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 protect men at home, and to intimidate them abroad. She died five years before her brother, and was buried in the monastery of St. Peter's, at Gloucester; which, in conjunction with her husband, Ethered, she had erected with great solicitude. Thither too she had transferred the bones of St. Oswald, the king, from Bardney; but this monastery being destroyed in succeeding time by the Danes, Aldred, archbishop of York, founded another, which is now the chief in that city.

As the king had many daughters, he gave Edgiva to Charles, king of France, the son of Lewis the Stammerer, son of Charles the Bald, whose daughter, as I have repeatedly observed, Ethelwulf had married on his return from Rome; and, as the opportunity has now presented itself, the candid reader will not think it irrelevant, if I state the names of his wives and children. By Egwina, an illustrious lady, he had Athelstan, his first-born, and a daughter, whose name I cannot particularise, but her brother gave her in marriage to Sihtric, king of the Northumbrians. The second son of Edward was Ethelward, by Elfleda, daughter of earl Etheline; deeply versed in literature, much resembling his grandfather Alfred in features and disposition, but who departed, by an early death, soon after his father. By the same wife he had Edwin, of whose fate what the received opinion is I shall hereafter describe, not with confidence, but doubtingly. By her too he had six daughters; Edfleda, Edgiva, Ethelhilda, Ethilda, Edgitha, Elgifa: the first and third vowing celibacy to God, renounced the pleasure of earthly nuptials; Edfleda in a religious, and Ethelhilda in a lay habit: they both lie buried near their mother, at Winchester. Her father gave Edgiva, as I have mentioned, to king Charles, and her brother, Athelstan, gave Ethilda to Hugh: this same brother also sent Edgitha and Elgifa to Henry, emperor of Germany, the second of whom he gave to his son Otho, the other to a certain duke, near the Alps.