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Life of St Wilfrid
Eddius Stephanus, tr. Colgrave, 1927
45. Of the Enmity Which Was Stirred Up Between Them
But those who had instigated the old quarrel were aroused as though from sleep and began to disturb the sea of this world, now joyful and calm. Blowing with the bellows of envy they stirred up the storm blasts till dreadful shipwreck threatened; thus they lit again the torch of dissension once extinguished. At one time peace and quietness abounded between the prudent king and the holy man, with the enjoyment of nearly every form of good; at another time the cauldron of evil boiled up and made many worse for a time, and so they continued living now in agreement and now in disagreement alternately, for many years, in such changing relations, until at last, when the flame of enmity was at its height, the holy man of God was banished by King Aldfrith and withdrew from Northumbria.
The first cause of their disagreement is of ancient origin, because the church dedicated to St Peter was unjustly deprived of its territories and possessions. The second cause is that the aforesaid monastery which was granted to us as our own property was changed into an episcopal see, thus losing the liberty which St Agatho and five kings had definitely established and firmly fixed. Then the third cause is that he kept compelling us to obey the commands and decrees of Theodore the archbishop who had been sent from the Apostolic See, not pointing to those canonical statutes which he made at the beginning of his rule among us, or in the last period of his life, when he called all our churches to harmony and ecclesiastical peace, but rather enforcing those decrees which he made in the middle of his rule, when discord had sprung up amongst us in Britain.
So our holy bishop, refusing these commands, went to his faithful friend Aethilred, King of the Mercians, who received him with great honour on account of his reverence for the Apostolic See, and he continued to live under the protection of God and the king, amid the profound respect of that bishopric which the most reverend Bishop Sexwulf had formerly ruled before his death.