THE SAXON AND DANE KINGS. FROM 827 TO 1066-239 YEARS. EDWY AND ELGIVA. Kingston, although the fact has been overlooked by nearly every writer, was the scene of one of the most romantic incidents in early English history-the loves and misfortunes of Edwy and Elgiva. King Edwy, in his seventeenth year, was crowned with great magnificence in the market-place at Kingston.* He was of handsome figure, and a most amiable disposition. Before his accession he had been smitten with the charms of Elgiva, a noble lady, his kinswoman, whom he married secretly, in spite of the fulminations of Saint Dunstan and Odo, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who had represented to him that their relationship was too near to allow of their union. Upon the day of his coronation a great feast was prepared for all the nobles; but the king, disliking their rude merriment and drunkenness, took an early opportunity to withdraw, and spend the remainder of the day in the more congenial society of his best beloved Elgiva. The nobles, after he was gone, expressed great dissatisfaction at the indignity with which they were treated in being abandoned by their entertainer; and Saint Dunstan was deputed by the rest to bring the monarch back to the table. Saint Dunstan readily undertook the mission, and accompanied by Odo, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was also highly indignant at the disrespect shown by Edwy to the church, rushed into the royal apartment, and found the king dallying with his bride. The brutal Dunstan immediately tore him from her arms, and applying an opprobrious epithet to the queen, dragged the young monarch by force into the banqueting-hall of the nobles. It was not to be expected that any woman, however mild her temper, could forgive so deep an insult as this; and Elgiva exercised all the influence she possessed over her husband's mind to bring about the ruin of the presuming and unmannerly priest. An opportunity was soon found; charges were brought against him from which he could not clear himself,† and he was finally banished from the kingdom, and forced to take refuge in Flanders. But the Archbishop of * Here the old Saxon monarchs of England were crowned in sight of the people, most of them on a raised platform in the open air, and the rest in the church:Edward the Elder, Athelstan, Edmund, Edred, Edwy, Edward the Martyr, and Ethelred. Egbert, the first king of England, held a great council here in the year 838, and in the records of that event the town is styled "Kyngngeston, that famous place." The stone on which the monarchs were crowned is still preserved in the town hall. Their portraits are at Windsor. The king questioned Dunstan concerning the administration of the Treasury during the reign of his predecessor, and when the minister refused to give any account of the money expended, as he affirmed, by orders of the late king, he accused him of malversation in his office, and banished him the kingdom. Hume, p. 116. Canterbury still remained behind. The unhappy Elgiva, in espousing the king, had gained to herself a host of troubles and of enemies; and instead of intimidating, had only embittered the latter by the means she had adopted. Intrigues were fomented against the young couple who had loved so well, but so unwisely. The queen, all fresh in youth, and all radiant in her beauty, was seized by the archbishop, at the head of a party of ruffians, and held forcibly upon the ground, while a wretch with a hot iron burnt her "damask cheeks" to obliterate the traces of that transcendant loveliness which had set enmity between the civil and ecclesiastical power. She was then carried away to the sea coast, and hidden for some days, till an opportunity was found to convey her to Ireland. She remained in that country for some months, when she effected her escape. The scars on her face had healed; the brutal work had not been effectually done, and she shone in as great beauty as ever, and was hastening to Kingston, to the embraces of her royal spouse, when she was intercepted at Gloucester, by the spies of the relentless archbishop. At this time revolt was openly declared against the authority of Edwy; and to show him how strong and how reckless the conspirators were, the archbishop gave orders that the unhappy princess should be put to death by the most horrible tortures which could be devised. It was finally resolved that she should be ham-strung. The crue. sentence was carried into execution, and the poor queen was left to linger on a couch of straw, without nourishment or attendance of any sort, until death put a period to her sufferings a few days afterwards. Edwy was soon afterwards deposed. He did not long survive his Elgiva; crownless, and what to him was worsewifeless, he died of a broken heart before he attained his twentieth year. "The Thames and his Tributaries," Charles Mackay. EDGAR AND ELFRIDA. Elfrida was daughter and heir of Olgar, Earl of Devonshire; and