Edith; and by Elfritha, his second wife, Ethelred, who also became king.

A.D. 958. King Edgar recalls the abbot Dunstan, who receives the see of Worcester, and afterwards that of London in the same year.

A.D. 959. “Odo the Good," archbishop of Canterbury, dies; Dunstan of London succeeds him.

A.D. 961. The Northmen land in Scotland, and kill the king, at Forteviot.

A.D. 962. St. Paul's minster, in London, burnt.

A.D. 963. The abbot Ethelwold becomes bishop of Winchester, and expels the secular priests. "Afterwards, then came he to the king, Edgar, and begged of him that he would give him all the minsters that heathen men had formerly broken down, because he would restore them; and the king blithely granted it." Ely and Medeshamstede (Peterborough), "where were nothing but old walls and wild woods," are accordingly restored.

A.D. 964. King Edgar expels the secular priests from many minsters, and replaces them with monks.

A.D. 965. Edgar marries Elfritha, the daughter of Ordgar, the ealdorman of Devonshire.

Such was the title among his cotemporaries of one whom comparatively recent writers have described as a monster. He appears only to have carried out the recognised rule in separating Edwy and Elgiva; and Eadmer, the author the nearest to his time, expressly says that Elgiva's death was the act of the Mercian partisans of Edgar. Odo was the son of a Danish chief, and had been banished from his home in boyhood for frequenting a Christian church. Some canons of his and a synodical epistle, which remain to us, have been pronounced " grave and pious compositions, very creditable to his memory."

I

A.D. 966. Thoreth, a Northman, ravages Westmoreland.

Oslac obtains the earldom of Northumberland.

A.D. 968. "King Edgar ordered all Thanet-land to be ravaged."

A.D. 973. Edgar is crowned at Bath, May 11.

"And soon after that, the king led all his ship-forces to Chester; and there came to meet him six kings, and they all plighted their troth to him, that they would be his fellow-workers by sea and by land."

A.D. 975. Edgar dies, July 8, and is buried at Glastonbury; his son Edward succeeds.

EDWARD II., CALLED THE MARTYR.

AFTER a reign of less than four years, in which much that his father had done to establish the monastic rule was set aside, this unfortunate young prince was assassinated by the order of his step-mother, and he is retained in the calendar of the Anglican Church as a saint and martyr; his feast is celebrated on the 18th of March, and the translation of his remains from their private resting-place at Wareham to Shaftesbury on the 20th of June. His half-brother Ethelred succeeded him.

A.D. 975. "Oslac, the great earl [of Northumberland], is banished from England."

The cotemporary Saxon Chronicle does not name them, but later writers, as Florence of Worcester, mentions eight, and specify Kenneth, king of the Scots, Malcolm, king of Cumberland, Maccus, king of the Isles, and five Northman and British chiefs.

The monastic rule was quashed, and minsters dissolved, and monks driven out, and God's servants put

down, whom King Edgar ordered the holy bishop Ethelwold to establish."

A.D. 976. "This year was the great famine among the English nation."

A.D. 978. "In this year all the chief witan of the English nation fell at Calne from an upper chamber, except the holy archbishop Dunstan, who alone supported himself upon a beam; and there were some grievously maimed, and some did not escape it with life."

A.D. 979. "King Edward was slain at eventide at Corfes-geat on the 15th of the calends of April (March 18,) and then was he buried at Wareham, without any kind of kingly honours. There has not been done among the Angles a worse deed than this, since they first sought Britain. He was in life an earthly king; he is now after death a heavenly saint."

ETHELRED II.

THE long reign of this prince, contemptuously styled "the Unready," was little else than a series of vain struggles with the Northmen, whom he alternately met in the field, bribed to retire, or attempted to cut off by wholesale assassination, but with equal want of success, being obliged to take refuge in Normandy in 1013, and

i Corfe, in Dorsetshire, the residence of his step-mother, Elfritha.

* Ethelred means "noble counsel;" so that the appellation is literally, "The noble counsellor who cannot advise."

only returning to die in England at the time that Canute was preparing the formidable armament with which he shortly after made himself master of the country. By his first wife, Elgiva, he left Edmund, who succeeded him; Edwy, put to death by Canute; Elfgina, married to Uhtred of Northumberland; Edgith, married to Edric Streona; and several other children; by his second wife, Emma, Edward (afterwards king), and Alfred, murdered in 1036 by Godwin; and Goda, first married to Walter, earl of Mantes, and afterwards to Eustace, earl of Boulogne, whose visit to England in 1051 was attended by a fatal result to many of his party.

A.D. 979. Ethelred is crowned at Kingston, on Sunday, May 4th'.

A.D. 980. Southampton, Thanet, and Cheshire ravaged by the Northmen.

The Northmen in Ireland sustain a great defeat at Tarah.

A.D. 981. The coasts of Wales, Cornwall and Devon ravaged; Padstow is destroyed.

A.D. 982. Portland ravaged by three ships of pirates.

London burnt.

A.D. 983. Elfric appointed ealdorman of Mercia.

A.D. 984. "This year died the benevolent bishop of Winchester, Ethelwold, father of monks, on the calends of August" (Aug. 1).

A.D. 985. Elfric, the ealdorman of Mercia, is banished.

Florence of Worcester says, 14th April, 978.

A.D. 986. "This year the king laid waste the bishopric of Rochester."

"This year first came the great murrain among cattle in the English nation."

A.D. 988. "This year was Watchet ravaged, and Goda, the Devonshire thane, slain, and with him much slaughter made."

The Northmen from Ireland levy a tribute on WalesTM. Archbishop Dunstan dies, May 19".

A.D. 989. The Northmen in Dublin said to pay tribute to Melaghlin, king of Ireland.

A.D. 991. "This year was Ipswich ravaged; and after that very shortly was Brihtnoth, the ealdorman, slain.

"And in that year it was decreed that tribute, for the first time, should be given to the Danish-men, on account of the great terror which they caused the seacoast; that was at first ten thousand pounds: this counsel advised first archbishop Siric" (of Canterbury).

A.L. 992. A fleet assembled at London to resist the Northmen.

Elfric, who had returned and received a command, joins the enemy.

A.D. 993. The Lincolnshire and Northumbrian coasts ravaged; Bamborough taken by storm. The army raised against the Northmen disperses, Frena, Godwin, and other Anglo-Danes, setting the example of flight.

This is called the tribute of the black Pagans, in the Chronicle of the Princes of Wales.

n Dunstan is retained in the Anglican calendar, his feast occurring on May 19, and eighteen churches exist dedicated to him.

• This fatal expedient had been proposed in 865, but whilst the matter was in debate the Northmen "stole away by night, and ravaged all Kent to the eastward."