“Thou art verily a bold youth, and were there many like thee, England might yet be hard to win.  A noble father must have begotten so brave a son.”

Then turning to his guests: 

“But I hope yet,” he added, “to win the hearts of such as he.  They loved Canute, although he conquered them.  Am I less a foreigner than he? and may not I win their love as he did?”

“Begin then thy reign with an act of clemency, my royal son,” said the bishop.

“I do; the lad shall have the protection he needs, and the assistance of our people, so far as our power yet extends.”

The tears started once more into Wilfred’s eyes.

“I thank thee, my Lord Duke, for my dead father’s sake, and for my living mother, and will pray the saints to forgive thee the bloodshed of this day.”

It was a curious ending to his speech, especially as the bloodshed was supposed to be on account of the saints, over whose bones the ill-fated Harold had taken his famous oath; but William had respect for courage and outspoken truthfulness, and more than once promoted men to high office in Church or State, who had withstood him in the face.

He only added, “When we meet again, my son, thou mayst judge thy king differently.”

Wilfred left the ducal tent; the authority of Count Eustace speedily procured the assistance of some Norman camp followers, and the body was reverently removed from the heap of slain, and placed upon a litter.  Wilfred slept in the tent of Eustace, and in the morning commenced his homeward journey, with the funeral cortege.

It is unnecessary to enter further into the details of that most sad journey.  Suffice it to say that he was able to transfer the precious burden from Norman to English hands, and that he arrived home in safety, whither Guthlac had preceded him, with the tidings that all save himself had perished alike.

Therefore the return of Wilfred was like that of one dead and alive again, lost and found; and the poor widow felt she had yet something besides her daughter Edith to live for.

The immediate effects of the conquest were not felt for some few weeks in the central parts of Mercia, and nought interfered with the solemn function customary at funerals in those ages.

The second morning after the return of Wilfred was fixed for the burial of the deceased thane, in the priory church which his father had built in the place of an earlier structure burnt by the Danes in 1006.

It was a noble pile for those early days, built chiefly of stone, which was fast superseding wood as a material for churches, dedicated to St. Wilfred.  The lofty roof, the long choir beyond the transept, gave magnificence to the fabric, which was surrounded without by the cloisters of the priory, of which it was the central feature.

In the south transept—­for it was a cruciform church—­was a chapel dedicated especially to St. Cuthbert, where the ashes of the deceased thane’s forefathers reposed in peace beneath the pavement.  There lay Ella of Aescendune, murdered by a Dane named Ragnar; his two sons, Elfric, who died young, and Alfred, who succeeded to the inheritance.  There, as in a shrine, the martyr Bertric reposed, who, like St. Edmund, had died by the arrows of the heathen Danes, there the once warlike Alfgar, the father of our thane, rested in peace, his lady Ethelgiva by his side {vi}.