MATTHEW OE WESTMTNSTEB. A.D. 855. her to sit at table and eat by his aide. But the nation of the West Saxons does not permit the queen to sit by the side of the king, and considers her proper title to be, not the queen, but the king's wife. And this disgrace originated in the conduct of Eadburga, the daughter of king Ofla, a queen of that nation, who destroyed her husband Brithric with poison, and who, sitting by the king's side, was accustomed to accuse all the nobles of the kingdom, and to murder, by means of poisonous draughts, all whom she could not destroy by her accusations. Therefore, because of the wickedness of this queen, as has been related above at some length, the West Saxons had all agreed never to permit a king" to reign over them who offended in the before-mentioned particulars. At last, when Ethelwolf, who was a peaceable king, returned from Rome, his son Ethelbald, who has been already mentioned, attempted with his accomplices to prosecute to its accomplishment the wickedness which he had conceived. But Almighty God did not permit this to succeed. For to prevent a worse than civil war, one, namely, between father and son, from drawing to a head, by the ineffable clemency of the king, the conspiracy of all the nobles and bishops was appeased, and the king divided the kingdom of the West Saxons with his son, which had never been divided before, so that the eastern districts of the kingdom fell .to the share of his son, and the western part remained with the father. And,, though the whole nobility of the kingdom was willing to fight for the king, and to exclude his son from a share in the kingdom, if the father would have allowed it to be done, yet he was, by the innate nobleness of his mind, so far removed from the vice of covetousness, that he satisfied the ambition of his son to such a degree, that when the father ought to have reigned by the just judgment of God, his obstinate and wicked son did reign. A.D. 855. Pope Leo died, and was succeeded by Benedict, who ruled the see two years, six months, and ten days. The same year, king Edmund, who traced his origin up to the blood of the ancient Saxons, succeeded to the supreme power in the province of the East Angles, in the thirteenth year after his birth ; and on the day of the Nativity of our Lord, the twenty-fifth of December, that most pious youth, having been elected king by all the nobles and people of that district, and being compelled, in spite of great resistance on his own part, to assume the reins of government, received consecration from