Soon after this Wilfred had a long conference with Prior Kenelm.  The result was, that he announced his intention of retiring from the world and ending his days in the cloister.  His years had been years of strife and tumult—­he would give the residue to God.

So he entered the famous order of St. Benedict, and after the death of Father Kenelm became the prior of the monastery dedicated to his patron saint—­founded by his 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 includes the chief names in the three Chronicles; the date of decease is given in each case.