A.D. 870. MARTYRDOM OF KINO EDMUND. 417 While, therefore, Hinguar was inconsolably anxious about the slaughter which had fallen upon his troops, his brother Hubba came to him at Thedforde, after having already laid waste the whole of Mercia, bringing with him ten thousand armed men ; and then uniting their forces, with the object of avenging themselves on the holy king Edmund, they moved their camp and soon arrived at the town of Heglesdune, where the most blessed king Edmund at that time was. Then the tyrant, Hinguar, commanded the king and all his army to be surrounded, so that not one of them all might escape alive. Therefore, the holy king Edmund, when he perceived that he was surrounded on all sides by the enemy, by the advice of Humbert, bishop of Helmham, fled to the church, to show himself a member of Christ, and throwing away his temporal arms, he put on the armour of heaven, humbly praying to the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, to give him constancy in his sufferings. Therefore, the most merciful king, Edmund, was pitilessly dragged out of the church by the ministers of iniquity, and bound with cruel thongs ; and as Christ was brought before Pilate, the governor, so was Edmund led before the unjust leader, wishing to follow the steps of Him who was slain as a victim for us. At the command of this wicked leader he was bound to a tree, which was at no great distance, and scourged for a long time, and mocked in many ways ; but Edmund, the invincible wrestler of Christ, by continually, with mournful voice, invoking Christ amid bis stripes, drove his tormentors to madness ; and they, amusing themselves with his body as with a target, pierced every part of it with darts and arrows, nor was there a vacant spot in the martyr's body where a new wound could be inflicted ; for as a hedgehog is beset with closely-set thorns over his whole skin, so was the body of the invincible king pierced with thepointsof arrows. And when even thus the bloody monster Hinguar could not separate the holy martyr Edmund from the faith of Christ and from the confession of the Trinity, so as to gain assent to his wretched persuasions, he immediately commanded the executioner t cut off the head of the martyr with bis bloody sword, and the executioner, amid his prayers and confession of the name of Christ, at one blow savagely struck bis holy head from his shoulders, and decapitated him, on the twentieth day of November, and so offered to God a grateful holocaust, which had