city, and devastate the whole province. This was accordingly done, and they returned to the king with an enormous booty, and so his fury was in some measure assuaged. In the same year, Eadward, brother of king Hardecnute, and son of king Ethelred, arriving in England from Normandy, met with a welcome reception from the king, and continued with glory and honour in his brother's court as long as the latter lived. The king of England's sister is married to the emperor. At this time, Hardecnute, king of England, married his sister Gunilda, the daughter of king Cnute and queen Emma, to Henry the Roman emperor. This damsel, in her father's lifetime, was, for her matchless beauty, wooed in vain by many nobles ; so that now the point of her nuptials was such, that the king her brother, and all his people, were so lavish of gold and silver, silken garments, precious jewels, and costly horses, that even to this very day, at feasts, hostelries, and other places of resort, players and minstrels cannot worthily extol the splendour thereof. For a long season the marriage knot remained unbroken, but at last, some sowers of discord charged the empress before the emperor of adultery. It was necessary therefore, according to the custom of the country, that Gunilda should clear her reputation by duel against her accuser, who was a man of gigantic size. But of all the knights and attendants who had come with her from England, there was not found one bold enough for the encounter with a man of such terrible stature. In this extremity, a boy, whom Gunilda had carried from England and brought up in her chamber, and who for his diminutive size was called Mimecan, undertook to do battle for his mistress, well assured of her purity ; and encountering the giant, by the just judgment of God, cut through his hamstring, so that he fell to the earthy and Mimecan, cutting off his head, presented it to his mistress. Rejoicing in the unlooked for victory, the empress repudiated the emperor, and neither threats nor blandishments could prevail on her thenceforth to ascend his bed. Simoniacal bestowmenl of a bishopric on a clerk. The same emperor, in the lifetime of his father Conrad, had received from a certain clerk a silver pipe, on condition