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  called Hoxne or Hoxon), and making no preparations for active defence; but his earl, Ulf Ketul, meeting the Danes in battle at Thetford, was beaten with dreadful slaughter. Other accounts represent Eadmund as having fought this battle in person, and add that after a terrible day's struggle the fortune of war was undecided, but that the sight of the fearful carnage of his people induced the king to surrender himself to his foes in the hope that the sacrifice of his own life might save his subjects.

At any rate after this battle Hingwar sent an envoy to Eadmund with a haughty command to divide with him his treasures, renounce his religion, and reign as his vassal. On receiving this message the king held counsel with one of his bishops, who advised compliance. A dialogue ensued, which is recorded by Abbo Floriacensis in a book addressed to Dunstan, in which the whole story is said to have been told ‘by an old soldier of Edmund's, on his oath, to the illustrious Ethelstan.’ Eadmund thought that his death might save his people. The bishops urged flight. The king steadily refused, and calling in the Danish envoy refused to deny Christ, and defied his foes. Eadmund was seized without making resistance. He was bound in chains and severely beaten. Then he was dragged to a tree, tied naked to its trunk, and scourged with whips, then riddled with arrows, and finally beheaded. And thus he died, ‘kyng, martyr, and virgyne’ (as the historian says), for there is no record of his leaving wife or child, on 20 Nov. 870. He was the last king of the East Angles.

Upon the departure of the Danes the body was found, and being taken to Hoxne was there buried in the earth in a wooden chapel. A legend says that the head was found guarded by a wolf, who joined quietly in the procession till the head was joined to the body. The remains were left at Hoxne for thirty-three years, and then miracles began to be attributed to the martyred king. A large church having been built by Sigebert, a former king of East Anglia, at Bury (formerly Beodericsworth), the remains were deposited there in a splendid shrine, enriched with jewels and precious ornaments, where they remained until the incursion of the Danish king, Sweyn, when Ailwin, the bishop, fearing outrage to the saint, sent his body to London. It remained there three years, when it was carried back to Bury. A manuscript cited by Dugdale in his ‘Monasticon’ and entitled ‘Registrum Cœnobii S. Edmondi,’ informs us that on its return to Bury ‘his body was lodged at Aungre, where a wooden chapel remains as a memorial to this day. This same wooden chapel is supposed to form the nave of Greenstead Church, Essex. Sweyn died a painful death, after seeing a vision of St. Eadmund coming against him in full armour and piercing him through with his spear. Cnut, his son, rebuilt the minster of St. Eadmund, replaced its secular canons by a Benedictine abbot and monks from Hulme and Ely, and the body of Eadmund having been placed in it, in 1020 Cnut made a pilgrimage to the famous church and offered his crown upon the shrine to atone for his father's sacrilege.

It is not certain at what date Eadmund was canonised, but for several centuries his name was highly venerated, and his name is retained in our present calendar.

A number of miracles attributed to St. Eadmund by mediæval writers may be read in ‘Veterum Scriptorum et Monumentorum, &c. Collectio,’ tom. vi., by Martène and Durand, Paris, 1729, and in Caseneuve's ‘Histoire de la Vie et des Miracles de S. Edmond,’ Toulouse, 1644.

The tree at which tradition declared Eadmund to have been slain stood in the park at Hoxne until 1849, when it fell. In the course of its breaking up an arrow-head was found embedded in the trunk. A clergyman who had a church which was dedicated to St. Eadmund begged a piece of the tree, and it now forms part of his communion-table. Another portion is in the possession of Lady Bateman of Oakley Hall.



EDMUND or EADMUND (922?–946), king of the English, son of Eadward the Elder and Eadgifu, first appears as sharing in the victory of his elder brother Æthelstan at Brunanburh in 937, when he must have been about fifteen. On Æthelstan's death, on 27 Oct. 940, he succeeded to the kingdom at the age of eighteen. He appears to have attempted to bring the north under his immediate rule, and it is said that the Norwegian king, Eric Bloodaxe, now left Northumbria. This, however, seems impossible for chronological reasons, for Eric did not arrive in England until the next reign (see under ;, Sea-kings, i. 317; Corpus Poeticum Boreale, ii. 489). Still, it is probably true that Eadmund tried to assert his authority over the north in some practical manner instead of resting content with the bare submission of the people, and leaving them to manage their own affairs. A revolt