or, as they said at the time, martyred. Now certainly he was not really a martyr, either for the Christian Faith or for right and truth in any shape; but he was a good youth and was unjustly and cruelly killed, so men looked on him as a kind of saint, and called him Edward the Martyr. The Chronicle greatly laments his death, and says that a worse deed had never been done since the English came into Britain. It does not, however, say who killed him, but only that he was killed at eventide at Corfes Gate. This is a place in Dorsetshire, now called Corfe Castle. It is called the Gate because it stands in a gap between two great ranges of hills. Some fine ruins of the castle still remain, and a small part is most likely as old as the time of Edgar. Henry of Huntingdon says that Edward was killed by his own people. Florence says that he was killed by his own people by order of his step-mother Ælfthryth. William of Malmesbury, in another part of his book, says that Alderman Ælfhere killed him, but in recording his death he lays the crime on Ælfthryth. If Ælfthryth did it, it was no doubt to secure the succession to her son Æthelred; if Ælfhere did it, which I do not at all believe, he may have had some hope of being chosen King himself, as he is said to have been a kinsman of King Edgar's. I can only say for certain that Edward was murdered at Corfe; and as Florence says that Ælfthryth had a hand in his death, it is most likely that it was so. His body was buried at Wareham, which is very near Corfe, without any royal honours, but the next year, 980, Alderman Elfhere translated it with great pomp to King Alfred's minster at Shaftesbury.

This is all I know, but I may as well add the story as William of Malmesbury gives it.

The Story of the Martyrdom of King Edward.

When Edward the son of Edgar was King of the English, he was always good and kind to his step-mother Ælfthryth and to her son Ethelred his brother. But Ælfthryth hated him, for that she had wished her son Æthelred to be King, but the Wise Men had chosen Edward his brother before him. So

Ælfthryth ever sought how she might slay King Edward. Now one day King Edward was hunting in the land of the Dorsætas, hard by the Gate of Corfe, where Ælfthryth and Æthelred her son dwelt. And the King was weary and thirsty, so he turned away alone from his hunting, and said, "Now will I go and rest myself at Corfe with my step-mother Ælfthryth and Æthelred my brother." So King Edward rode to the gate of the house, and Ælfthryth his step-mother came out to meet him, and kissed him. And he said, "Give me to drink, for I am thirsty." And Ælfthryth commanded, and they brought him a cup, and he drank eagerly. But while he drank Ælfthryth made a sign to her servant, and he stabbed the King with a dagger; and when the King felt the wound, he set spurs to his horse and tried to join his comrades who were hunting. But he slipped from his horse, and his leg caught in the stirrup, so he was dragged along till he died, and the track of his blood showed whither he had gone. And Ælfthryth bade that he should be buried at Wareham, but not in holy ground nor with any royal pomp. But a light from heaven shone over his grave, and wonders were wrought there. And now Ælfthryth rejoiced greatly, but Æthelred her son wept when he heard that Edward his brother was slain, for that Edward had always been kind to him. Then was Ælfthryth wroth, and she beat her son Æthelred because he wept for his brother.1 But after a while she heard of all the mighty works which were done at the grave of King Edward, how the sick were healed and the lame walked, and she said, "Lo, I will go even unto Wareham, and see whether these things be so or no. But when she mounted her horse to ride, the horse would not stir; and her servants shouted and beat the horse, yet would he not stir. So Ælfthryth saw that it was a wonder, and she repented of her sin that she had sinned, and she became a nun in the house of Wherwell which she and Edgar her husband had builded, and there she served God with prayers and fastings and watchings and scourgings all the rest

1 A tale is added almost too ridiculous to put in the text. As Ælfthryth had not a rod at hand, she beat her son with wax candles, wherefore Æthelred ever hated wax candles, and would have none burned before him all the days of his life.

2

of her days. Moreover Ælfhere the Alderman repented that he had driven the servants of God out of so many minsters, and he took up the body of the holy King Edward, and carried it with all pomp to the minster at Shaftesbury.1 And there all the holy virgins and godly widows lamented him, and many wonders were wrought by God at his tomb.

I shall now end this chapter. I have gone through all the Kings who reigned after the first Edward, the first King of the West-Saxons who became King of the English and Lord of all Britain, down to the second Edward the son of Edgar. I stop here, because in the next reign, that of Æthelred, the Danish invasions begin again and go on till the Danes had conquered all England.

1 In the Chronicle called that of Bromton all this is given at much greater length than by William of Malmesbury.

CHAPTER X.

HOW THE DANES CONQUERED AND REIGNED IN
ENGLAND.

§ 1. THE REIGN OF KING ÆTHELRED THE SECOND.

978-1016.

We now come to a very different time from that of which we have been reading lately. Since the time of Alfred we have eard very little of actual invasions of the Danes. There has been endless fighting with the Danes who were already settled in England, up to the time when they were finally subdued under King Eadred. But the fighting was almost wholly with the Danes who were settled in England, or at most with those who came over from Ireland. We hear but little of any Danes actually coming from Denmark, and, when we do, it is only to help their brethren in Northumberland, not to conquer or plunder in other parts of the country. But now the Danish invasions begin again. They begin at first with mere plundering, such as we heard of long ago, as far back as King Beorhtric's time in Wessex. But the invasions gradually become of quite another sort. We soon find Kings of all Denmark and of all Norway coming to England, not to plunder but to conquer, till at last a Danish King became King over all England. This is then what I before called a third stage of the Danish wars. The first was the stage of mere plundering; the second was the stage of settlements like that of Guthorm-Æthelstan; this last stage is that of deliberate attempts to conquer the whole Kingdom.

2

The reason of this seems to be that some great changes had been lately going on in the North of Europe. Scandinavia, which had been before divided into a great many small principalities, had now settled down into the three great kingdoms of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden.1 The Danes were finally brought into one kingdom by a King named Gorm, who, from the long time that he lived and reigned, was called Gorm the Old. If it really be true that he reigned from 840 to 935, he must have been very old indeed. But this is hardly possible, and the date of his death is much more certain than the date of his coming to the crown. The Danes have a great deal to say about this King Gorm and his wife Thyra. They are said to have made the Dannewerk, the great dyke which was meant to defend Denmark against the Germans, and which was often spoken of in the late wars in those parts. Gorm's kingdom took in the Danish Islands, Jütland, Scania, which is now part of Sweden, and the northern part of Sleswick, that beyond the Dannewerk. In Charles the Great's time the boundary between Denmark and Germany had been the Eyder. But there were often wars between the Danes and the Germans, especially as Gorm and most of his people were still heathens and persecuted such Christians as were in their land. So Henry, King of the East-Franks, who is called Henry the Fowler, came against Gorm and made him ask for peace and perhaps do homage. Then King Henry moved the boundary northwards from the Eyder to the Dannewerk, and made the country between them into a Mark or border land under a Margrave, and planted a Saxon colony there. Now though this Mark of Sleswick did not last very long, for in Cnut's time the Danes got the frontier of the Eyder again and kept it till our own days, still this German settlement north of the Eyder was the beginning of events of which the world heard a great deal a few years back. Gorm the Old was succeeded by his son Harold, called Blaatand or Bluetooth, who reigned fifty years, from 935 to 985. We read a great deal

1 See above, p. 91.

2 The Danish writer Saxo Grammaticus makes her out to have been one of the daughters of Edward the Elder (whom he calls Æthelred) and sisters of Æthelstan; but this is very unlikely.