EDWARD (THE MARTYR) AND ETHELRED THE

UNREADY.

The

EDGAR left two sons, Edward and Ethelred. former was thirteen, the latter seven years of age. There was no older prince of the House of Alfred who could be called to the throne, and between two children the choice seemed, at least to some of the nobles, to be open. Elgiva, the mother of Ethelred, claimed the crown for her son, on what pretext it is not easy to understand,1 and found some supporters. But Dunstan was too powerful for her. He presented the young Edward to the assembly, and gave him the royal consecration on the spot, being joined in the act by his fellow-primate the Archbishop of York.

The politics of Edward's short reign are extremely obscure. The Chroniclers of later times speak as if the chief question in dispute was whether the dignities of the Church should be held by monks or seculars.

It is said on the ground that Edgar was not crowned when Edward was born. But neither was he crowned, as far as we know, till five years after the birth of Ethelred. The only coronation of Edgar that is recorded took place in 973. Possibly Edward's mother never received the title of Queen.

But even if this view be accepted we are still in the dark. One of the undoubted facts of the period is that "Oslac the great Earl of Northumbria was banished," and another that "Elfhere commanded that many monasteries should be destroyed which King Edgar had before commanded the holy bishop Athelwold to restore." But Oslac's banishment is lamented by the monkish chroniclers. He was the friend of the Orders. And if Dunstan was in power, why was it that Oslac and not Elfhere was banished? It has been suggested that the real question in dispute was the relation between the King and the nobles, and that Dunstan, whose devotion to the monastic cause has been greatly exaggerated, ranged himself on the side of the King.

In 976 there was a great famine throughout England. Two years afterwards "all the nobles of England, assembled in council at Calne, fell from a certain chamber, save only the holy Archbishop Dunstan, who planted his feet upon a beam. Some were grievously wounded, and others did not even escape alive."

In this year Edward was murdered. That the deed was done at Corfe Castle in Dorsetshire, and by the instigation of his step-mother Elfrida, may be taken as a certainty, Later writers add that he had been hunting in the neighbourhood, that left alone by his attendants and wearied by the chase, he made his way to his step-mother's palace, that she met him at the door and presented him with a cup of wine, and that while he was drinking an assassin plunged a Conquest of England," p. 352.

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dagger into his body. When he felt the blow the young King set spurs to his horse, but, weakened by loss of blood, fell from his saddle, and was dragged along till he died. His body was buried without any ceremony at Wareham, but was translated in the following year by Elfhere and Dunstan to Shaftesbury, and re-interred with royal honours. Pity for his untimely fate gave him the title of Martyr, and the festival of the translation of his bones retains its place in the Calendar of the English Church.

Ethelred was crowned at Kingston in May, 979. He was then in his eleventh year. Little is told us of the early years of his reign, but enough to show us that the old troubles were coming back. The incursions of the pirates, from which England had been almost entirely free, for many years began again. They were rendered restless at home by the growing strength of the royal power, and by the conflict. between Christianity and their old faith, while they soon found out that England was less vigorously governed and protected than it had been for many generations. The great fleet which Edgar had raised for the defence of the coasts had disappeared. As early as the second year of Ethelred's reign we hear of places so widely apart as Kent, Southampton, and Chester being ravaged by the pirates. Then there were troubles and strife at home. London, always the richest, if not the most politically important, city of the kingdom was burnt to the ground. "A great murrain of cattle happened for the first time in the English nation." Elfric, ruler of Mercia, was banished, and the King, for some reason which is not known to

I

DEATH OF DUNSTAN.

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us, laid siege to Rochester, and unable to take the town, ravaged the lands of the bishopric. And then in 988 the great Dunstan died. He had been present at the coronation of Ethelred, probably had himself performed it. William of Malmesbury records the prophecy which he is said to have uttered on that occasion: "The sin of thy mother and of the men that conspired with her in her wicked deed shall not be washed out but with the blood of many, and there shall come upon the English people such evils as it has not suffered from the day that it came hither until now!" From that time the great Archbishop had little or no part in affairs of state, though he is said to have bought off the King from his attack on Rochester by the present of a hundred pounds, and to have expressed his contempt for his meanness in taking it. He occupied himself with the care of his diocese and his province, and what time these and his private devotions left him he gave to study. On Ascension Day, May 17th, he preached three times, and entertained his guests with his customary cheerfulness. Two days afterwards he died, “a man," says his biographer, "not of very advanced years, but of boundless sanctity, whose virtues exceeded all reports of them, and who postponed till his own departure the ruin that had long since been threatening his country."

This danger was indeed more formidable than the piratical descents which had troubled the early years of Ethelred's reign. It was nothing less than the conquest of the whole kingdom. The rest of Ethel

1 Dunstan's name is still kept in the Anglican Calendar.