[1] We still have, at Llantwit Major, the beautiful monument set up by one of the kings who thus made submission, Howel, son of Ris. The Latin is not as good as the decoration of the monument: _ni nomine di patris et spiritus santdi anc crucem houelt properabit pro anima res patris eus_. The monument is a singularly beautiful “wheel” cross with broad stem. It has long been broken in two. It lies on the ground in the remarkable western portion of the double church at Llantwit. [2] Possibly meaning an Englishman who was not a Wessex man. [3] The mancus was more than the third of a pound. [4] In 959, Alfsin, Archbishop of Canterbury, died in the Alps on his way for the pall, overcome by the snow and the cold. [5] A hundred years before Alfred’s time, Alcuin of York wrote to Bishop Remedius of Coire, to beg him to let his messenger pass through the mountains to Italy without payment of the heavy tolls. [6] Canute’s descriptive letter is given by Florence, under the year 1031. The argument used by Wilfrith at Whitby, and by Aldhelm in writing to the Britons, had been brought to bear on the king. “I learned from wise men that the holy Apostle Peter received of the Lord great power of binding and loosing, and is the key-bearer of the heavenly kingdom, and thus I held it mightily useful to seek diligently his more special patronage with the Lord.” [7] We learn this from William of Malmesbury, Aldhelm’s own monastery. William reports Alfred as saying that no one in any age equalled Aldhelm in poetry, for he could make a poem, compose an air, and aptly either sing or recite. A street-song common in Alfred’s time was composed by Aldhelm. See also p. 81. [8] A marginal note in the Cotton MS. remarks that this disposes of the story of a school of literature at Oxford at that time. An interpolation in Asser credits this school with the high approval of Germanus in A.D. 430. [9] See also note on p. 76. [10] In the form of treaty as it has come down to us, there is no mention of Christianity, except so far as this, that it is confirmed by an oath for themselves and their “successors born and unborn who love God’s mercy and ours.” The tradition probably mixes up the simple terms of peace with the events that followed, and treats those events as the fulfilment of conditions. [11] Nothing is said of her training in needlework. The skill of the Saxon ladies was great. There is contemporary evidence of this in the tapestry-work figures of the stole of Frithestan, now in the Chapter Library at Durham, worked under the direction of Alfred’s daughter-in-law Ælflæd, between 910 and 915. A Latin inscription states that _Ælflæd ordered it to be made for the pious Bishop Frithestan_. The most gorgeous cope seen by Anselm at the Council of Bari in 1098 had been a Canterbury vestment in Canute’s time.