d by day and night, and where Roman discipline and
order had held sway, while the wall raised by Constantine, broken and
imperfect, still rose on the banks of the river. Near the Ludgate was
the palace of the Saxon king, and the ruins of an aqueduct overshadowed
its humbler portal, while without the walls the river Fleet rolled,
amidst vineyards and pleasant meadows dotted with houses, to join the
mighty Thames.

Edred, the reigning king of England, was the brother of the murdered
Edmund, and, in accordance with the custom of the day, had ascended the
throne on the death of his brother, seeing that the two infant sons of
the late king, Edwy and Edgar, were too young to reign, and the idea of
hereditary right was not sufficiently developed in the minds of our
forefathers to suggest the notion of a regency. It must also be
remembered that, within certain limits, there was an elective power in
the Witenagemot or Parliament, although generally limited in its scope
to members of the royal family.

Edred was of very delicate constitution, and suffered from an inward
disease which seldom allowed him an interval of rest and ease. Like so
many sufferers he had found his consolation in religion, and the only
crime ever laid to his charge (if it were a crime) was that he loved the
Church too much. Still he had repeatedly proved that he was strong in
purpose and will, and the insurgent Danes who had settled in Northumbria
had owned his prowess. In the internal affairs of his kingdom he was
chiefly governed by the advice of the great ecclesiastic and statesman,
with whose name our readers will shortly become familiar.

Upon the morning after the arrival of Elfric in London, Edwy, the young
prince, and his new companion, sat in a room on the upper floor of the
palace, which had but two floors, and would have been considered in
these days very deficient in architectural beauty.

The window of the room opened upon the river, and commanded a pleasant
view of the woods and meadows on the Surrey side, then almost
uninhabited, being completely unprotected in case of invasion, a
contingency never long absent from the mind in the days of the sea kings.

A table covered with manuscripts, both in Latin and Anglo-Saxon,
occupied the centre of the room, and there Elfric was seated, looking
somewhat aimlessly at a Latin vocabulary, while Edwy was standing
listlessly at the window. The "library," if it deserved the name, was
very unlike a mod