full worthily,
as he worthy was,
at the west end,
the steeple well-nigh,
in the south aisle.
His soul is with Christ.”
And lastly, the fact that Harold was buried at Westminster, the first of our kings buried there. His half-brother, Hardacnut, had the body exhumed and thrown into the mud of the marsh round Thorney—“into a fen,” says the Chronicle. Thorney stood in a fen, and it is not likely that the new king would desire his savage deed—yet, was it more savage than the acts of Charles II. at the Restoration?—to be concealed. One knows not how many tides ebbed and flowed over the body of the dead king as it lay among the reeds; but presently some—perhaps the monks—taking pity on the poor remains put them into a boat, carried them down the river, and buried them in the little church of St. Clement’s, which, like Thorney, stood on the rising ground of the Strand. And there his dust lies still.
Hardacnut fell down in a fit—“as he stood at his drink”—at Kennington Palace, having crossed over from Westminster to attend a wedding feast. He was buried at Winchester with his father. But before he was well buried the people had chosen, at London, his half-brother, Edward, as king.
The Plan of BORSTAL.
