Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 41.djvu/429

 the altar of his cathedral church. Lanfranc [q. v.] placed his bones in the chapel of the Holy Trinity behind the altar, and at the rebuilding of the choir in 1180 they were placed beneath the feretory of St. Dunstan (, i. 16, 25). The death of Ælfsige (d. 959) [q. v.], who was nominated as his successor, was held to be a judgment on him for having insulted Odo's memory. The strictness with which Odo reproved laxity of morals accounts for the epithet ‘severus’ given to him in an epitaph; while Dunstan, equally with him a champion of morality, gave him the title of ‘the Good’ (Gesta Pontificum, p. 30), which is adopted in the Canterbury version of the ‘Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’ (an. 961). Regarded apart from late and untrustworthy legends, he appears as a righteous and holy man, of strong will and commanding influence, no respecter of persons, and careful of the rights of the weak. He was held to be wise and eloquent (, u.s.), and seems to have encouraged learned men such as Frithegode and Abbo of Fleury, who speaks of the friendship that Odo had for him (Memorials of St. Dunstan, p. 410). 

ODO or ODDA (d. 1056), Earl, was a kinsman of Edward the Confessor (, Gesta Regum, i. 243). This is confirmed by the statement, which Leland quotes from the ‘Pershore Chronicle,’ that Odda was the heir of Ælfhere (d. 983) [q. v.]; Leland in another place calls Odda the son of Ælfhere. For reasons of chronology it is very unlikely that Odda was Ælfhere's son, but he may have been his grandson and the son of Ælfric (fl. 950?–1016?) [q. v.] In any case the conjecture of Lappenberg (Anglo-Saxon Kings, p. 510) and of Green (Conquest of England, p. 492), that Odda was a Norman kinsman of Edward the Confessor, who came to England in 1042, is untenable. Odda was baptised by the name of Edwin, and thus, like his brother Ælfric (English Chronicle, ad ann. 1053) and sister Eadgyth or Edith (Domesday, p. 186), bore a distinctively English name. He may perhaps have taken the name of Odo after the Danish conquest. An Odda ‘minister’ occurs as witness to a royal charter in 1018 (Cod. Dipl. 728), and frequently afterwards during the reign of Cnut, and once in that of Harthacnut; this Odda may be identical with Odda the earl, though there is no conclusive evidence. But Odda the earl had an hereditary connection with Mercia, and he is therefore probably the Odda miles who appears as witness to two charters of Bishop Living of Worcester in 1038 and 1042 (ib. 760, 764); in the latter Ælfric miles also occurs. Odda and Ælfric also appear as witnesses to a charter of Ælfwold, bishop of Sherborne, which is older than 1046 (ib. 1334); this connects him with his western earldom. After Edward's accession Odda ‘minister’ continues as a witness to royal charters, and in two he appears as Odda ‘nobilis’ (ib. 787, 791). On the banishment of Godwine and Harold in 1051, Odda was made earl over Somerset, Devon, Dorset, and ‘the Wealas,’ which last no doubt means Cornwall. Next year Odda and Earl Ralph, the king's nephew, were sent with the fleet to Sandwich, to watch for Godwine and his sons. Godwine came with his fleet to Dungeness. The earls went out to seek him, but Godwine went back, and the earls, unable to discover his whereabouts, retired. Soon afterwards Godwine and his sons were restored. Odda in consequence lost his western earldom, but he was perhaps compensated with an earldom of the Hwiccas, comprising the shires of Gloucester and Worcester; for he is styled Earl or ‘Comes’ till his death (ib. 804, 805, 823). On 22 Dec. 1053 Odda's brother Ælfric died at Deerhurst, and was buried at Pershore. Odda built the minster at Deerhurst, which still survives, for his brother's soul. Eventually he received the monastic habit from Ealdred, the bishop of Worcester, and on 31 Aug. 1056 he himself died at Deerhurst, but, like his brother, was buried at Pershore; his leaden coffin with a Latin inscription was discovered at Pershore in 1259. The date seems to make it impossible that the earl and his brother are identical with the monks Odda and Ælfric who witnessed a charter of Edward in 1052 or 1053 (ib. 797). Florence of Worcester, in recording the earl's death, speaks of him as ‘Comes Agelwinus, id est Odda;’ he praises