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48 YORK.
Ripon was a colony from Melrose. Eata, afterwards
bishop of Lindisfarne, was its abbot ; and one whose
name can never be forgotten in the North, the saintly
Cuthbert, went with him as the " hostillar " of the
monastery. The monks who had been sent there refused
to sympathise with Alchfrid's strongly-expressed
views on the Paschal question, and retired from
Ripon, probably about 66 1. Wilfrid became its
abbot, and thus commenced his relations with a place
with which his name is even now inseparably associated
; and here he was admitted into the order of
the priesthood, at Alchfrid's request, by Agilbert, a
French bishop, who had the oversight of the West
Saxons.
In 664 the disputes which from time to time had
been carried on between the two rival parties appeared
imperatively to demand a settlement, hastened probably
by the anomaly of a double Easter perpetually
recurring at the court of Oswy—the one observed by
the king and his Scotic ecclesiastics, the other by
P'anfleda and her followers, under the guidance of
her priest, Romanus. Agilbert, the bishop, came to
spend a little time with his friend Alchfrid, attended
by a priest named Agatho, and the necessity of arriving
at some definite conclusion was, doubtless, a subject
of no little thought and discussion. Alchfrid
strongly espoused the Roman view, as did the queen,
Eanfleda. His father, Oswy, still adhered to the
Scotic practice, but was at last prevailed upon to
summon a gathering of " all the orders in the church
system " for the discussion of the subject. It was
assembled at a place called Streoneshalch, where the