was thought, to settle at Durham, causing the foundation of the city and Durham Cathedral. The St Cuthbert Gospel is among the objects later recovered from St Cuthbert's coffin, which is also an important artefact. Legacy After Cuthbert's death, numerous miracles were attributed to his intercession and to intercessory prayer near his remains. In particular, Alfred the Great, King of Wessex, was inspired and encouraged in his struggle against the Danes by a vision or dream he had of Cuthbert. Thereafter the royal house of Wessex, who became the kings of England, made a point of devotion to Cuthbert, which also gave a useful political message, as they came from opposite ends of the English nation. Cuthbert was "a figure of reconciliation and a rallying point for the reformed identity of Northumbria and England" after the absorption of the Danish populations into Anglo-Saxon society, as Michelle Brown puts it. The 8th-century historian Bede wrote both a verse and a prose life of St Cuthbert around 720. He has been described as "perhaps the most popular saint in England prior to the death of Thomas Becket in 1170." In 698 Cuthbert was reburied at Lindisfarne in the decorated oak coffin now usually meant by St Cuthbert's coffin, though he was to have many more coffins. In 995 the "community of Cuthbert" founded and settled at Durham, guided by what they thought was the will of the saint, as the wagon carrying his coffin back to Chester-le-Street after a temporary flight from a Danish invasion became stuck hard on the road. During the medieval period, Cuthbert became important in defining the identity of the people living in Northumbria north of Tees. Symeon noted that it was the 'people of St Cuthbert', that is, 'the whole people between the river Tees and the river Tweed', who waged an unsuccessful campaign against the Scots at the Battle of Carham in 1018. By the later 11th century the Bishops of Durham had established a semi-autonomous region known as the Liberty of Durham, later the Palatinate of Durham, between the Tyne and Tees. Within this area the Bishop of Durham had almost as much power as the king of England himself, and the saint became a powerful symbol of the autonomy the region enjoyed. The inhabitants of the Palatinate became known as the haliwerfolc, which roughly translates as "people of the saint", and Cuthbert gained a