When he compiled his narrative of the reign of king Alfred, he sacrificed facts of history to the fame of the saint. Omitting genuine details which he had at hand, he subjected the capital events of Alfred’s life to the patronage of St. Cuthbert. Thus he begins: ‘In the year 877 the nefarious host quitted Exeter and came to Chippenham and wintered there. King Alfred in those days endured great tribulations and lived an unsettled life. Being encouraged with an explicit oracle by St. Cuthbert, king Alfred fought against the Danes, at the time and in the place which the saint had directed, and gained the victory, and from that time forward he was terrible and invincible to his enemies. The manner in which he vanquished his foes is related as followeth.’ In such a manner was this figment introduced into the page of history, where it long continued in good repute. Hickes was so much swayed by it, that he relinquished his first interpretation of the _icuncula_ in favour of St. Cuthbert. If the connexion of Alfred with St. Neot is (as it may well be) of a mythical nature, or even an invention of the biographer, he did but use the licence which was then accorded to the panegyrist; and it is very different from that abuse of the authority of the historian which introduced St. Cuthbert into the narrative of the deeds of Alfred. APPENDIX C THE TWO-SCEPTERED FIGURE IN THE BOOK OF KELLS (p. 78) I am indebted to Miss Swann for the following extract from Professor Westwood’s _Miniatures and Ornaments of Anglo-Saxon and Irish Art_ (p. 29): The drawing representing (as I apprehend) the Temptation of the Saviour occurs on fol. 202 v., and is copied in my Plate XI. Here the bust of the Saviour is represented at the summit of an elaborately ornamented conical design, which I suppose represents a ‘pinnacle of the temple’ rather than the ‘exceeding high mountain.’ The head of the Saviour is surrounded by a cruciferous nimbus, like that of the Virgin in the above-described drawing, and He appears to hold a roll in His left hand. Two very rudely designed angels hover above His head, and two others occupy the upper angles of the picture, the interstices of the latter being filled in with foliage and branches springing from vases; that on the right hand being in an unusual position. The strangely emaciated black figure of the Tempter (destitute of tail, but with hoof-like feet), and the crowd of heads at the side and bottom of the design, as also the bust within a frame holding two rosette-bearing rods, merit particular notice.