AUGUST 201 



Now, as to the known antiquity of this sylvan chapel. 

 It is dedicated to St. Andrew, but its fame is derived from 

 its having been the temporary resting-place of the corpse 

 of Saxon Edmund. In 870 the Danish chiefs Henger and 

 Hubba invaded East Anglia, and defeated the Saxons 

 under King Edmund at Thetford, in Suffolk. There was 

 a terrible slaughter of the vanquished ; Edmund was 

 pursued, first to Framlingham, then to a wood at Hoxne. 

 He was offered his life if he would abjure Christianity, 

 and cede half his realm. Refusing these terms, he was 

 bound to an oak, and made a target for Danish bowmen. 

 Finally, Henger hacked off his head. The oak to which 

 he was bound, or, at all events, one reputed to be St. 

 Edmund's oak, fell in September 1848. It measured 

 twenty feet in circumference, and it is said that an arrow- 

 head was found embedded in the trunk ; but I am unable 

 to quote chapter and verse for this statement. The 

 king's body was recovered after the Danes had moved 

 off, and was buried at Hoxne, at that time called Egles- 

 dene or Heglesdon. Tradition runs that his head was 

 recovered at a distance from the body, closely guarded by 

 a wolf, which went quietly away when people came in 

 search of the royal remains. This incident is com- 

 memorated in a wooden carving in St. Mary's Church, 

 Bury St. Edmunds. 



For thirty-three years Edmund lay where he had been 

 buried ; in 903 his remains were removed to the wooden 

 church of Bedrichesworthe, where King Athelstane 

 founded a monastery and dedicated it to the good king ; 

 for Edmund by this time had been canonised. The fame 

 of his sanctity effected that in which the imperial 

 authority of Rome had often failed. The Roman 



