Worcester; upon which, burning and depopulating the city by means of his commanders, and plundering the property of the citizens, he cast a blemish on his fame and diminished the love of his subjects. But here I will not pass over in silence, what tattlers report of Alfred the first-born of Ethelred. Doubtful what to do between Harold’s death and the arrival of Hardecanute, he came into the kingdom, and was deprived of his eyes by the treachery of his countrymen, and chiefly of Godwin, at Gillingham: from thence being sent to the monastery of Ely, he supported, for a little time, a wretched subsistence upon homely food; all his companions, with the exception of the tenth, being beheaded: for by lot every tenth man was saved.[245] I have mentioned these circumstances, because such is the report; but as the Chronicles are silent, I do not assert them for fact. For this reason, Hardecanute, enraged against Living, bishop of Crediton, whom public opinion pointed out as author of the transaction, expelled him from his see: but, soothed with money, he restored him within the year. Looking angrily too upon Godwin, he obliged him to clear himself by oath; but he, to recover his favour entirely, added to his plighted oath a present of the most rich and beautiful kind; it was a ship beaked with gold, having eighty soldiers on board, who had two bracelets on either arm, each weighing sixteen ounces of gold; on their heads were gilt helmets; on their left shoulder they carried a Danish axe, with an iron spear in their right hand; and, not to enumerate everything, they were equipped with such arms, as that splendour vying with terror, might conceal the steel beneath the gold. But farther, as I had begun to relate, his sister Gunhilda, the daughter of Canute by Emma, a young woman of exquisite beauty, who was sighed for, but not obtained, by many lovers in her father’s time, was by Hardecanute given in marriage to Henry, emperor of the Germans. The splendour of the nuptial pageant was very striking, and is even in our times frequently sung in ballads about the streets: where while this renowned lady was being conducted to the ship, all the nobility of England were crowding around and contributing to her charges whatever was contained in the general purse, or royal treasury. Proceeding in this manner to her husband, she cherished for a long time the conjugal tie; at length being accused of adultery, she opposed in single combat to her accuser, a man of gigantic size, a young lad of her brother’s[246] establishment, whom she had brought from England, while her other attendants held back in cowardly apprehension. When, therefore, they engaged, the impeacher, through the miraculous interposition of God, was worsted, by being ham-strung. Gunhilda, exulting at her unexpected success, renounced the marriage contract with her husband; nor could she be induced either by threats or by endearments again to share his bed: but taking the veil of a nun,