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 nobles 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 anticipations, 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 nobles.
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 wishing
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 Dorsetshire. 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 Dorsetshire. 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 brass, 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.
[Illustration: 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
pronounced 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.
In the reign of Ethelred Dunstan died. As he had used politics to
help the church, he was made a saint. This was in a rude and
ignorant age.
Poor boy kings! Edmund was murdered; Edwy died of a broken heart;
Edward was stabbed and dragged to death at his horse's heels; and
Ethelred lost his kingdom. Three of them were good and three were
bad. Only one of them was happy.
Edmund, eighteen years of age, reigned from 940 to 946; Edred, 946
to 955; Edwy, fifteen years of age, 955 to 958; Edgar, fifteen years
of age, 958 to 975; Edward, thirteen years of age, 975 to 979;
Ethelred, ten years of age, 979 to 1016.
So the boy kings reigned in all seventy-six years, and governed
England in their youth for nearly fifty years.
"I like your story,
