as the first sovereign of
Bernicia. Ida died in 559. Deira still had a ruler
of its own, but the two kingdoms were soon to be
brought under one rule. The Bernicians pressed
forward to achieve the conquest of Deira. Ella, its
king, was old, and offered but a feeble resistance,
and when he died in 589, Ethelric became master of
Northumbria. His son Ethelfrith completed the
work his father had begun, and his victory at Chester
finally broke the power of the Britons, who on the
western side of the island had long cflfered a stubborn