The new king was installed with no opposition, his accession greeted with favour by our northern neighbours who preferred him to a younger more warlike ruler. Different in this respect from his immediate predecessors, Aldfrith was welcomed also by the leading churchmen as a philosopher-king because of his renowned learning. Among the bishops to look favourably on his investiture was Cuthbert—some say he was a cousin to the king on his Irish side but I do not believe this. Whatever the truth behind the king’s ancestry, nobody can doubt that his reign brought a period of prolonged prosperity and a revival of interest in literature and the arts.
If we had a philosopher-king, on a personal level, I was developing my philosophy of what I like to think of as oneness. To explain, I would attribu
