200 KOGER OF WENDOVER. [A.D. 870. " Here, here, here," and did not cease repeating the same till it brought them all to the spot ; where they found a huge and horrible looking wolf embracing the head with its paws, and keeping watch over the blessed martyr. Boldly seizing the head and offering praises unto God, they conveyed it to the body, followed by the wolf as far as the place of sepulture ; then uniting the head to the body, they deposited both in a suitable tomb, after which the wolf returned to his wonted solitude. A small church of mean workmanship was erected by the faithful on that spot, where the holy body rested during the lapse of many years. Now the most veritable king and martyr Edmund suffered in the year of our Lord 870, in the twenty-ninth year of his age and the sixteenth of his reign, the twelfth day of December, in the third indiction, in the twenty-second moon. How the body of the blessed Edmund was found uncorrupted. After the lapse of many years, when the flames of war were wholly extinguished, the piety of the faithful began to revive, and from the number of miracles that were'witnessed at the spot where the martyr's body rested, which is now called Hoxen by the natives, they built a very large church in a royal village called in the English tongue Betrischesworthe,* which means the court or dwelling of Beodric, and thither they translated the holy martyr with festivity and dancing. But, wonderful to tell ! the martyr's most precious body, which all supposed to have rotted by length of time, was found entire and uninjured, insomuch that not only were the head and body reunited, but there was no appearance of wound or scar in any part. And so the worthy martyr of God, Edmund, was translated to the place aforesaid, appearing as though he were alive, and having as a sign of martyrdom around his neck, as it were, a scarlet thread, according to the testimony of a certain woman of blessed memory named Oswen, who spent many years in fasting and prayer at the sacred tomb of the martyr, and was wont, when the blessed martyr's tomb was opened at the season of the Lord's supper, to cut his hair and nails, which she carefully collected and placed in a little casket on the altar of that church, where they are preserved with due veneration unto this day. * Bury St. Edmunds, in Suffolk.