chief men of his kingdom; sent ambassadors to them to sue for peace, and request them to cease from their ravages, promising them provisions and tribute ; on hearing which, not without treachery and dissimulation, as the event proved, they consented to his offer. For, although food was provided for them in abundance, and tribute paid as much as they pleased, still, they did not desist from making incursions in straggling bodies throughout the provinces wherever they chose, laying waste towns, spoiling some wretched people of their property and slaying others. In the same year, after having ravaged a great part of England, an army of the Banes, between the Nativity of Saint Mary and the feast of Saint Michael, drawing their Hues around it, laid siege to the city of Canterbury. On the twentieth day of the siege, through the treachery of the archdeacon Elmer, whom Saint Elphege had before rescued from being condemned to death, a part of the city was burnt, and, the army effecting an entrance, the city was taken. Some were slaughtered with the sword, some destroyed by the flames. Many were also thrown from the waBs, while some were put to death by being hung up by their secret parts. The women were dragged by their hair through the streets of the city, and then, being thrown into the flames, were thus put to death ; infants were torn from their mother's breasts, and were either caught on the points of spears, or ground to pieces under the wheels of vehicles. In the meantime archbishop Elphege was taken, bound in fetters, kept in confinement, and put to various torments. Ail-mar, abbat of the monastery of Saint Augustine, was aUowed to depart. Godwin, the bishop of Rochester, was also taken, and Leoufruna, abbess of the monastery of Saint Mildred, EHrige, the king's steward, the monks also and secular clergy, and an innumerable multitude of either sex. After this, Christ's Church was sacked and burnt ; a multitude of monks, and a crowd, consisting not only of men, but even women and chUdren as weB, were decimated, and nine were put to death, while the tenth was reserved alive : the amount of the decimated thus saved was four monks and eight hundred men. After the people had been slaughtered and the whole of the city burnt, archbishop Elphege was dragged forth in fetters, hurried along with violence, grievously wounded, and afterwards led away to the fleet and thrust into prison, where he was tortured for seven months. 90 ANN AXS OF B.OGEB, DE HOVEDEN. A.D. 1011.