198 EOGEE OF WENDOVEK. [A.D . 870. Passion of the blessed king and martyr Edmund. While Hinguar was inconsolable on account of the slaughter of his followers, his brother Hubba, who had just ravaged the whole of Mercia, joined him at Thetfbrd with ten thousand men. Resolved to take vengeance on the holy king Edmund, they united their forces, and, moving their camp, quickly reached the village of Haeilesdune, where the most blessed king Edmund then was. The tyrant Hinguar then commanded the king and all his followers to be surrounded, that not one of them might escape alive; whereupon the most holy king Edmund, perceiving himself to be hedged in by his enemies, by the advice of Humbert, bishop of Helmham, fled to the church that he might show himself a member of Christ, and there exchanging his temporal for celestial weapons, he humbly prayed the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost to grant him fortitude in suffering. The most merciful king Edmund was then forcibly bound by the ministers of iniquity, and led forth from the church before their wicked chief, as was Christ before the governor Pilate ; at whose command he was tied to a neighbouring tree ; after which he was scourgedfor a long time, and insulted with every species of mockery. But the undaunted champion of Christ, by continuing to call on him between every lash, provoked to fury his tormentors, who then in their mockery using his body as a mark, shot at him with their bows till he was entirely covered with arrows, so that there was not a place in the martyr's body in which a fresh wound could be inflicted, but it was as completely covered with darts and arrows as is the hedgehog's skin with spines. And so the fierce executioner Hinguar, not being able to make the holy martyr Edmundrelinquish his faith in Christand the confession of the Trinity, so as at all to yield to his wicked persuasions, ordered one of his attendants to cutoff the martyr's head with his bloody sword ; whereupon the executioner, with one fierce stroke, severed his holy head from its trunk on the 20th day of November, as he was praying and confessing the name of Christ. Being thus made an offering most acceptable to God, and fully tried in the furnace of suffering, he was translated to heaven with the palm of victory and the crown of righteousness. The headless body of the blessed