26 Malmesbury. 



wind of royal favour blew from no steady point. Whatever 

 happened to be the humour of the king for the time, so was it 

 either good or bad times for the Monks. Of which kind it was 

 likely to be under the next king, ^thelred the Unready, may be 

 easily anticipated when we are told that his reign was cruel in the 

 beginning, wretched in the middle, and disgraceful in the end. 

 He took a particular dislike to the ceremonies of the religious, and 

 whether or no he had suflficient motive for so doing you shall judge. 

 He had a furious mother, Queen Elfrida, who, when her children 

 were troublesome, had a habit of putting them to death. She had 

 just served one of the olive-branches so, when ^thelred, then only 

 ten years old, began, not unnaturally, to cry for the loss of his 

 brother. Her Majesty, in a towering passion, not happening to 

 have in her hand at the moment the proper instrument of flagella- 

 tion, caught at the first thing she could lay hold of, which happened 

 to be a pound of candles ! How many they were to to the pound, 

 whether they were rushlights, dips, sixes or fours, the chronicle 

 does not specify ; but whatever they were, she beat him so nearly 

 to death that he could never bear the sight of a candle afterwards, 

 and would never allow one to be lighted in his presence. Hence 

 his aversion to tapers, and through tapers to monks. It was 

 during JEthelred's reign that the Danes again obtained a footing 

 in England, which they did not relinquish for many years. Two 

 of their chieftains, Sigeferth and Morcar, being seized and put to 

 death at Oxford by ^thelred's order, the wife of Sigeferth, Elgiva, 

 a lady of much beauty, was cari'ied prisoner to Malmesbury. The 

 King's son, Edmund, afterwards called Ironside, hearing of her, 

 took a journey hither, and, without his father's knowledge, made 

 her his wife. Langtoft, the chronicler, in mentioning this, calls 

 the town Malmcestre. 



After the death of Edmund Ironside in 1016 there were three 

 Danish Kings of England, and during their reigns, ending 1042, 

 little is met with relating to the monastery. In the neighbourhood 

 there was much fighting: and at a battle at Sherston some local 

 hero of great eminence distinguished himself, whose memory still 

 lives in that village under the name of " Rattlebone," perpetuated 



