United States or Poland ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


He was buried with much mourning and great pomp in the Abbey at Hexham; and during the recent excavations the fact of a Saxon interment was verified as having taken place beneath the beautiful tomb which tradition has always held to be that of King Alfwald the Just. This fact also helped to demonstrate the extent of the original Abbey.

The same Alfwald was a iust prince, and woorthilie gouerned the Northumbers to his high praise and commendation. Matth. West. In the yeere following a great part of London was consumed by fire.

Other treasures of the Abbey are the beautiful Old Rood Screen, dating from the end of the fifteenth or beginning of the sixteenth century; some wonderful old paintings, especially the portraits of the early Bishops of Hexham, Alcmund, Wilfrid, Acca, Eata, Frithbert, Cuthbert, and John, which date from the fifteenth century; the mediaeval carved and painted pulpit, and the tomb of good King Alfwald of Northumbria.

Moreouer, about the same time the sonnes of king Alfwald were by force drawne out of the citie of Yorke, but first by a wile they were trained out of the head church where they had taken sanctuarie, and so at length miserablie slaine by king Ethelbert in Wonwaldremere, one of them was named Alfus, & the other Alfwin.

Amongst the rulers of Northumbria in those days, the name of Alfwald the Just, who was called "the Friend of God," shines out with enduring light across the stormy darkness of that terrible period; yet even his just and merciful rule and noble life could not save him from the hand of the assassin.