though she had been educated in the country, and had never appeared at court, she had filled all England with the reputation of her beauty. Edgar himself, who was indifferent to no accounts of this nature, found his curiosity excited by the frequent panegyrics which he heard of Elfrida; and reflecting on her noble birth, he resolved, if he found her charms answerable to their fame, to obtain possession of her on honourable terms. He communicated his intentions to Earl Athelwold, his favourite; but used the precaution, before he made any advances to her parents, to order that nobleman, on some pretence, to pay them a visit, and to bring him a certain account of the beauty of their daughter. Athelwold, when introduced to the young lady, found general report to have fallen short of the truth; and being actuated by the most vehement love, he determined to sacrifice to this new passion his fidelity to his master, and to the trust reposed in him. He returned to Edgar, and told him that the riches alone, and high quality of Elfrida, had been the ground of the admiration C paid her, and that her charms, far from being anywise extraordinary, would have been overlooked in a woman of inferior station. When he had, by this deceit, diverted the king from his purpose, he took an opportunity, after some interval, of turning again the conversation on Elfrida. He remarked, that though the parentage and fortune of the lady had not produced on him, as on others, any illusion with regard to her beauty, he could not forbear reflecting that she would, on the whole, be an advan tageous match for him, and might, by her birth and riches, make him sufficient compensation for the homeliness of her person. If the king, therefore, gave his approbation, he was determined to make proposals in his own behalf to the Earl of Devonshire, and doubted not to obtain his as well as the young lady's consent to the marriage. Edgar, pleased with an expedient for establishing his favourite's fortune, not only exhorted him to execute his purpose, but forwarded his success by his recommendations to the parents of Elfrida, and Athelwold was soon made happy in the possession of his mistress. Dreading, however, the detection of the artifice, he employed every pretence for detaining Elfrida in the country, and for keeping her at a distance from Edgar. The violent passion of Athelwold had rendered him blind to the necessary consequences which must attend his conduct, and the advantages which the numerous enemies that always pursue a royal favourite, would, by its means, be able to make against him. Edgar was soon informed of the truth; but before he would execute vengeance on Athelwold's treachery, he resolved to satisfy himself with his own eyes of the certainty and full extent of his guilt. He told him that he intended to pay him a visit in his castle, and be introduced to the acquaintance of his newmarried wife; and Athelwold, as he could not refuse the honour, only craved leave to go before him a few hours, that he might better prepare everything for his reception. He then discovered the whole matter to Elfrida; and begged her, if she had any regard either to her own honour or his life, to conceal from Edgar, by every circumstance of dress and behaviour, that fatal beauty which had seduced him from fidelity to his friend, and had betrayed him into so many falsehoods. Elfrida promised compliance, though nothing was farther from her intentions. She deemed herself little beholden to Athelwold for a passion which had deprived her of a crown; and knowing the force of her own charms, she did not despair even yet of reaching that dignity, of which her husband's artifice had bereaved her. She appeared before the king with all the advantages which the richest attire and the most engaging airs could bestow upon her, and she excited at once in his bosom the highest love towards herself, and the most furious desire of revenge against her husband. He knew, however, how to dissemble these passions; and, seducing Athelwold into a wood, cu pretence of hunting, he stabbed him with his own hand, and soon after publicly espoused Elfrida. Hume, page 123. LADY GODIVA. Leofric, Earl of Mercia (in the time of Edward the Confessor), wedded Godiva, a most beautiful and devout lady, sister to one Thorold, Sheriff of Lincolnshire in those days, and founder of Spalding Abbey; as also of the stock and lineage of Thorold, Sheriff of that county, in the time of Kenulph, King of Mercia; which Countess Godiva, bearing an extraordinary affection to this place (Coventre), often earnestly besought her husband that, for the love of God and the Blessed Virgin, he would free it from that grievous servitude whereunto it was subject. But he, rebuking her for importuning him on a matter so inconsistent with his profit, commanded that she should thenceforth forbear to move therein; yet she, out of her womanish pertinacity, continued to solicit him, insomuch that he told her "if she