about their noting of so many facts and detailing of them. Let us think
of the beginnings of English history and literature; of the writing of
precious manuscripts; the careful copying of them; each of them taking
so much time to complete and being so costly in production, especially
when there was added to care and skill the artistic beauty of decoration
and illumination.

From these quiet abodes of the piety that transfused itself through
loving toil and discipline, light streamed forth to go on shining and
shining, on through the long centuries to come.

We must now have a look into the pages of the great English Chronicle
which we should not possess had it not been for these good monks, and we
will take the account of the martyrdom of Archbishop Ælfeah, whom you
know best under the Latinized form of his name, Alphege. His heavenly
birthday was the 19th of April. The king who is spoken of was Æthelred
who was called the Unready, which word means without counsel, and then
of ill-counsel. You know how we talk of "ill-advised" conduct or speech.
There is a fourteenth century poem which speaks of Richard the Second as
"redeless." And, because there is no such thing as being neutral;
because, if we are not good, we are bad, the word got the meaning of
foolish or worse. Freeman, the great historian says that Æthelred "was
perhaps the only thoroughly bad king among all the Kings of the English
of the West Saxon line; he seems to have been weak, cowardly, cruel, and
bad altogether."

As long as St Dunstan lived, Æthelred was not so bad as he afterwards
became. We must remember what a bad mother Æthelred had in Ælfthryth, or
Elfrida, who was an evil wife to her first husband, and most probably
caused the murder of the king her step-son, the son of King Edgar, who