own forefathers.

His greatest joy was when surrounded by his nephews and
nieces--yea, great-nephews and great-nieces, after the happy
marriage of Edward of Aescendune to Lady Agatha of Wilmcote.

Etienne and Edith lived blessed in each other's love to the end.
The Norman estates fell to Hugh, the English ones to Edward, who
not unworthily represented both English and Norman lines--"a knight
without fear and without reproach."

The last years of our hero, Wilfred, were years of tranquil
happiness and serene joy, such as Milton wrote of in later ages, in
those lines of wondrous beauty:

"Let my due feet never fail
To walk the cloisters hallowed pale,
With storied windows richly dight,
Casting a dim religions light,
And let the pealing organ blow
To the foil-voiced choir below,
Bring all heaven before mine eyes,
Dissolve me into ecstasies."

In the ruins of the abbey of St. Wilfred the spectator may notice a
cross-legged knight, whose feet rest upon a vanquished lion. His
whole attitude is expressive of intense action; the muscles seem
strained in the effort to draw his sword and demolish a Turk, while
the face expresses all that is noble in manly courage.

Hard by lies a prior in his vestments, his hands meekly clasped.
The colour has not yet quite faded, which embellished the statue;
but the remarkable thing is the face. Even yet, in spite of the
broken and mouldering stone, there is a calmness of repose about
that face which is simply wonderful.

It has been our task to call them both back to life--knight and
prior, and to make them live in our pages. Pardon us, gentle
readers, for the imperfect way in which we have fulfilled it.

Thus ends the Third and last Chronicle of Aescendune.

i Ordericus Vitalis, lib. iv. 523.

ii William of Malmesbury.

iii Sassenach equals Saxon.

iv It seems strange how such a misconception could ever have
arisen and coloured English literature to so great an extent, for
if we turn to the pages of the contemporaneous historians, such as
Henry of Huntingdon, William of Malmesbury, Florence of Worcester,
Ordericus Vitalis--born within the century of the Conquest--we find
that they all describe the Anglo-Saxons as English, not Saxons.

v See the Second Chronicle, chapter VI.

vi Genealogy of Aescendune.

The reader may be glad to have the genealogy of the family, in whom
it has been the author's aim to interest him, placed clearly before
him. The following table includ