th Wales--has beleaguered
Nottingham with his brothers-in-law, Ethelred and Alfred, six years
back, not without show of manhood--sees for his part nothing for it
under such circumstances but to get away as swiftly as possible, as many
so-called kings have done before him, and since. The West Saxon court is
no place for him, quite other views of kingship prevailing in those
parts. So the poor Buhred breaks away from his anchors, leaving his wife
Ethelswitha even, in his haste, to take refuge with her brother; or is
it that the heart of the daughter of the race of Cerdic swells against
leaving the land which her sires had won, the people they had planted
there, in the moment of sorest need? In any case Buhred drifts away
alone across into France, and so toward the winter to Rome. There he
dies at once--about Christmas-time, 874--of shame and sorrow probably,
or of a broken heart as we say; at any rate having this kingly gift left
in him, that he cannot live and look on the ruin of his people, as St.
Edmund's brother Edwold is doing in these same years, "near a clear well
at Carnelia, in Dorsetshire," doing the hermit business there on bread
and water.

The English in Rome bury away poor Buhred, with all the honors, in the
Church of St. Mary's, to which the English schools rebuilt by his
father-in-law Ethelwulf were attached. Ethelswitha visited, or started
to visit, the tomb years later, we are told, in 888, when Mercia had
risen to new life under her great brother's rule. Through these same
months Guthrum, Oskytal, and the rest are wintering at Repton, after
destroying there the cloister where the kingly line of Mercia lie;
disturbing perhaps the bones of the great Offa, whom Charlemagne had to
treat as an equal.

Neither of the pagan kings is inclined at this time to settle in Mercia;
so, casting about what to do with it, they light on "a certain foolish
man," a king's thane, one Ceolwulf, and set him up as a sort of King
Popinjay. From this Ceolwulf they take hostages for the payment of
yearly tribute--to be wrung out of these poor Mercians on pain of
dethronement--and for the surrender of the kingdom to them on whatever
day they would have it back again. Foolish king's thanes, turned into
King Popinjays by pagans, and left to play at government on such terms,
are not pleasant or profitable objects in such times as these of one
thousand years since--or indeed in any times, for the matter of that. So
let us finish wit