Saxons or English (the Saxons founded the
kingdoms of Wessex and Essex; the Jutes, Kent; the Angles all the
others. The predominance of the latter caused the term English to become
the general appellation.) cared little to inhabit the cities they
conquered; they left them to utter desolation, as in the case described
in the text, until a period came when, as in the case of the first
English assaults upon Exeter and the west country, they no longer
destroyed, but appropriated, while they spared the conquered.

xxv Seaton in Devonshire.

xxvi Elgiva or Aelgifu, signifies fairy gift.

Xxvii

The gate of hell stands open night and day;
Smooth the descent, and easy is the way:
But to return, and view the upper skies--
In this the toil, in this the labour lies.--Dryden.

xxviii Valhalla.

Valhalla or Waihalla was the mythical Scandinavian Olympus, the
celestial locality where Odin and Edris dwelt with the happy dead who
had fallen in battle, and who had been conducted thither by the fair
Valkyries. Here they passed the days in fighting and hunting
alternately, being restored sound in body for the banquet each night,
where they drank mead from the skulls of the foes they had vanquished in
battle. Such was the heaven which commended itself to those fierce warriors.

xxix The parish priests were commonly called "Mass-Thanes"

xxx "I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord.
He that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and
whosoever liveth, and believeth in Me, shall never die."

It was not the usual English custom, in those days, to bury the dead in
coffins, still it was often done, in the case of the great, from the
earliest days of Christianity. For instance, a stone coffin, supposed to
contain the dust of the fierce Offa, who died A. D. 796, was dug up,
when more than a thousand years had passed away, in the year 1836, at
Hemel-Hempstead, with the name Offa rudely carved upon it. The earliest
mention of churchyards in English antiquities is in the canons called
the "Excerptions of Ecgbriht," A.D. 740, when Cuthbert was Archbishop of
Canterbury; and here the word "atria" is used, which may refer to the
outbuildings or porticoes of a church.

xxxi The Greater and Lesser Excommunications.

The lesser excommunication excluded men from the participation of the
Eucharist and the prayers of the faithful, but did not necessarily expel
them from the Church. The greater excommunication was fa