king, who gave orders for them all to be hung on gibbets. After this the king possessed his kingdom in peace all the rest of his life, devoting himself wholly to the restoration of the churches, to almsgiving, and to frame laws for curbing the rapacious and confirming the faithful in their duty. The kingdom of the West'Saxons without episcopal care. A.D. 899. Romanus sat in the Roman chair four months and twenty-two days, and was succeeded by Theodore, who sat in the chair twenty-six days. He was succeeded in the same year by John, who continued two years and fifteen days. In the same year died Ethelwald, bishop of Sherburn; after which, from hostile violence, the province of the West-Saxons remained seven years without bishops and pastoral care. Death of the.great king Alfred and succession of Eadward. A.D. 900. Charles succeeded to the kingdom of the Franks over which he reigned twenty-seven years. In the same year, after a reign of twenty-nine years and six months, Alfred, the most gracious king of the English, exchanged a temporal for an eternal kingdom, on Wednesday the 28th day of October, in the fifth indiction. He was buried at Winchester in the new monastery which he had himself founded, clad in a robe of blessed immortality, and waiting to be crowned anew at the general resurrection. Violence offered to a certain holy virgin. A.D. 901. Eadward, the eldest son of king Alfred, inferior to his father in literary culture, but more glorious in power and dignity, was invested with the diadem of the kingdom of England. As soon as he was raised to the throne, Ethelwald the atheling, his uncle's son, who, as he was of the royal race, thought himself in no respect his inferior, made every attempt to gain the kingdom, and seizing on the royal vills of Oxbeam and Wimburn, he rashly entered them with his followers and barred the gates. In this place, as has been related before, St. Cuthburga, king Ina's sister, had founded a monastery of virgins devoted unto God ; one of whom this Ethelwald carried off by violence and made her his wife. On hearing of Ethelwald's rashness, king Eadward