While sitting in the royal box, the young prince Wiglaf was asked what he thought of the performance.  “Rotten!” he answered, and left the place abruptly, setting fire to the building as he went out.

Beobald, in citing the above incident in his “Chronicles of Comical Kings,” calls it “an hendy hap ichabbe y-hent.”  And perhaps he’s right.

Events proceeded in rapid succession after this for the young boy and we next find him facing marriage with a stiff upper-lip.  Mystery has always surrounded the reasons which led to the choice of Princess Offa as Wiglaf’s bride.  In fact, it has never been quite certain whether or not she was his bride.  No one ever saw them together.[1] On several occasions he is reported to have asked his chamberlain who she was as she passed by on the street.[2]

And yet the theory persists that she was his wife, owing doubtless to the fact that on the eve of the Battle of Otford he sent a message to her asking where “in God’s name” his clean shirts had been put when they came back from the wash.

We come now to that period in Wiglaf’s life which has been for so many centuries the cause of historical speculation, pro and con.  The reference is, of course, to his dealings with Aethelbald, the ambassador from Wessex.  Every schoolboy has taken part in the Wiglaf-Aethelbald controversy, but how many really know the inside facts of the case?

Examination of the correspondence between these two men shows Wiglaf to have been simply a great, big-hearted, overgrown boy in the whole affair.  All claims of his having had an eye on the throne of Northumbria fade away under the delightful ingenuousness of his attitude as expressed in these letters.

“I should of thought,” he writes in 821 to his sister, “that anyone who was not cock-ide drunk would have known better than to of tried to walk bear-foot through that eel-grass from the beech up to the bath-house without sneekers on, which is what that ninn Aethelbald tryed to do this AM.  Well say laffter is no name for what you would of done if you had seen him.  He looked like he was trying to walk a tide-rope.  Hey I yelled at him all the way, do you think you are trying to walk a tide-rope?  Well say maybe that didn’t make him sore.”

Shortly after this letter was written, Wiglaf ascended the throne of Mercia, his father having disappeared Saturday night without trace.  A peasant[3] some years after said that he met the old king walking along a road near what is now the Scottish border, telling people that he was carrying a letter of greeting from the Mayor of Pontygn to the Mayor of Langoscgirh.  Others say that he fell into the sea off the coast of Wales and became what is now known as King’s Rocks.  This last has never been authenticated.

At any rate, the son, on ascending the throne, became king.  His first official act was to order dinner.  “A nice, juicy steak,” he is said to have called for,[4] “French fries, apple pie and a cup of coffee.”  It is probable that he really said “a coff of cuppee,” however, as he was a wag of the first water and loved a joke as well as the next king.