Page:William of Malmesbury's Chronicle.djvu/167

 pardon my grief: grief, I say, compels me to condemn him, "because private advantage is not to be preferred to public loss, but rather public loss should outweigh private advantage." He paid the penalty of his rash attempt even in this life, being despoiled of the greatest part of his kingdom; shocked with which calamity, he died, and was buried in the new minster at Winchester. CHAP. VIII.

Of king Edgar, son of king Edmund. [ 959—975.]

In the year of our Lord's incarnation 959, Edgar, the honour and delight of the English, the son of Edmund, the brother of Edwy, a youth of sixteen years old, assuming the government, held it for about a similar period. The transactions of his reign are celebrated with peculiar splendour even in our times. The Divine love, which he sedulously procured by his devotion and energy of counsel, shone propitious on his years. It is commonly reported, that at his birth Dunstan heard an angelic voice, saying, "Peace to England so long as this child shall reign, and our Dunstan survives." The succession of events was in unison with the heavenly oracle; so much while he lived did ecclesiastical glory flourish, and martial clamour decay. Scarcely does a year elapse in the chronicles, in which he did not perform something great and advantageous to his country; in which he did not build some new monastery. He experienced no internal treachery, no foreign attack. Kinad, king of the Scots, Malcolm, of the Cambrians, that prince of pirates, Maccus, all the Welsh kings, whose names were Dufnal, Giferth, Huval, Jacob, Judethil, being summoned to his court, were bound to him by one, and that a lasting oath; so that meeting him at Chester, he exhibited them on the river Dee in triumphal ceremony. For putting them all on board the same vessels he compelled them to row him as he sat at the prow: thus displaying his regal magnificence, who held so many kings in subjection. Indeed, he is reported to have said, that henceforward his successors might truly boast of being kings