He loved God with all his heart, and would fain have given up his princely state and retired into some religious house, so that he might have more time to study His Word, and to learn about Him.
But he had plenty of what we call ‘common sense,’ so when his father died, and he was left King in his stead, he said to himself, ‘Now must I bestir myself and put away the dreams of my youth. I had visions of forsaking the world like Cuthbert or Bede, or the holy Paulinus, who won King Edwin to the Faith.[2] But if it had been the will of God that I should serve Him in this manner, I would not have been born an Ætheling,[3] and inheritor of the throne of East Anglia; and, seeing He hath thus dealt with me, I must serve Him according to His will, and not according to mine own. Therefore will I seek to be a just and true King.’
Then, knowing that a King has need of a wife, he sent for all the aldermen and wise men of his Kingdom, as soon as the days of mourning for his father were over, and told them that he wished to wed the Princess Elfreda, daughter of Offa, King of Mercia, and that he willed that a deputation should go from among them to the Court of that Monarch, to ask, in his name, for her hand.
Now, this Offa was a very great and mighty King, who cared for nothing so much as to extend the boundaries of his Kingdom, and he had succeeded in doing this in an extraordinary way. He had conquered the parts of the country which are now known as Kent, Sussex, Essex, and Surrey, and on the West he had driven back the Welsh beyond Shrewsbury, and had built a huge earthwork, which was known as ‘Offa’s Dyke,’ to mark the boundary of their domains. In this way it came about that in his days Cærffawydd, or ‘Fernlege,’ as it had come to be called, was in Mercia instead of Wales.
He had built for himself a great Castle at Sutton, near the banks of the Wye, and here he was holding his Court when King Ethelbert’s Ambassadors arrived, and laid their request before him.
He granted it at once, for he had but two daughters, the elder of whom, Eadburh, was married to Beorhtric, King of the West Saxons, who owed allegiance to him, and he thought that he would also have a certain power over the young Monarch of the East Angles if Elfreda became his wife.
So the grave bearded aldermen returned to their own land, and told their Royal Master how they had fared.
King Ethelbert was overjoyed at the success of his suit, and appointed a day on which he would set out, accompanied by all his retinue, to travel to the pleasant West Country in order to fetch home his bride.
Now, in those days people believed a great deal in dreams, and omens, and signs, and the old chroniclers tell us that, just before the young man set out, his mother, Queen Laonorine, came to him, and begged him not to go, because it was a very dark and cloudy morning, and she had had a bad dream the night before.
‘Look at the clouds,’ she said; ‘they be so black, methinks they portend evil.’