p. 75-77.

[108] The gre-hound was so called from hunting the gre or badger.

[109] The spear and the hawk were as the badges of Saxon nobility; and a
thegn was seldom seen abroad without the one on his left wrist, the other
in his right hand.

[110] BED Epist. ad Egbert.

[111] TEGNER's Frithiof.

[112] Some of the chroniclers say that he married the daughter of
Gryffyth, the king of North Wales, but Gryffyth certainly married Algar's
daughter, and that double alliance could not have been permitted. It was
probably, therefore, some more distant kinswoman of Gryffyth's that was
united to Algar.

[113] The title of queen is employed in these pages, as one which our
historians have unhesitatingly given to the consorts of our Saxon kings;
but the usual and correct designation of Edward's royal wife, in her own
time, would be, Edith the Lady.

[114] ETHEL. De Gen. Reg. Ang.

[115] AILRED, De Vit. Edward Confess.

[116] Ingulfus.

[117] The clergy (says Malmesbury), contented with a very slight share
of learning, could scarcely stammer out the words of the sacraments; and
a person who understood grammar was an object of wonder and astonishment.
Other authorities, likely to be impartial, speak quite as strongly as to
the prevalent ignorance of the time.

[118] House-carles in the royal court were the body-guard, mostly, if
not all, of Danish origin. They appear to have been first formed, or at
least employed, in that capacity by Canute. With the great earls, the
house-carles probably exercised the same functions; but in the ordinary
acceptation of the word in families of lower rank, house-carle was a
domestic servant.

[119] This was cheap. For Agelnoth, Archbishop of Canterbury, gave the
Pope 6000 lb. weight of silver for the arm of St. Augustine.--MALMESBURY.

[120] William of Malmesbury says, that the English, at the time of the
Conquest, loaded their arms with gold bracelets, and adorned their skins
with punctured designs, i.e., a sort of tattooing. He says, that they
then wore short garments, reaching to the mid-knee; but that was a Norman
fashion, and the loose robes assigned in the text to Algar were the old
Saxon fashion, which made but little distinction between the dress of
women and that of men.

[121] And in England, to this day, the descendants of the Anglo-Danes,
in Cumberland and Yorkshire, are still a taller and bonier race than
those of the Anglo-Saxons, as in Surrey and