[158] Henry, surnamed the Fowler, father of Otho the Great. She had a son and daughter by him. One of Edward’s daughters, called Adela, is said to have been married to Ebles, earl of Poitiers, by whom she had two sons. See L’Art de Verifier les Dates, ii. 312.
[159] This seems to have been Lewis the Blind, king of Arles: and if so, she must have been one of the elder daughters, as he appears not to have survived A.D. 930. She had, at least, one son by him, Charles Constantine, earl of Vienne. See L’Art de Verifier les Dates, ii. 429.
[160] This is a mistake: Hugh is confounded with his father, who married Edward’s daughter. There is no notice of this exploit of Hugh’s in Bouquet, though Isembard is mentioned as the nephew of Lewis, who, being unjustly banished, returns accompanied by a large body of Danes and Normans, but is defeated. Bouquet, Recueil, &c. tom. ix. 58. Lewis, however, left issue, and it was on the death of his grandson Lewis, that Hugh Capet became king of France.
[161] This story of pope Formosus and the seven bishops is to be found verbatim in a MS. (Bodley, 579) which was given to the cathedral of Exeter by bishop Leofric, who died A.D. 1073. Its difficulties therefore are not to be imputed to our author. But though it may not be easy to assign a rational motive for the invention of such an instrument, it is a decided forgery; and all the ecclesiastical writers, from Baronius to Wilkins, [See Concilia, i. p. 201,] have utterly failed in their conjectural attempts to uphold it: even the temperate, the acute, the learned Henry Wharton [Anglia Sacra, i. 554, 5], who rejects decidedly the epistle, gives but an unsatisfactory solution of the seven vacant sees. Its repugnancies will be seen at a glance, when it is recollected, that Formosus died A.D. 896; Edward did not reign till A.D. 901; and Frithstan did not become bishop of Winchester before A.D. 910.
[162] Matt. ix. 37.
[163] In the Saxon Chronicle it is called Brumby. [See Chronicles of the Anglo-Saxons, in Bohn’s Antiquarian Library, pp. 376, 377.] Its site is not exactly known, but it was probably not far from the Humber.
[164] Said to be Werstan, bishop of Sherborne. See Malmesbury’s Gesta Pontificum; or, Lives of the Bishops, to be hereafter translated and published in this series.
[165] This passage is thought to prove the existence of knights as a distinct order among the Saxons; and, coupled with the case of Hereward, it has very much that air. See Mr. Turner’s Anglo-Saxons, 4, 171, et inf. But perhaps in the present instance, it may amount to nothing more than bestowing his first arms on him. Lewis the Debonnaire received his arms, “ense accinctus est,” at thirteen years old.—Duchesne, t. ii. 289.
[166] Cornu Galliæ, a fanciful etymology.
[167] Improperly called king: it was Hugh the Great, father of Hugh Capet. Malmesbury was probably deceived by a blunder of Ingulf’s.