grant the palatinate rights of the wealthy bishops of Durham arise, and which are still retained, in a great measure, in the present day. The bishop was a prince between the Tyne and Tees. He could pardon and condemn, and even exercise the power of life and death; and for this reason, a bishop of Durham may, if he please, sit on the bench in scarlet robes when the judges try a criminal within his diocese.

We must not omit to mention that Guthred ever remained faithful to Alfred.

The ready election of this prince by his former enemies, the Danes, as well as the Saxons, may be accounted for, by the reverence in which the royal line of Sweden was held throughout the north as the genuine descendants of Odin, who was the reformer, conqueror, and lawgiver, of the north, and for several ages worshipped as a god. He was said to be of Asiatic origin, and the dark hair and eyes that tradition decribes his descendants to have possessed, makes that idea probable.

In such respect was a king of Sweden held in ancient times, on account of his lineal descent from this mighty ruler of the north, that the rival monarchs of Denmark and Norway condescended to hold his bridle and stirrup when he mounted or dismounted, on solemn occasions, when these princes met.

36

ROYAL CHASE OF WAREHAM.

On the death of Edgar the Second, sirnamed the peaceable, England was distracted by the contentions of two adverse factions respecting the choice of a successor to the crown.

*

At the head of the most powerful party, distinguished by the name of the Dunstanites, was the famous Archbishop Dunstan, who supported the title of Edward the Atheling, or prince royal, the eldest son of the deceased monarch, by his first wife. The other faction called the Anti-Dunstanites, were the partisans of the queen dowager, the beautiful but wicked Elfrida, who was ambitious of placing her young son Ethelred on the throne, and governing in his name during a long minority. But while the whole nation was divided and involved in civil discord on this point, and the most deadly hatred agitated the minds of those who espoused the rival claims of the sons of Edgar, it is an interesting fact that the youthful princes, though only brothers by the half blood, were united in the tenderest bonds of love.

Edward, who had just completed his fourteenth year, had been named by his dying father as his successor. The right of primogeniture was his

Some account of this celebrated statesman and ecclesiastic will be found in the Historical Summary.

also, and in the Witenagemot or great national council, the eloquence and influence of the two archbishops, Dunstan and Oswald, obtained a formal recognition of those rights, and Prince Edward was, in conformity with the will of his deceased father, placed on the throne of the Anglo Saxons.

At the tender age of seven years the baleful passions of ambition had no place in the then guileless heart of the younger prince. Unconscious of the charms of royalty, of which he had as yet only experienced the restraints, the loss of a kingdom was not to him matter of either disappointment or regret. The only sorrow of which the decision of the Witenagemot was productive to him was his separation from that beloved elder brother, in whose affectionate bosom he had, from his earliest remembrance, been wont to repose his childish joys and griefs, and who had been his companion, his guide, and his own sweet familiar friend. Never were the soothing kindness and fond endearments he had been accustomed to receive from the princely Edward so much required by Ethelred as at this period, when all the evil passions of his haughty mother's nature had been roused and called into baleful activity during her late attempts to supplant her royal step-son; and having been foiled in her endeavours to usurp the royal authority in Ethelred's name, she vented her mortification and baffled rage on the unfortunate object of her maternal ambition and defeated machinations.

E

Weak in body and feeble in mind, Ethelred had evidently been designed by nature for a private station, and these constitutional defects frequently subjected him to the bitterest reproaches and most injurious treatment from the imperious Elfrida, whose unrestrained violence of temper rendered her at all times an object of terror to him, although occasionally experiencing the most pernicious indulgence from her when caprice inclined her to fondness.

Child as he was, Ethelred was only too painfully aware of the evil traits of his mother's character, and since he had been deprived by death of his natural protector, and afterwards separated from his affectionate brother, he seemed to tremble at the sound of her step, and sought at all times to avoid her presence, while he beheld with jealous displeasure the caresses she bestowed on her little cankered dwarf Wulstan, whose droll tricks and impish mischief occasionally possessed the power of diverting the black gloom that oppressed her, after she had been compelled to resign the gaiety and splendour of the court for a solitary residence in Corfe Castle, one of the royal demesnes in Dorsetshire, which had been the favourite hunting palace of her late husband King Edgar, who had been accustomed to spend much of his time there; and thither Elfrida had been allowed by her generous step-son to retire, with her son Prince Ethelred and a train suitable to the dignity of his father's widow. Instead of being moved by the kindness and forbearance of

the young king, Elfrida continued in secret her treasonable practices against him. She had already sacrificed her first husband Ethelbald to her ambition, and she only waited a suitable opportunity of attemping the life of Edward. The Archbishop Dunstan was, however, fully aware of her cruel and perfidious disposition, and he strictly guarded his royal pupil from all her machinations and conspiracies against his person, and warned him perpetually against the imprudence of either admitting her to visit the court, or trusting himself in the vicinity of her abode. So implicitly had the cautions or Dunstan been attended to by those about the young king, that for a period of three years he had been prevented from holding the slightest intercourse with Elfrida and her son:

But the affectionate heart of Edward yearned towards his younger brother, whom he earnestly desired to embrace once more. The cares of royalty, the sceptre of a divided realm, and the severe restri nts and self-sacrifices imposed upon him by his austere but faithful guardian Dunstan, were grevious to the youthful monarch, who, in addition to these, was compelled to submit to the stern discipline of a monastic education; and the mode in which learning was communicated in those days was equally fatiguing to the preceptor and painful to the pupil. Elementary books were not then written to facilitate the progress of education. There were not above three copies of a meagre dictionary in existence. in England, and lessons were learned from dictation,