Page:St. Oswald and the Church of Worcester.djvu/47

 God speaketh in me;' and this was afterwards accounted an inspired prophecy.

3. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in its pre-Conquest form mentions neither Oda's accession nor his death. But the Worcester Chronicle (D) has under 958 the entry: 'In this year Archbishop Oda separated King Edwy and Ælgifu, for that they were too near akin.' It cannot, however, be affirmed with certainty that this is pre-Conquest evidence. A.S. Chron. D alone has: 958. Her on þissum geare Oda arcebiscop totwæmde Eadwi cyning ⁊ Ælgife. forþæm þe hi wæron to gesybbe. Is this a pre-Conquest statement? Plummer says (II. lxxix): ' We must, therefore, recognize the fact that D as we have it is a late compilation, some of which dates from after 1100, and none of it probably from much before 1100.' This is his judgement, in spite of the fact that Sir G. Warner had said that the earliest hands might be as early as 1050 (p. xxxix).

Two other entries distinctive of D show an interest in the wives of the kings:

946. The whole annal is in A, except for the insertion of the following words, after the statement that King Edmund died on St. Augustine's mass-day: 'Ꝥ was wide cuð. hu he his dagas geendode. Ꝥ Liofa Line ofstang set Puclan cyrcan. ⁊ Æþelflaed æt Domerhame, Ælfgares dohter ealdormannes, wæs þa his cwen.'

965. Her on þissum geare Eadgar cyning genam Ælfyðe him to cwene, heo wæs Ordgares debtor ealdormannes.

[Inserted also in the marg. of F, which reads: 'Ælfðryðe him to gebeodan.']

The mention of Liofa as the robber who murdered King Edmund, and of Pucklechurch as the scene of the murder, are only found elsewhere in William of Malmesbury (G. R. 159) and Florence of Worcester. None of the biographers of Dunstan mention the name of the place, not even W. of M., though he says that the 'villa' was given to Glastonbury for his death-rites ('data in inferias villa').

Florence of Worcester tells the story in a different way from W. of M., and introduces the word 'cleptor' from the biographer B (p. 29).

The Chronicler D does not tell us that Edmund's first wife was Ælfgifu, the mother of Edwy and Edgar. Thus we have three early stories of the interference of Oda in the domestic life of the young king; and all of them are different, though not necessarily irreconcilable.

4. We will next take the evidence of charters. Birch, Cartularium Saxonicum, 660, prints a charter dated 927, which is attested by 'Odo Scyrburnensis episcopus'. This is one of a group of grants to Christ Church, Canterbury (cf. nos. 747, 766), in Cod. Lambeth. 1212, in all of which a like attestation is found. They cannot be regarded as authentic copies in their present form. The Canterbury scribe may have added the titles of the bishops' sees. The third of