------------- * Dryasdust puzzles and pokes for some biography of this Beodric; and repugns to consider him a mere East-Anglian Person of Condition, not in need of a biography,--whose [script] _weorth_ or _worth,_ that is to say, _Growth,_ Increase, or as we should now name it, _Estate,_ that same Hamlet and wood Mansion, now St. Edmund's Bury, originally was. For, adds our erudite Friend, the Saxon [script], equivalent to the German _werden,_ means to _grow,_ to _become;_ traces of which old vocable are still found in the North-country dialects, as, 'What is _word_ of him? meaning 'What is become of him?' and the like. Nay we in modern English still say, 'Woe _worth_ the hour' (Woe _befall_ the hour), and speak of the _'Weird_ Sisters;' not to mention the innumerable other names of places still ending in _weorth_ or _worth._ And indeed, our common noun _worth,_ in the sense of _value,_ does not this mean simply, What a thing has _grown_ to, What a man has _grown_ to, How much he amounts to,--by the Threadneedle-street standard or another! -------------- Much passes away into oblivion: this glorious victory over the Flemings at Fornham has, at the present date, greatly dimmed itself out of the minds of men. A victory and battle nevertheless it was, in its time: some thrice-renowned Earl of Leicester, not of the De Montfort breed, (as may be read in Philosophical and other Histories, could any human memory retain such things,) had quarreled with his sovereign, Henry Second of the name; had been worsted, it is like, and maltreated, and obliged to fly to foreign parts; but had rallied there into new vigour; and so, in the year 1173, returns across the German Sea with a vengeful army of Flemings. Returns, to the coast of Suffolk; to Framlingham Castle, where he is welcomed; westward towards St. Edmundsbury and Fornham Church, where he is met by the constituted authorities with _posse comitatus;_ and swiftly cut in pieces, he and his, or laid by the heels; on the right bank of the obscure river Lark,--as traces still existing will verify.