of

wicked Hinguar, and said to him, "Stained as you are with the blood of my people, you are worthy of the punishment of death. But, imitating the example of my master, Christ, if it shall so happen, I am not at all afraid willingly to die for His sake. Return, therefore, with speed to your master, and bear him my answer: "Though, with your might, you may carry off my treasures and riches, which the mercy God has given me, still you shall never make me subject to your infidel power; for it is honourable to defend liberty for ever, and to uphold at the same time the purity of the faith, for which objects, if it be necessary, we do not consider it useless to die; therefore, as your arrogant ferocity has begun, murder the king after his servants, and the King of Kings, who sees this, shall transport me to heaven, where I shall reign for ever and ever.'

When, therefore, the savage messenger departed, king Edmund ordered his soldiers to fly to arms, saying, that it was a worthy deed to fight for their faith and for their country, and not to show themselves deserters of the war and betrayers of their nation. Therefore, the most blessed king Edmund, being animated by the earnest exhortations of the bishop Humbert, and of his nobles and soldiers, marched forth, with all the army which he could assemble, boldly against the enemy, and fought a terrible battle, accompanied with heavy loss to both sides, against the enemy who came to meet him, not far from the city which is called Thedforde; for when they had mutually slaughtered one another from morning till evening, and when the whole field was red with the excessive number of the slain, and with their blood, the most pious king Edmund grieved not only at the slaughter of his own troops, who were fighting for their country and their nation, and for the faith of Jesus Christ, and whom he knew to have received the crown of martyrdom, but also for the death of the infidel barbarians who are thrust with exceeding bitterness down to the gulf of hell. Therefore, as soon as the pagans retreated from the place of death, that most blessed confessor of Christ, king Edmund, with the remainder of his soldiers who survived, marched to the royal town of Hegledune, and resolved unchangeably in his mind, that he would never for the future fight against the barbarians. But he only said this, that it was needful that he alone should die for his people, and that the whole nation should not perish.

A.D. 870.

MARTYRDOM OF KING EDMUND.

417

While, therefore, Hinguar was inconsolably anxious about the slaughter which had fallen upon his troops, his brother Hubba came to him at Thedforde, after having already laid waste the whole of Mercia, bringing with him ten thousand armed men; and then uniting their forces, with the object of avenging themselves on the holy king Edmund, they moved their camp and soon arrived at the town of Heglesdune, where the most blessed king Edmund at that time was. Then the tyrant, Hinguar, commanded the king and all his army to be surrounded, so that not one of them all might escape alive. Therefore, the holy king Edmund, when he perceived that he was surrounded on all sides by the enemy, by the advice of Humbert, bishop of Helmham, fled to the church, to show himself a member of Christ, and throwing away his temporal arms, he put on the armour of heaven, humbly praying to the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, to give him constancy in his sufferings. Therefore, the most merciful king, Edmund, was pitilessly dragged out of the church by the ministers of iniquity, and bound with cruel thongs; and as Christ was brought before Pilate, the governor, so was Edmund led before the unjust leader, wishing to follow the steps of Him who was slain as a victim for us.

At the command of this wicked leader he was bound to a tree, which was at no great distance, and scourged for a long time, and mocked in many ways; but Edmund, the invincible wrestler of Christ, by continually, with mournful voice, invoking Christ amid his stripes, drove his tormentors to madness; and they, amusing themselves with his body as with a target, pierced every part of it with darts and arrows, nor was there a vacant spot in the martyr's body where a new wound could be inflicted; for as a hedgehog is beset with closely-set thorns over his whole skin, so was the body of the invincible king pierced with the points of arrows. And when even thus the bloody monster Hinguar could not separate the holy martyr Edmund from the faith of Christ and from the confession of the Trinity, so as to gain assent to his wretched persuasions, he immediately commanded the executioner t cut off the head of the martyr with his bloody sword, and the executioner, amid his prayers and confession of the name of Christ, at one blow savagely struck his holy head from his shoulders, and decapitated him, on the twentieth day of November, and so offered to God a grateful holocaust, which had

VOL. I.

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been purified by the fire of suffering, and transmitted it with the palm of victory and crown of justice to heaven. And the ministers of the devil leaving the body of the martyr deprived of its head, conveying the head into the wood which is called Heglesdune, threw it among the thick bushes and brambles, for the cruel butchers were still anxious that the body of the martyr should not, with his head, be given the burial which became it by the few Christians whom they had left alive; for Hinguar and Hubba, those most wicked robbers, had learnt that their father, Lothbroc, had been formerly murdered in the before-mentioned wood, on which account, at the lying suggestion of the huntsman Bernus, they sought to retaliate on the blessed king and martyr Edmund, and therefore threw his head ignominiously into the same wood, and gave it to be devoured by the birds of heaven and the wild beasts.

And with the most holy king Edmund, there also suffered his inseparable companion Humbert, bishop of Helmham, who had raised king Edmund to the supreme power, and who, being animated by the constancy of the king to endure martyrdom, was with him made a possessor of the kingdom of heaven. And when this blessed king had been thus removed to the heavenly regions, the pagans, boasting extravagantly, wintered in that district, having driven out the few natives who survived the previous massacre. The same year, Ceolnoth, archbishop of Canterbury, died, and was succeeded by Ethelred, a venerable man, of great learning in all divine matters.

