United States or Greece ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Whereupon he sent to me, asking again that I would speak with him. On that I took counsel with Ingild and Egfrid, and the thane his father, and they thought it well that I should do so. "This Dane," said the thane, "is lord of East Anglia by the might of the strong hand, and it seems to us that we might have a worse ruler.
His son Egfrid succeeded him; who perishing in battle against the Picts, without leaving any children, because Adelthrid, his wife, refused to violate her vow of chastity, Alfred, his natural brother, acquired possession of the kingdom, which he governed for nineteen years, and he left it to Osred, his son, a boy of eight years of age.
Because of these & other his hard dooings, doubting the malice of his enimies, he procured the friendship of forren princes. Will. Egfrid taking vpon him the rule, began to follow the approoued good dooings of his father, and first restored vnto the churches their ancient priuileges, which his father sometimes had taken from them.
This was Abbot Adamnan, to whom Ireland and Scotland are equally indebted for his admirable writings, and who might almost dispute with Bede himself, the title of Father of British History. Adamnan regarded the fate of Egfrid, we may be sure, in the light of a judgment on him for his misdeeds, as Bede and British Christians very generally did.
"Wherever this Beorn had a house; and at Caistor where that old fool Ulfkytel lives, and maybe at one or two other places on the way thither. And I think your father and Egfrid your brother would have helped me, or I them." So he doubted me not at all, any more than I should have doubted his tale, were he in my place and I in his.
When we came to Colchester town we heard that Eadmund was yet at Thetford, and when we asked more we learnt that Lodbrok was there also with my father. So, because Hoxne was but twenty miles or thereby from Thetford, both Egfrid and I were glad that our way was yet together, and we would go there first of all.
So they threw my hunting knife to me, and I girded it on. But Beorn's dagger fell on the floor of the boat, and he paid no heed to it, not even turning his head. Then the earl and three thanes went on board the fishing boat, and Egfrid would fain have come with him.
Now when the first pleasure of return was over, I myself began to be restless in my mind, seeing the quiet happiness of Egfrid in his marriage, and thinking how far I was from Osritha, whom I loved in such sort that well I knew that I should never wed any other.
And they would be heavy laden with men, so that he must needs make the first port possible. Yet for a time we should be left in quiet. Now I must say how things went at home, for my sister's wedding with Egfrid had been put off first by the doubt of my own fate, and then by the mourning for my father's death.
The piety of an after age saw in the retribution which overtook Egfrid the following year, when he was slain by the Picts and Scots, the judgment of Heaven, avenging the unprovoked wrongs of the Irish. His Scottish conquerors, returning good for evil, carried his body to Iona, where it was interred with all due honour. Iona was now in the zenith of its glory.
Word Of The Day