Henry of Huntingdon, speaking of Siward's death, says--"And so he passed away, as he believed, to Valhalla, to rejoin the great warriors of his race who had gone before," seeming to intimate, founded on the misconception of his identity with the Viking Siward-Barn, that he died in the old Scandinavian faith of Woden, which was not true, as he lived and died a Christian, such as Christians were then. He is supposed to have founded a church in York, dedicated to St. Olaf, the martyred King of Norway, and connected with it a fraternity of monks, the name of which, in the reign of William II., was changed into that of St. Mary the Virgin, and eventually became the famous and wealthy abbey of after-times, with a mitred abbot. The ruins may now be seen in the grounds of the Museum. He ruled his province with great firmness and some severity, necessary in his endeavours to curb the savage propensities of the people, and to establish a system of order and good government, and was bountiful to the Church, as some atonement, perhaps, for the crimes by which he rose to his high position. Shortly after his return from his Scottish expedition, he was stricken with dysentery, which rapidly grew worse, and he lay in his vice-regal mansion at York without hope of recovery. When he felt his last moments approaching he suddenly started up from his couch and exclaimed, "Let me not die the death of a cow! If it be not my fate to die gloriously on the field of battle, as my brave boy, Osbert, has done, with all his wounds in front, at least let me die in the guise of a warrior. Don me my harness, place the helmet on my head, and gird my sword on my thigh. It were a shame and disgrace that I, who have faced death in so many fields, should die ignominiously in bed. Bring forth my battle-axe and shield, and place them by my side, that the ghosts of my warlike ancestry, who are looking down upon me now, may see me pass away from earth to join them in their everlasting home, with the semblance of the great warrior that I have been." And thus, seated on a chair, clothed in his armour, and supported in an upright posture by his attendants, he gave up the ghost, and was buried in his church of St. Olaf. His son, Waltheof, being too young for the government of so important a province, it was given to Tosti, son of Earl Godwine, and brother of Harold, the future King; whilst Waltheof succeeded to the Earldoms of Huntingdon and Northampton, and eventually to that of Northumbria. Phases in the Life of a Political Martyr.