the residents in many places boast of more; Saint Etheldrida,[261] and Werburga, virgins; king Edmund; archbishop Elphege;[262] Cuthbert the ancient father: who with skin and flesh unwasted, and their joints flexile, appear to have a certain vital warmth about them, and to be merely sleeping. Who can enumerate all the other saints, of different ranks and professions? whose names and lives, singly to describe, I have neither intention nor leisure: yet oh that I might hereafter have leisure! But I will be silent, lest I should seem to promise more than I can perform. In consequence, it is not necessary to mention any of the commonalty, but merely, not to go out of the path of my subject history, the male and female scions of the royal stock, most of them innocently murdered; and who have been consecrated martyrs, not by human conjecture, but by divine acknowledgment. Hence may be known how little indulgence they gave to the lust of pleasure, who inherited eternal glory by means of so easy a death. [Sidenote: [A.D. 1035.] OSWALD, KING AND MARTYR.] In the former book, my history dwelt for some time on the praises of the most holy Oswald, king and martyr; among whose other marks of sanctity, was this, which, according to some copies, is related in the History of the Angles.[263] In the monastery at Selsey, which Wilfrid of holy memory had filled with Northumbrian monks, a dreadful malady broke out, and destroyed numbers; the remainder endeavoured to avert the pestilence by a fast of three days. On the second day of the fast, the blessed apostles Peter and Paul, appearing to a youth who was sick with the disorder, animated him by observing: “That he should not fear approaching death, as it would be a termination of his present illness, and an entrance into eternal life; that no other person of that monastery would die of this disorder, because God had granted this to the merits of the noble king Oswald, who was that very day supplicating for his countrymen: for it was on this day that the king, murdered by the faithless, had in a moment ascended to the heavenly tribunal: that they should search, therefore, in the scroll, in which the names of the dead were written, and if they found it so, they should put an end to the fast, give loose to security and joy, and sing solemn masses to God, and to the holy king.” This vision being quickly followed by the death of the boy, and the anniversary of the martyr being found in the martyrology, and at the same time the cessation of the disorder being attested by the whole province, the name of Oswald was from that period inserted among the martyrs, which before, on account of his recent death, had only been admitted into the list of the faithful. Deservedly, I say, then, deservedly is he to be celebrated, whose glory the divine approbation so signally manifested, as to order him to be dignified with masses, in a manner, as I think, not usual among men.