Zigzag Journeys in Northern Lands Part 6

Edred died in the year 955, having for nine years aimed to do justly and to govern well. His decease, like his brother's before him, was sincerely lamented.

He left a well-ordered government, except in the department of the treasury. Some remarkable "irregularities"--as stealing is sometimes called nowadays--had taken place there, some of the public money having become mixed up with Dunstan's.

The next of the six boy kings of England was Edwy the Fair,--fifteen years of age when he ascended the throne.

He was the son of Edmund,--a handsome boy, and as good at heart as he was handsome. Though so young, he had married a beautiful princess, named Elgiva. So we have here a boy king and a girl queen.

As if one bad prelate were not enough, there was, besides Dunstan, another great mischief-maker, Odo, the Dane, Archbishop of Canterbury.

The coronation of Edwy was the occasion of great rejoicing. They had a sumptuous feast in the evening, attended by all the prelates and thanes. Edwy liked the society of the girl queen better than that of these rude people, and in the midst of the festivities he retired to the queen's apartment to see her and the queen mother.

Odo, the archbishop, noticed that the boy king had left his place at the tables. He rightly guessed the reason, and deemed such conduct disrespectful to himself and to the guests. So he went and made complaint to Dunstan, and Dunstan went to look for the missing king.

When the latter came to the queen's apartment, and was refused admittance, he broke open the door, upbraided Edwy for his absence from the feast, and, seizing him by the collar, dragged and pushed him roughly back to the banqueting-hall.

Edwy, of course, resented this treatment. Dunstan replied by accusing him of great impropriety, and talked in a very overbearing way, and Edwy, though a considerate boy, and of a mild disposition, at last lost his temper.

"You have a very nice sense of propriety," he said. "You were the treasurer in the last reign, I believe. I intend to call you to account for the way that you fulfilled your trust."

Dunstan was greatly astonished, and, guilty man that he was, he began to feel very unsafe.

The boy king made the attempt which he had threatened, to call Dunstan to account for his late doings in the treasury. But the latter, when he found that Edwy was in earnest, fled to Ghent.

The n.o.bles saw somewhat into his true character when he thus disappeared from court, and a party of men was sent in pursuit of him to put out his eyes. But he was too foxy to be caught, and arrived safely in Belgium at last, to make a great deal of trouble in the world yet.

Incited by Dunstan, Odo raised a rebellion. When he had drawn to himself a sufficient party to insure his personal safety, he proclaimed Edgar, the younger brother of Edwy, king.

Dunstan returned to England, and joined Odo, and this precious pair soon discovered the value of their piety, as you shall presently see.

Edwy the Fair loved the girl queen. She was beautiful as well as amiable, and was as devoted to her husband as she was lovely. Odo and Dunstan wished to break the spirit of Edwy, and thought to accomplish their end by capturing the queen. They caused her to be stolen from one of the royal palaces, and her cheeks to be burned with hot irons, in order to destroy the beauty that had so enchanted the boy king. They then sent her to Ireland, and sold her as a slave.

The Irish people pitied the weeping maiden, and loved her. They healed the scars on her cheeks, that the hot irons had made. When her beauty returned, she grew light-hearted again, and all her dreams were of the king.

Then the Irish people released her from bondage, and gave her money to return to Edwy.

She entered England full of joyful antic.i.p.ations, and made rapid journeys towards the place where Edwy held his court. But Odo and Dunstan, who had been apprised of her coming, intercepted her, and ordered that she should be tortured and put to death. They caused the cords of her limbs to be severed, so that she was unable to walk or move. The beautiful girl survived the cutting and maiming but a few days.

Weeping continually over her disappointments and sorrows, and shrieking at times from the acuteness of her pain, she died at Gloucester,--perhaps the most unfortunate princess who ever came to the English throne.

When Edwy heard of her death, he ceased to struggle for his right; he cared for nothing more. He grew paler and thinner day by day, his beauty faded, his thoughts turned heavenward, and he aspired to a better crown and kingdom. He died of a broken heart before he reached the age of twenty, having aimed for three years to govern well.

Edwy's short reign was followed by that of his brother Edgar, who succeeded to the Anglo-Saxon throne in the year 959, and was an unprincipled and dissolute king.

He was fifteen years of age when he began to reign. One of his first acts was to reward the intriguing Dunstan for his crimes by bestowing upon him the archbishopric of Canterbury. Think of conferring an archbishopric as the price of a brother's ruin and death! Ah, better to be Edwy the Fair in his early grave, with the birds singing and the violets waving above him, than the cruel boy Edgar upon the throne.

