[373] The youngest son of Osway, King of Northumbria; he succeeded to the throne on the death of his father in the year 670.
[374] She seems to have been principally encouraged in this fanatical determination by Wilfrid; probably this was one of the causes of Ecgfrid's displeasure towards him. So highly was the purity of the body regarded in the early Saxon church, that Aldhelm wrote a piece in its praise, in imitation of the style of Sedulius, but in most extravagant terms. Bede wrote a poem, solely to commemorate the chastety of Etheldreda.
"Let Maro wars in loftier numbers sing
I sound the praises of our heavenly King;
Chaste is my verse, nor Helen's rape I write,
Light tales like these, but prove the mind as light."
Bede's Eccl. Hist. by Giles, b. iv. c. xx.
[375] Bede's Eccl. Hist. b. iv. c. xx.
[376] Saxon Chronicle translated by Ingram, p. 118. Dugdale's Monasticon, vol. i. p. 458.
[377] Sharon Turner's Hist. of the Anglo-Saxons, vol. ii. p. 288.
[378] Strutt's Saxon Antiquities, vol. i. p. 83.
[379] Dibdin's Bibliomania, p. 228.
[380] Dibdin alludes to the "Harmony of the Four Gospels," preserved among the Cotton MSS. Caligula, A. vii. and described as "Harmonia Evangeliorum, lingua Francica capitulis, 71, Liber quondam (dicit Jamesius) Canuti regis." See also Hicke's Gram. Franco-Theotisca, p. 6. But there is no ground for the supposition that it belonged to Canute; and the several fine historical illuminations bound up with it are evidently of a much later age.
[381] An entry occurs of 6s. 8d. for writing two processionals.