been purified by the fire of suffering, and transmitted it with the palm of victory and crown of justice to heaven. And the ministers of the devil leaving the body of the martyr deprived of its head, conveying the head into the wood which is called Heglesdune, threw it among the thick bushes and brambles, for the cruel butchers were still anxious that the body of the martyr should not, with his head, be given the burial which became it by the few Christians whom they had left alive ; for Hinguar and Hubba, those most wicked robbers, had learnt that their father, Lothbroc, had been formerly murdered in the before-mentioned wood, on which account, at the lying suggestion of the huntsman Bemus, they sought to retaliate on the blessed king and martyr Edmund, and therefore threw his head ignominiously into the same wood, and gave it to be devoured by the birds of heaven and the wild beasts. And with the most holy king Edmund, there also suffered his inseparable companion Humbert, bishop of Helmham, who had raised king Edmund to the supreme power, and who, being animated by the constancy of the king to endure martyrdom, was with him made a possessor of the kingdom of heaven. And when this blessed king had been thus removed to the heavenly regions, the pagans, boasting extravagantly, wintered in that district, having driven out the few natives who survived the previous massacre. The same year, Ceolnoth, archbishop of Canterbury, died, and was succeeded by Ethelred, a venerable man, of great learning in all divine matters. When, then, after the martyrdom of the most blessed king Edmund, the brothers Hinguar and Hubba, hated by God, had passed part of the winter season in the country of the East Angles, devoting themselves to plunder and rapine, there came to the same district to them a man of the name of Gytro, the most powerful of the kings of the Danes, in order to pass the winter with the before-mentioned brethren. When then the spring season arrived, all the pagans departed together from East Anglia. And when this was heard, the Christians came forth on all sides from their lurking places, and laboured most earnestly to find the head of the blessed king Edmund, and unite it to bis body, and then to give such a burial to the whole body as a king was entitled to. And as they all united in this object with equal eagerness, and traversed the woods, seeking diligently for the martyr's head, a thing wonderful to relate, and unheard of in previous ages, happened. For while