A.D. 857. SING BTHELWOLT DIES. 405 Humbert, bishop of Helmham, in the royal town which is called Bures. A.D. 856. Lothaire, king of France, and patrician of Rome, died, and was succeeded by Louis, who reigned twenty-one years. A.D. 857. Ethelwolf, the peaceful king of the West Saxons, among his other good studies in this life, thinking of bis passage to the life everlasting, lest his sons should quarrel with one another after his decease, drew up an epistle touching the inheritance, in which he had the division of his kingdom equitably apportioned between his eons Ethelbald and Ethelbert, and whatever treasures in money he should leave behind him he divided between his daughter and his relatives, and the nobles of his kingdom. Moreover, and for the benefit and salvation of his soul, he enjoined his successors to the end of time, in every ten hides or manors to maintain one poor man, whether a native or a stranger, in meat, drink, and clothing, provided only that that district was full of cattle, and was cultivated by men. And he ordered four hundred mancuses1 to be carried to Rome every year, to be there divided, so that one hundred mancuses should be spent in honour of Saint Peter, the chief of the Apostles, in the especial purchase of oil for filling all the lamps of the Apostolic Church on the eve of Easter, and the same sum for refilling them at cock-crow ; also a hundred mancuses in honour of Saint Paul for the same purposes, and a hundred were to be given to the universal pope for the purpose of increasing his alms. Moreover, this king, so devoted to God, before the death of king Egbert, his father, had been ordained bishop of Winchester ; but after his father's death, though he was very unwilling, he was created king, as there was no one else of the royal family who was entitled to reign. At last, when the illustrious king Ethelwolf had governed the kingdom of the West-Saxons with great care for seventeen years, he went the way of all flesh, and left Ethelbert, his second son, the kingdom of Kent with Sussex, while his eldest son, Ethelbald, succeeded him in the kingdom of the West Saxons ; and king Ethelwolf was buried with royal honours at Winchester, in the cathedral church. Aa soon as Ethelbald had been advanced to the kingdom, he, in defiance of the laws of God, and the honour of the * • mancus was about the weight of our present half crown.—Hume, c. ii.