strates the severity that was customarily meted out
to serfs.

The queens and other ladies of rank among the Anglo-Saxons included
some who were ornaments to the sex in industry and intelligence as
well as charity. Their influence on politics for good or for evil
was often the result of their position as members of rival houses.
Christianity was often furthered by the alliance of a Christian
princess to a pagan king; Bertha, the daughter of a famous Frankish
king, was in this way instrumental in the introduction of Christianity
into England. Herself a Christian, she married Ethelbert, King of
Kent, on condition that she should be permitted to worship as a
Christian under the guidance of a Frankish bishop named Lindhard. The
condition was observed, and Bertha had her Frankish chaplain with
her at court. She seems not to have made any attempt to convert her
husband; and he never disturbed her in her religion. The pope was
probably informed of the auspiciousness of the outlook for the
introduction of Christianity into the Kentish kingdom, and, being
still under the influence of the impression made upon him by the
flaxen-haired Angles he had seen in the slave markets of Rome before
his elevation to the pontificate, he determined to make good the vow
he had then registered to send missionaries to the land of the boy
slaves. Augustine was selected for the mission, and on arriving, with
his companions, in England, after a great deal of trepidation for
their personal safety, they presented themselves at the court of the
King of Kent Ethelbert received them in the open air, with a great
show of pomp, and gave them his promise to interpose no hindrance
to their missionary endeavors among his people. To Bertha must be
ascribed the credit for the complaisance of her husband and the
opening that was made to restore the Christian faith, which had
perished with the Britons.

Edith, the gentle queen of Edward the Confessor, was noted alike
for her skill with the needle and her conversance with literature.
Ingulf's _History_, though perhaps not authentic, gives us a
delightful picture of the simplicity of her Anglo-Saxon court. "I
often met her," says this writer,--meaning Edith,--"as I came from
school, and then she questioned me about my studies and my verses;
and willingly passing from grammar to logic, she would catch me in
the subtleties of argument. She always gave me two or three pieces of
money, which were counted to me by he