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Updated: July 12, 2025
Gospatrick and the earls retreated to Durham; the Atheling, more cautious, to Scotland. Then came a strange story, worthy of the grown children who, in those old times, bore the hearts of boys with the ferocity and intellect of men. A great fog fell on the Frenchmen as they struggled over the Durham moors. The doomed city was close beneath them; they heard Wear roaring in his wooded gorge.
Her mother was sister to Edgar Atheling, the last heir-male of the Saxon race; of whom frequent mention hath been made in the two preceding reigns: and thus the Saxon line, to the great contentment of the English nation, was again restored.
I thought that the princess was to be envied, for more worth than that were the words of every man of his land in his favour, whether as the atheling of East Anglia or her king. And it was much for me that here this open-hearted king was telling me his hopes as if I were an old friend. Maybe that was because to his subjects he did not care to speak thus, or could not, by reason of old habit.
"How to the Earl's loss?" asked Vebba. "Why, simple thegn," answered Godrith, "why, suppose that Edward had refused to acknowledge the Atheling as his heir, suppose the Atheling had remained in the German court, and our good King died suddenly, who, thinkest thou, could succeed to the English throne?" "Marry, I have never thought of that at all," said the Kent man, scratching his head.
The atheling was in no haste to return to England, and it was his word that until he was needed he should bide here and learn. But when the time went on he had thought for me, and one April day, as we rode together, he bade me go home and see that all was well with my folk.
When, therefore, he heard that he was the son of the traitor Cendric, who had been so deeply implicated in Alfred's plot, he was so unjust as to believe all that Brithric said against him. Accordingly, he took Wilfrid, as well as the young Atheling, and carried them prisoners to London.
"Why, what should the king think of Olaf but that he has been his best friend?" "The earl tells me that he has heard that Cnut will offer Olaf some under-kingship if he will take his part," I said. "I cannot tell how he has heard that," Eadmund said, and he looked puzzled. "By your spies in Cnut's court," said I. "We have no spies there. I hate spying," the Atheling said. "What means he?"
When Alred approached the Atheling, with a blending of reverent obeisance and paternal cordiality, the boy carelessly cried, in a barbarous jargon, half German, half Norman-French: "There, come not too near, you scare my hawk. What are you doing? You trample my toys, which the good Norman bishop William sent me as a gift from the Duke. Art thou blind, man?"
"Alfred the Great, he is the plague of my life! if I am Atheling, men are to live for me, not I for them; and if you tease me any more, I will run away to Duke William in Rouen; Godfroi says I shall never be teased there!" So saying, already tired of hawk and lure, the child threw himself on the floor with the other children, and snatched the toys from their hands.
For one moment, it seemed indeed, that Edward regretted or reconsidered the pledge of our youth. He sent for his kinsman, the Atheling, natural heir to the throne. But the poor prince died.
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