Therefore the return of Wilfred was like that of one dead and alive
again, lost and found; and the poor widow felt she had yet
something besides her daughter Edith to live for.

The immediate effects of the conquest were not felt for some few
weeks in the central parts of Mercia, and nought interfered with
the solemn function customary at funerals in those ages.

The second morning after the return of Wilfred was fixed for the
burial of the deceased thane, in the priory church which his father
had built in the place of an earlier structure burnt by the Danes
in 1006.

It was a noble pile for those early days, built chiefly of stone,
which was fast superseding wood as a material for churches,
dedicated to St. Wilfred. The lofty roof, the long choir beyond the
transept, gave magnificence to the fabric, which was surrounded
without by the cloisters of the priory, of which it was the central
feature.

In the south transept--for it was a cruciform church--was a chapel
dedicated especially to St. Cuthbert, where the ashes of the
deceased thane's forefathers reposed in peace beneath the pavement.
There lay Ella of Aescendune, murdered by a Dane named Ragnar; his
two sons, Elfric, who died young, and Alfred, who succeeded to the
inheritance. There, as in a shrine, the martyr Bertric reposed,
who, like St. Edmund, had died by the arrows of the heathen Danes,
there the once warlike Alfgar, the father of our thane, rested in
peace, his lady Ethelgiva by his side {vi}.