Editing Wilfrid (section)

=== Return from exile ===
In 686 Wilfrid was recalled to Northumbria after the death of Ecgfrith in battle with the Picts.<ref name=Handbook224 /><ref name=ASE139>Stenton ''Anglo-Saxon England'' p. 139</ref> During the 680s Theodore had created two more dioceses in Northumbria, at Ripon, and at Abercorn in the Pictish kingdom, but both were short-lived.<ref name=Making48 /> After Ecgfrith's death, Theodore wrote to the new king of Northumbria, Aldfrith, and to [[Æthelred of Mercia|Æthelred]], king of Mercia and the Abbess of Whitby, Ælfflæd, suggesting that an agreement be made allowing Wilfrid's return to Northumbria. Aldfrith agreed, Wilfrid returned to the north, and Bosa was removed from York. Wilfrid did not recover the whole of his previous bishopric however, as Hexham and Lindisfarne remained separate sees.<ref name=DNB />{{efn|The only authority for the expulsion of Bosa is Stephen of Ripon's ''Vita Sancti Wilfrithi'', and it is possible that Bosa was not expelled, as he was still bishop at his death in 706.<ref name=Usurp20>Cubitt "Wilfrid's "Usurping Bishops"" ''Northern History'' pp. 20–21</ref>}}

Wilfrid appears to have lived at Ripon, and for a time he acted as administrator of the see of Lindisfarne after Cuthbert's death in 687.<ref name=ASE139 /> In 691, the subdivision issue arose once more, along with quarrels with King Aldfrith over lands,<ref name=DNB /> and attempts were made to make Wilfrid either give up all his lands or to stay confined to Ripon.<ref name=Society96 /> A proposal to turn Ripon into a bishopric was also a source of dispute. When no compromise was possible Wilfrid left Northumbria for Mercia, and Bosa was returned to York.<ref name=DNB />

Something of the reception to Wilfrid's expulsion can be picked up in a Latin letter which has survived only in an incomplete quotation by [[William of Malmesbury]] in his ''[[Gesta pontificum Anglorum]]''. We have it on William's authority that the letter was written by [[Aldhelm]] of Malmesbury and addressed to Wilfrid's abbots. In it, Aldhelm asks the clergymen to remember the exiled bishop "who, nourishing, teaching, reproving, raised you in fatherly love" and appealing to lay aristocratic ideals of loyalty, urges them not to abandon their superior.<ref>Ehwald (ed.) ''Aldhelmi Opera'' pp. 500–502</ref><ref>Whitelock ''English Historical Documents'' no. 165</ref> Neither William nor the citation itself gives a date, but the letter has been assigned to Wilfrid's exile under Aldfrith in the 690s.<ref>Foley ''Images of Sanctity'' p. 53.</ref>