A.D. 852.] THE WITCH OF BERKELEY. 181 the Mercians. The body of the deceased was carried to the monastery of Eependun, the most famous of that age, and is said to have been buried in the tomb of his grandsire king Wilaf. His martyrdom was not without heavenly miracles ; for from the spot where he was innocently slain, a column of light, extending up to heaven, remained visible to the inhabitants of that place for thirty days. In the year of our Lord 850, the French were worsted by the Bohemians in a severe engagement. A malignant spirit publicly declared by the mouth of a certain maniac, that he had presided over that war, and by himself and his companions, the spirits of pride and discord, had brought it to pass that the French turned their backs on their enemies. In the year of our Lord 851, a great heap of pagans arrived in the mouth of the river Thames with three hundred and fifty vessels, and ravaged Dorobernia, that is to say, Canterbury, and put to flight Bertulf king of the Mercians, who had come against them to battle. Rendered bolder by this success, they advanced with all their forces into Surrey; which being told to Athelwulf, king of the West-Saxons, he assembled a mighty army, and accompanied by his son Athelbald, engaged with them in battle in a place called Aclea [Ockley], where he defeated them with unheard-of slaughter. Death of king Bertulf. In the year of our Lord 852, Bertulf, king of the Mercians, departed this life, and was succeeded by Burchred, who reigned twenty-two years. In the first year of his reign he took to wife a daughter of the king of the West-Saxons, and thereby strengthened himself in his kingdom ; the nuptials were celebrated in the royal vili of Chippenham, where the young Ethelswitha received the appellation of queen. Of a certain witch,'and her miserable death. In those days there lived in the village of Berkeley a certain woman, who was a witch, a lover of her belly, and given to lasciviousness, forsaking not her flagitious courses and her fortune-telling even in her old age, but remaining shameless even to her death. One day, as she sat at dinner a young raven, which she kept for her amusement, began to chatter I know not what ; on which the woman let the knife