Wilfrid and Biscop attended the Kentish bishop wherever he went. They admired him greatly and were eager to learn all there was to learn from him while they were with him.
Biscop was twenty-five years of age and had recently left the service as thegn to King Oswy of Bernicia, to join the Church. He had been greatly shaken by Oswy’s ruthless murder of Oswin and had begun to question the violence of secular life, and the immorality of earthly power, without wishing to go the whole way literally into the poverty and humility of the Celtic Church. Rome seemed much more to his taste, and so to Rome he decided to go.
Wilfrid too had lived under the protection of King Oswy, since his mother died and his father had taken to wife a woman who mistreated him. He had served at court as a child, and
