elevation of the fair Maud to the throne filled the hearts of the English with joy, for not only was she their countrywoman and a descendant from the royal stock of Alfred the Great, but she was also at the time of her marriage beautiful in person, charitable unto the poor, and distinguished above all the ladies of her time by a love for learning and learned men. Elfric the sword-bearer, who was yet in the prime vigour of life, brought to mind the dying prediction of Frithric the Abbat of St. Albans, and said joyously to his lord, that “England would be England still, and that the Saxon tongue and laws were things that could not be rooted out!” “Elfric,” said Lord Hereward, “the great stream of our old Saxon blood is fast absorbing the less stream of Norman blood, and so will it continue to do. The children of Normans, being born in England and suckled by Saxon nurses, will cease to be Normans. All men love to keep that which they have gotten; and as our old Saxon laws are far more free than those of France, and give more security for life and goods, and oppose a stronger barrier to the tyranny of princes, the Normans that now live among us, or their sons that shall succeed them, will, for their own sakes, cling to our old laws, and help the chiefs and the great body of the English people to make the spirit of them to be enduring in the land.” Thus talked the Lord of Brunn and his faithful sword-bearer; and thus they lived to teach their children’s children. Hereward continued to live comfortably and peaceably with his neighbours and with all men, and he died in peace after he had lived many more years. Both he and the Ladie Alftrude reached a patriarchal age, and they left a patriarchal stock behind them. They were buried with all honour in Crowland Abbey, which, by this time, had become a holier and a better governed house than ever it had been before. A learned monk of Crowland wrote good verses in Latin upon the tombstone of the Lord of Brunn; but we find in our own home tongue lines which might have been a still better epitaph:— Him loved young, him loved old, Earl and baron, dreng and kayn, Knight, bondeman, and swain, Widows, maidens, priests, and clerks, And all for his good werkes. He loved God with all his might, And holy kirk and soothe and right. And that there might be a lasting record of his prowess in battle and skill in war, his good and learned mass-priest Alefricus Diaconus, had written before he died, and in the same old English tongue, a goodly book of the deeds of Hereward, the great soldier; and albeit this goodly book, by some evil chance, hath disappeared, Hugo Candidus and Robert of Swaffham, two right learned monks of the abbey of Peterborough, have put the substance of it, and such portions as could be found, into their treatise intituled, DE GESTIS HEREWARDI INCLYTI MILITIS.