By the Rev. J. E. Jackson. 21 



having to write with steel-pens there is no explanation. He was 

 looked on as a martyr, and was buried in the first Abbey-church 

 dedicated to the Holy Saviour, St. Peter and St. Paul, a small one 

 which stood near the south transept of the present Church. 



If King Alfred did little for you, and was unlucky in that little, 

 it was otherwise with his grandson, whose glorious and immortal 

 memory is a household word at Malmesbury. The estates which 

 he gave to the monks, at Norton, Somerford, and elsewhere, have 

 long since passed into other hands ; but the King's Heath still 

 belongs to those to whom King Athelstan gave it, " the burgesses 

 of Malmesbury, and their successors for ever." 



And what, about the year 930, had the burgesses done to deserve 

 a perpetual gift of 500 acres of land ? They had done that which, 

 of course, they are ready to do again when the next invader comes. 

 " I give and grant to them," says the King in his charter, " that 

 Royal Heath, near my little town of Norton, for their aid given to 

 me in my conflict with the Danes." There were so many battles 

 against the Danes that it may not be quite certain in which of 

 them the valour of Malmesbury was displayed. Some have said it 

 was at Sodbury camp : some nearer the town. 



" That Royal Heath," says the translation of the charter ; meaning 

 of course in the dry legal sense, the Heath belonging to the Crown : 

 for, in the appearance of Malmesbury Common before it was 

 enclosed, there was (as those who knew it say) nothing Royal in 

 any other sense. Trampled upon by hundreds of beasts, over-grown 

 with furze, full of holes and swamps, it had become a royal snipe- 

 ground, and its enclosure is very much lamented by those who 

 used to ramble over it with their guns. Some of the holes may be 

 accounted for. Coal was at one time supposed to lie underneath, 

 and so much money was spent in digging for the black diamond, 

 that none was left to pay for filling up the pits. The Heath was 

 enclosed in 1821, and King Athelstan's gift is now enjoyed in a 

 more beneficial form, in various shares, according to some established 

 rules, into which we need not now enter. 



I add a few particulars relating to the great benefactor of the 

 town. Athelstan was a boy of extraordinary beauty and graceful 



