Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/43

 and Sentiments. 23 not, they took their place at the tables. One of the laws of king Cnut dire6ts^ that if, in the meantime, any one took the weapon thus depo- fited, and did hurt with it, the owner fliould be compelled to clear himfelf of fulpicion of being cognifant of the ufe to be made of his arms when he laid them down. Hillory atfords us feveral remarkable inftances of the facility of approach even to the tables of kings during the Saxon period. It was this circumftance that led to the murder of king Edmund in 946. On St. Auguftin's day, the king was dining at his manor of Pucklechurch, in Gloucefterfliire 5 a bandit named Leofa, whom the king had banifhed for his crimes, and who had returned without leave from exile, had the effrontery to place himfelf at the royal table, by the fide of one of the principal nobles of the court 5 the king alone recognifed him, rofe from his feat to expel him from the hall, and received his death-wound in the ftruggle. In the eleventh century, when Hereward went in difguife as a fpy to the court of a Cornilli chieftain, he entered An Anglo-Saxon Dinner-Party Pledging. the hall while they were feafl;ing, took his place among the guefls, and was but flightly queftioned as to who he was and whence he came. In the early illuminated manufcripts, dinner fcenes are by no means uncommon. The cut. No. 14 (taken from Alfric's verfion of Genefis, MS. Cotton.