FOR such a celestial light was shed on the place, that even with its beams the lame were enabled to walk, the blind to see, and the dumb to speak, and all who laboured under any infirmity were healed.* Multitudes from all parts of the kingdom resorted to the martyr’s tomb, and among the rest his murderess took her journey thither. Having mounted her horse she urged him to go forward, when lo! he who before out-stripped the winds and was full of ardour to bear his mistress, now by the will of God stood immovable, nor could her attendants move him at all with their shouts and blows. Their labour was still in vain when another horse was put in his place.
On this, Ælfthryth, seeing God’s miracle, became exceedingly penitent, insomuch that for many years her flesh, which she had nourished in delicacy, she mortified with hair-cloth at Wherwell,* sleeping on the ground, and afflicting her body with all manner of sufferings. Elfery also, whom we have mentioned before as having destroyed the monasteries of the monks,* bitterly repenting of his fault, removed the king’s sacred body from that mean place, and interred it with due honour at Shaftesbury.*
* Edward and his backers stood firmly behind St Dunstan’s renewal of the country’s Benedictine monasteries, a policy supported by his late father Edgar. Ælfthryth and her party were determined to dissolve the monasteries, and use them as communities for married clergy and their families. Monasticism had been such an important part of the Christian religion since the fourth century (and voluntary celibacy long before that) that his assassination earned Edward honour as a martyr for the Christian faith. His feast is kept on the date of his death, March 18th.
* Wherwell is a village on the River Test in Hampshire, some nine miles northwest of Winchester. An Abbey was founded there in 986 by Ælfthryth, and she retired there in repentance for her part in Edward’s death and also for her campaign against monasteries. She died there on November 17th, 1002, and was buried at the Abbey. The assassination of Edward and its unintended consequences foreshadowed an even more famous case, The Assassination of Thomas Becket.
* Elfery had masterminded the dissolution of monasteries in the province of Mercia, many of them recently re-established by St Æthelwold, Bishop of Winchester. It was this campaign that had led to the eventful Synod of Calne in 975: see Dunstan’s Deliverance.