then returned to Northumbria, and for three years ruled his diocese nobly (‘sublimiter regens,’ Bede, v. 19). From his training under Aidan and in the Irish monastery he had learned that spirit of simple modest piety, purity from worldly aims, and single-minded devotion to duty for which the clergy of the Scottish school were remarkably distinguished. His whole time was divided between prayer, study, and the visitation of his diocese to preach and baptise. His journeys were all made on foot, after the apostolic fashion (ib. iii. 28). Wilfrith, on his return from Gaul, did not resent the appointment of Ceadda, and quietly retired to his abbey of Ripon. Soon after Theodore had been made archbishop of Canterbury, 669, he held a general visitation of the English church, and objections were then raised against the consecration of Ceadda as having been irregular, partly, we may suppose, because Wilfrith had already been appointed to Ceadda's see, and partly because two of the consecrating bishops belonged to the British church, which did not keep Easter according to the canonical rule. When Theodore told Ceadda that he had not been properly consecrated, he meekly replied that if the archbishop thought so, he was quite willing to resign an office of which he had never deemed himself worthy, and which he had consented to undertake only for obedience sake. Theodore, touched by his humility, said that he was not bound to relinquish the episcopal office. Ceadda, however, retired to his monastery at Lastingham, and Wilfrith entered upon the administration of the see of York (ib. iv. 2); but the holy man was not long permitted to enjoy his monastic retreat. On the death of Jaruman, bishop of the Mercians, in 669, Wulfhere, the king, requested Theodore to provide a successor. Theodore refused to consecrate a new bishop, but asked Oswy, king of Northumbria, to let Ceadda be transplanted to this South Humbrian diocese (ib. iv. 3). Oswy consented, and Theodore either reconsecrated Ceadda, or by some additional rites made good the supposed defects or irregularities in the original act of consecration (‘Ipse ordinationem ejus denuo catholicâ ratione consummavit,’ ib. iv. 2). The language of Wilfrith's biographer Eddius, c. 15, is stronger: ‘Per omnes gradus ecclesiasticos ad sedem prædictam plene eum ordinaverunt.’ He also implies that it was Wilfrith who recommended Ceadda for Mercia, and with other bishops reconsecrated him. But his partiality for Wilfrith probably makes him less trustworthy on this point than Bede.
Ceadda fixed the Mercian see, which had hitherto been unsettled, at Lichfield. Here he found or built a church, dedicated to St. Mary, eastward of the spot occupied by the present cathedral, and a short distance from the church he built a dwelling for himself and seven or eight brethren, where they spent in prayer and study the little leisure which could be spared from the ‘ministry of the word.’ King Wulfhere also granted fifty hides of land to the bishopric for establishing a monastery in a place called ‘the grove,’ in the province of Lindsey, supposed to be Barrow in Lincolnshire, where traces of Chad's monastic rule still existed when Bede wrote (ib. iv. 3). The bishop entered upon his episcopal and missionary labours with the same apostolic simplicity and zeal which had distinguished him in his former diocese. He still journeyed everywhere on foot, and out of ‘zealous love of pious toil’ resisted the bidding of Archbishop Theodore, who ordered him to ride when he had a longer circuit than usual to make. The primate, however, insisted on having his way, and on one occasion with his own hand helped Ceadda to mount; because, as Bede says (iv. 3), he had ‘assuredly discovered him to be a holy man.’ Bede relates several beautiful instances of this ‘holy man's’ habits of simple piety as described to him by one who had been brought up and trained in Ceadda's monastery at Lastingham. If he heard a loud blast of wind, he would pause in his reading, or whatever he was doing, and pray God to be merciful to mankind; and if the gale waxed louder, he would close his book and fall upon his face in prayer. If it rose to a tempest with thunder and lightning, he would go into the church and pray there, or recite psalms until fair weather returned (ib.)
After having ruled his church for two years and a half, Ceadda fell a victim to a pestilence which was fatal to many of his clergy before it attacked the bishop. Seven days before he died he had an intimation of his coming end. A faithful disciple and friend named Owin, who had once been steward in the royal household in Northumbria, but had forsaken all to become a lay brother at Lastingham, was working in the fields hard by the bishop's house, when he heard the sweetest sound as of songs of joy coming down from heaven to earth. It gradually reached and encircled the chamber where Ceadda was sitting alone, the other inmates of the dwelling having gone to the church, and after about half an hour it floated heavenwards again. While Owin was wondering what this might mean, Ceadda opened the window of his oratory and summoned Owin and the rest of the brethren. He told them that ‘the lovely guest who had already visited so many of their brethren had deigned to come to him
