ng incident is said to have occurred. The
narration of it will illustrate the ideas of the time. A child of
about seven years old, named Kenelm, succeeded to the throne in the
Anglo-Saxon line. Being too young to act for himself, he was put under
the charge of a sister, who was to act as regent until the boy became
of age. The sister, ambitious of making the power thus delegated
to her entirely her own, decided on destroying her brother. She
commissioned a hired murderer to perpetrate the deed. The murderer
took the child into a wood, killed him, and hid his body in a thicket,
in a certain cow-pasture at a place called Clent. The sister then
assumed the scepter in her own name, and suppressed all inquiries in
respect to the fate of her brother; and his murder might have remained
forever undiscovered, had it not been miraculously revealed at Rome.

A white dove flew into a church there one day, and let fall upon the
altar of St. Peter a paper, on which was written, in Anglo-Saxon
characters,

In Clent Cow-batch, Kenelme king bearne, lieth under Thorne, head
bereaved.

For a time nobody could read the writing. At length an Anglo-Saxon
saw it, and translated it into Latin, so that the pope and all others
could understand it. The pope then sent a letter to the authorities in
England, who made search and found the body.

But we must end these digressions, which we have indulged thus far in
order to give the reader some distinct conception of the ideas and
habits of the times, and proceed, in the next chapter, to relate the
events immediately connected with Alfred's accession to the throne.

[Footnote 1: A great many other tales are told of the miraculous
phenomena exhibited by the body of St. Edmund, which well illustrate
the superstitious credulity of those times. One writer says seriously
that, when the head was found, a wolf had it, holding it carefully in
his paws, with all the gentleness and care that the most faithful dog
would manifest in guarding a trust committed to him by his master.
This wolf followed the funeral procession to the tomb where the body
was deposited, and then disappeared. The head joined itself to the
body again where it had been severed, leaving only a purple line to
mark the place of separation.]

CHAPTER VI.

ALFRED'S ACCESSION TO THE THRONE

At the battle in which Alfred's brother, Ethelred, whom Alfred
succeeded on the throne, was killed, as is briefly mentioned at