He resigned the government almost wholly to Dunstan, his primate, and spent his time in gayety, pleasure, and ease. He was unstable, profligate, and vicious. He once broke into a convent and carried off a beautiful nun, named Editha. For this violation of the sanctuary, Dunstan commanded him not to wear his crown for seven years, which was no great punishment, as he could ornament his head as well in some other way.

Dunstan certainly possessed great ability as a statesman. He employed the vast armaments of England against the neighboring sovereigns, and compelled the King of Scotland and the Princes of Wales, of the Isle of Man, and of the Orkneys, to do homage to Edgar.

The boy king annually made a voyage around England in great state, accompanied by princes and n.o.bles.

On one of these occasions, when he wished to visit the Abbey of St.

John the Baptist, on the River Dee, he appointed eight crowned kings to pull the oars of his barge, while he himself acted as steersman.

The vainglorious young sovereign then went into the grand old abbey and said his prayers, after which he returned in the same pomp, rowed by the eight subject kings.

This event is celebrated in the songs and ballads of the olden time, which tell of the glory of England, when the eight crowns glimmered on the sun-covered waters of the Dee.

Edgar, who was King of England up to the year 975, married twice, and left two sons. The elder of these was named Edward, the son of a good queen, Ethelfreda; the other was named Ethelred, the son of the bad queen, Elfrida.

Edward had the best claim to the throne, but the intriguing Elfrida endeavored to secure the succession to her own son, Ethelred, a boy about seven years old. Dunstan decided against her, and caused Edward to be crowned. The boy king was at this time thirteen years of age.

He was an amiable, susceptible boy, loving every one, and wis.h.i.+ng every one well, and believing, with childish simplicity, that all the world was as pure at heart and as unselfish as himself.

But Elfrida hated him, and resolved that his reign should be a short one, if it was within the reach of her arts to make it so.

She retired with little Ethelred to Crofe Castle, a beautiful country seat in Dorsets.h.i.+re. Green forests waved around it, and blue hills seemed to semicircle the sky. The silver horn of the hunter often echoed through the stream-cleft woodlands, and merrily blew before the castle gate.

Edward and a youthful court party went hunting one day in the dreamy old forests of Dorsets.h.i.+re. Chancing to ride near Crofe Castle, Edward thought that he would like to see Elfrida and his little brother. So he separated himself from his attendants, rode to the castle, and blew his horn.

Elfrida presently appeared, her face glowing with smiles.

"Thou art welcome, dear king," she said, in a winning way. "Pray dismount and come in, and we will have pleasant talk and good cheer."

"No, madam," said Edward. "My company would notice my absence, and think that some evil had befallen me. Please bring me a cup of wine, and I will drink to your health and to my little brother's, in my saddle, and then I must away with speed."

Elfrida turned away to order the wine. She gave another order at the same time in a whisper to an armed attendant.

The wine was brought. Elfrida filled the cup and handed it to the boy king. As he held it up it sparkled in the light. Elfrida stood in the gateway, holding little Ethelred by the hand.

"Health," said Edward, putting the bright cup to his lips.

There crept up behind him softly an armed man, whose muscles stood out like bra.s.s, and whose eyes burned like fire. He sprang upon the boy king and stabbed him in the back. The affrighted horse dashed away, dragging the bleeding body by the stirrup,--on, on, on, over rut and rock, bush and brier.

They tracked him by his blood. They found his broken body at last.

They took it up tenderly and with many tears, and laid it beneath the moss and fern.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE MURDER OF EDWARD.]

When little Ethelred saw his brother stabbed and bleeding, and dragged over the rough earth, he began to weep. Elfrida beat him and sent him to his chamber.

What a night was that when the moon silvered the forest! One boy king mangled and dead on the cold ground, and another boy king weeping in the forest castle, and beaten and bruised for being touched at heart at the murder of his bright, innocent brother.

Ethelred came to the English throne at the age of ten. He was the last of the six boy kings.

The people held him in disfavor from the first on account of his bad mother, and when Dunstan put the crown on his head at Kingston, he p.r.o.nounced a curse instead of a blessing. Neither the blessing nor the curse of a man like Dunstan could be of much account, and we do not believe that the latter did the little boy Ethelred any harm.

Dunstan was now old and as full of craft and wickedness as he was full of years. He continued to practise jugglery, which he called performing miracles, whenever he found his influence declining, or had an important end to accomplish.