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MATTHEW OF WESTMINSTER
The flowers of history, especially such as relate to the affairs of Britain. Vol. I. B.C. 4004 to A.D. 1066.
page 494
whole period of hie life, a custom of travelling through all the provinces of his kingdom, that he might see how the laws and rights and ordinances laid down in his decrees were observed by the princes, and to take care that the poor received no injury from and were not oppressed by the powerful ; both which points he used to examine into carefully, studying courage in one of them and justice in the other, and consulting the interests of his nation and kingdom in both. On this account, bis enemies in every quarter regarded him with fear, and all his subjects with love. After this, he ordered a new coinage to be struck throughout England, because the old one was so impaired in value by the dishonesty of clippers, that a piece of gold scarcely weigned an oboi in the scale. The same year, iElfly the bishop and count Eadulf conducted Eined, king of the Scots, to king Edgar. And when they had brought him into the king's presence he received many presents from the king's liberality, among which were a hundred ounces of the purest gold, with many ornaments of silk, and rings, and precious stones. Besides this, he gave the king all that district which in the native language is called Laudian, on condition that every year, on the principal festivals, when the king and his successors carried their crowns through the streets, they should come to court, and celebrate the festival with joy, with the other princes of the kingdom. Moreover, the king gave him many mansions on the road, in order that he and his successors, when coming to the festival and returning back again, might be able to lodge comfortably, and those mansions remained till the time of king Henry the Second,
in the power of the king of the Scots.
The same year, that flower and pride of all kings, that honour and glory of England, king Edgar the Pacific, the fame of whose hberality and magnificence had by this time filled all Europe, departed this life in the thirty-second year of bis age, and the sixteenth of his reign, and exchanged his earthly kingdom for an eternal one. And his body was carried to Glastonbury, and buried there with all royal solemnity. And after his death, as has been said before, there arose a great dissension among the nobles of the kingdom about electing a king : for some voted for Edward, the first-born son of the late king, and some agreed in electing his brother Ethelred, who was born of the second wife. On which account, the two archbishops, Dunstan, archbishop, of Canterbury, and Oswald,
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