would ride on horseback, naked, from one end of the town to the other, in the sight of all the people, he would grant her request." Whereupon she returned:"But will you give me leave to do so ?" And he replying "Yes," the noble lady, upon an appointed day, got on horseback, naked, with her hair loose, so that it covered all her body, and thus performing the journey, returned with joy to her husband, who thereupon granted to the inhabitants a charter of freedom, which immunity I rather conceive to have been a kind of manumission from some such servile tenure whereby they then held what they had under this great earl, than only a freedom from all manner of toll, except horses, as Knighton affirms; in memory whereof the pictures of him and his said lady were set up in a south window of Trinity Church, in this city, about King Richard the Second's time, and his right hand holding a charter, with these words written thereon: "I, Lariche, for the love of thee, Dugdale's Antiquities of Warwickshire, p. 91. HAROLD'S OATH ON THE RELICS. In the town of Avranches, or in that of Bayeux-for the testimonials vary with regard to the place-Duke William convoked a great council of the lords and barons of Normandy. The day before that fixed for the assembly, William caused to be brought, from all places around, bones and relics of saints, suffi *Connected with Lady Godiva, is a very popular legend, which relates how a certain tailor, surnamed "Peeping Tom," disobeyed the proclamation of the great earl, which commanded all persons to close their doors and shut in their windows, and keep within their houses during the charitable pilgrimage of the countess, and venturing to peep from his garret, was struck blind for his presumption. A wooden effigy of this worthy is still to be seen, let into the wall of a house, on the site of the building which witnessed his delinquency. There is also a very curious old picture in St. Mary's Hall, showing the countess on horseback, enveloped in her luxuriant tresses. cient to fill a great chest, or cask, which was placed in the hall of council, and covered with cloth of gold. When the duke had taken his seat in the chair of state, holding a drawn sword in his hand, crowned with a circlet of gems, and surrounded by the crowd of Norman chiefs, amongst whom was the Saxon, two little caskets for relics were brought and laid upon the cask of relics. William then said-"Harold, I require thee, before the noble assembly, to confirm by oath the promises thou hast made me, viz., to assist me in obtaining the kingdom of England after King Edward's death, to marry my daughter, Adela, and to send me thy sister, that I may give her to one of my followers!" The Englishman, once more taken by surprise, and not daring to deny his own words, approached the two reliquaries, with a troubled air, laid his hand upon them, and swore to execute, to the utmost of his power, his agreement with the duke, if he lived, and with God's help. The whole assembly repeated-" May God be thy help!" William immediately made a sign, on which the cloth of gold was removed, and discovered the bones and skeletons, which filled the cask to the brim, and which the son of Godwin had sworn upon without knowing it. The Norman historians say that he shuddered, and his countenance changed at the sight of this enormous heap. Harold soon after departed, taking with him his nephew, but was compelled to leave his younger brother behind him in the power of the Duke of Normandy. William accompanied him to the sea-side, and made him fresh presents, rejoicing that he had, by fraud and surprise, obtained from the man in all England most capable of frustrating his projects, a public and solemn oath to serve and assist him. Thierry's History, page 57. TREACHERY OF HAROLD. At the moment when the duke received the important intelligence he was in his park, near Rouen, with a new bow and arrows in his hand, which he was trying. On a sudden he appeared thoughtful; he gave his bow to one of his men, and, passing the Seine, repaired to his hotel at Rouen. He stopped in the great hall, and walked backwards and forwards, sitting down and rising up again, changing his seat and his posture, and unable to remain still in any place. None of his people dared to approach him; all stood apart, looking at one another in silence. At length an officer came in, who was admitted more intimately into William's familiarity. All the attendants pressed around him to learn the cause of the great agitation which they remarked in the duke. "I know nothing certain about it," answered the officer, "but we shall soon be confirmed of it." Then advancing alone towards William--"Sire," said he, "why should you conceal from us your news? What will you gain by it? It is commonly reported in the city that the King of England is dead, and that Harold, breaking his faith with you, has seized the kingdom." "They say true," answered the duke, "my chagrin is caused by Edward's |