The house of Cerdic now ranked as securely Christian. Athelstan was born into a dynasty that could boast of a devotion to Christ reaching back more than two centuries. Yet still there lingered a certain nagging anxiety: that Wessex, compared to Kent or Northumbria, ranked as a parvenu among Christian powers, and that the lineage of its ruling house lacked the glory bestowed upon those of other kingdoms by kings of the holiness of Oswald.
