It is highly probable that this story became connected with Gunhild, wife of Henry III, in consequence of her bearing the name Cunigund after her marriage, owing to which circumstance she might become confused with the consort of the Emperor St Henry II, St Cunigund, in whose legendary history there is a passage essentially similar. St Cunigund's married life extended from 1002 to 1024. After Henry's death she retired to a nunnery, and she died "in the service of God," 1033, which corresponds with what Malmesbury says of Gunhild. Notwithstanding the mutual asceticism of the imperial pair, reports obtained, instigated by the devil, that Cunigund had doubly broken her vows, nor did these fail to make an impression on her husband's mind. To justify herself, Cunigund offered to walk barefoot over red-hot ploughshares, or, according to another account, to carry red-hot iron in her hands, and she went through the test without injury.[42] This form of ordeal is of the nature of what is suggested in the Färöe and the Icelandic ballad, and executed in the latter, where Gunild both walks over hot steel and carries hot iron in her hands. Emma, Gunhild's mother, had the misfortune to be subjected to the same aspersions as her daughter and the Empress Cunigund, and was favored with the like glorious vindication. Accused of having a bishop for her lover, she asked to be submitted to the ordeal of hot iron, and walked over nine glowing ploughshares, in the church of St Swithin, Winchester, not only without injury, but even without the consciousness of what she had done.[43] We are expressly informed that a ballad on the subject was sung by a minstrel in the hall of the prior of St Swithin on the occasion of a visit of the Bishop of Winchester in 1338, in conjunction with another about the giant Colbrand.[44] Earlier instances of a miraculous exoneration, under similar circumstances, are those of Richarda, or Richardis, wife of the Emperor Charles III, 887, and of Gundeberg, wife of the Lombard king Arioald, c. 630. Richarda, accused of adultery with a bishop, protests, like Cunigund, not only her innocence of crime, but her intact virginity after a marriage of ten or twelve years, and offers herself to the judgment of God, either by duel or hot ploughshares; or actually proves her integrity by some form of ordeal, divino [aquino] judicio, or by passing through fire in a waxed shift, or donning a wax shift, which is set on fire at her hands and feet. Disculpated thus, she goes, like Cunigund, into a monastery for the rest of her days.[45]