When, then, after the martyrdom of the most blessed king Edmund, the brothers Hinguar and Hubba, hated by God, had passed part of the winter season in the country of the East Angles, devoting themselves to plunder and rapine, there came to the same district to them a man of the name of Gytro, the most powerful of the kings of the Danes, in order to pass the winter with the before-mentioned brethren. When then the spring season arrived, all the pagans departed together from East Anglia. And when this was heard, the Christians came forth on all sides from their lurking places, and laboured most earnestly to find the head of the blessed king Edmund, and unite it to his body, and then to give such a burial to the whole body as a king was entitled to. And as they all united in this object with equal eagerness, and traversed the woods, seeking diligently for the martyr's head, a thing wonderful to relate, and unheard of in previous ages, happened. For while

A.D. 870. DISCOVERY OF THE HEAD OF KING EDMUND.

419

they were all seeking for the head among the thickets and closely-growing woods, and one companion kept mutually calling on another in his native language, and said, "Where are you? where are you?" the head of the martyr replied in the same language," Her, her, her," which means in Latin “Hic, hic, hic.' Nor did it cease to cry out and repeat the same words until it brought all the seekers to itself; and then there was found with the head a wolf of great size and horrible appearance, which, embracing the holy head with his fore-legs, hung over the holy martyr, keeping watch. Therefore the men fearlessly took up the head, pouring forth praises to God, and carried it to its body, the wolf following them to the place of burial. Then they joined the head to the body, and placed it in a suitable mausoleum. And when this had been done, the wolf sought the retirement of his favourite solitude. And there was built by the faithful on the same spot a small chapel of moderate workmanship, where afterwards, for many ages, the holy body of the martyr rested. This most blessed king and martyr, Edmund, suffered in the eight hundred and seventieth year of grace, in the twenty-ninth year of his age, and the sixteenth of his reign, on the first of December, on the second day of the week, in the third indiction, on the twenty-second day of the month.

Afterwards, when an interval of many years had elapsed, when the flames of war were completely quenched, the piety of the faithful began to breathe again, who, having seen frequent miraculous signs in the place where the body of the martyr was resting, which is now called Hoxon by the natives, built a very large church in the royal town, which is called in the English language Beodricheswort, but in Latin Beodricicurtis, or the dwelling of Beodric, and they transferred to that church the body of the holy martyr with great solemnity. But a marvellous circumstance occurred. For though the most precious corpse of the martyr was believed to have decayed, from the long time which had elapsed since his death, it was found to be so entire and uninjured, that not only was the head reunited and closely joined to the body, but that there was absolutely no wound or scar visible on it. And so Edmund, that martyr worthy of God, was removed to the beforementioned place like a living man, the sign of martyrdom appearing on his neck all round, like a scarlet thread, as a woman of blessed memory was accustomed to testify, by name

Oswen, who often practised fasting and prayer at the sacred tomb of the martyr for a series of many years, opening the mausoleum of the blessed martyr, and, on every occasion of the Lord's Supper, cutting his hair and his nails, and all the fragments she carefully collected and deposited in a small bag, and placed on the altar of that church, where to this very day they are preserved with all due veneration.

The same year, died Weremond, bishop of Dummoc, after whose death that see was transferred to Helmham, and instead of two bishops, one of whom had his episcopal seat at Dummoc, and the other at Helmham, there was ordained one bishop, by name Wilred, who had as his successors in the same see Athwolf, Alfric, Theodred, Athelstan, Algar, Alwyn, Alfric, a third Alfric, Stigand, Ethelm, and Herstan.

CH. XVI.-FROM A.D. 871 To A.D. 900.

The Danes invade the West Saxons-Reach Reading-Battles with Alfred-King Ethelred dies and is succeeded by Alfred —The youth and education of Alfred-His wisdom-His wars -Brithred, king of Northumberland and Mercia―The body of Saint Cuthbert is brought from Lindisfarne-A truce is made between Alfred and the Danes-It is broken-Alfred besieges Exeter and builds a fleet-The Danes ravage Wiltshire— Alfred retires to Athelney-King Gytro becomes a Christian -An account of John or Dun Scotus-Alfred defeats the Danes -Story of a vision of the emperor Charles about purgatory— Alfred becomes king of all Britain—A list of the kings of the Heptarchy-Alfred founds monasteries-Appoints governors throughout his kingdom-Story of Rollo, duke of Normandy -Death of Alfred.

A.D. 871. The before-mentioned army of the pagans quitted the country of the East Angles, and invaded the kingdom of the West Saxons, and came to the royal town which is called Reading, situated on the south bank of the river Thames, in the county of Berks. After the arrival of whom, on the third day, two of their counts, with a numerous multitude of armed men, went forth to plunder, while others in the meantime raised a fortification between the two rivers, namely, the Thames and the Kennet, on the right hand of the abovementioned town. And they were encountered by Eadulf, count of Berkshire, and his army, in the place which is called