Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 01.djvu/259

Aldgyth ALDGYTH (fl. 1063), the daughter of Ælfgar, earl of Mercia, was a woman of great beauty. She married her father's ally, Gruffydd, the ‘king over all Wales,’ and is said to have borne him a son and a daughter. When, in 1063, the Welsh were conquered by Earl Harold, Gruffydd's own men conspired against him and slew him. An alliance with the great Mercian house, which had so long withstood the power of Godwine and his family, promised to forward the accomplishment of Harold's designs. He was already pledged to marry a daughter of William, the Norman duke. Another woman was the mother of his children. Nevertheless, Aldgyth was married, probably in 1064, to the conqueror of her former husband. She was in London at the time of the battle of Senlac. When her brothers, Eadwine and Morkere, heard of the death of Harold, they came thither, and sent their sister to Chester for shelter. She appears in Domesday as ‘Aldgid uxor Grifin,’ which may perhaps show that the Normans affected to consider that the pre-contract of Harold to a daughter of their duke had invalidated his marriage with Aldgyth. Some lands which she held in Warwickshire were of course forfeited after the Conquest. Nothing more is known of Aldgyth, save that she had a son by Harold, who was called after his father, and that it is probable that she was also the mother of another of his sons, named Ulf.

[William of Jumièges, lib. vii.; Orderic, ap. Duchesne, Hist. Norman. Scriptores, 492; Anglo-Saxon Chron. sub an. 1063; Florence of Worcester, sub an. 1066; Freeman, Norman Conquest, iii. 630. iv. 756.]  ALDHELM (640?–709), bishop of Sherborne, was the son of Kenten, who is said by Faricius to have been the brother of King Ine. William of Malmesbury, however, corrects Faricius for this statement, saying that Kenten was not the brother, but a near kinsman, of the king. By Kenten the name Centwine is evidently meant, and it is possible that Aldhelm may have been, as Mr. Freeman suggests (see below), the son of Centwine, king of the West Saxons (d. 685). In childhood Aldhelm was placed under the care of Maildulf, a learned Scot, who early in the century settled in the place which, as Malmesbury, still preserves his name, and from him Aldhelm first learned those studies for which he became famous. A higher education than could be had at Malmesbury was in store for him. When, in 668, Theodore was sent over to England by Pope Vitalian to be archbishop, the English were fast falling back into the rudeness of heathenism. With Theodore came Hadrian, an African, of a convent near Monte Cassino, and the coming of Theodore and Hadrian caused a sudden intellectual change in England. As soon as the new teachers were established at Canterbury, a vast number of scholars flocked to them; for they taught secular as well as sacred learning. Amongst these scholars was Aldhelm. On his return from Canterbury he gained his living by teaching, but, not content with what he had already learned, he seems to have visited Canterbury a second time for the sake of Hadrian's instruction, and to have stayed there until forced to leave by ill-health. When Maildulf was very old, he probably retired from the government of the society he had founded, and Leutherius, bishop of the West Saxons (670–676), committed it to Aldhelm. As abbot, Aldhelm was widely known as one of the most learned men of his time. Scholars of France and Scotland sought his advice. When learning was at its lowest ebb in the rest of Western Europe, it flourished in England; and a story told of Aldhelm incidentally shows that books commanded a better price here than on the Continent, and were largely imported. Bede (Hist. Eccles. lib. iv. cap. 2) knew pupils of Theodore and Hadrian, to whom Latin and Greek were as their mother-tongue; and this new spirit of learning extended to nunneries, for Aldhelm addressed his treatise, ‘De Laude Virginitatis,’ to the abbess of Barking and her nuns. Aldhelm was foremost in this intellectual movement. His Latin treatises are written in an intricate style, and are full of latinised Greek words. His letters and his Latin verses are more simply expressed. He was skilful in all kinds of music, in singing, and in improvisation. Finding the people unwilling to listen to preaching, he stood on a bridge where many came and went, and sang songs, and when a crowd had gathered round him, thinking him a professional minstrel, he would gradually bring sacred subjects into his song. William of Malmesbury tells us, on the authority of the lost ‘Manual of Alfred,’ that that king loved the English poems of Aldhelm. None of these English compositions are preserved. Faricius says that, besides having a thorough knowledge of Latin and Greek, he could read the Scriptures in Hebrew. He studied theology, Roman jurisprudence, the art of poetry and astronomy. Arithmetic, at that time chiefly used for ecclesiastical calculations, he found very hard. His observations on natural phenomena show how readily faith was placed in the fables of antiquity.

Aldhelm was no less great as a builder than as a scholar. He built a church dedicated to SS. Peter and Paul to be the head 