to see Eadric in Oxford, and there were slain at a banquet, while
their followers perished in the attempt to avenge them. "Into the
tower of St. Frideswyde they were driven, and as men could not drive
them thence, the tower was fired, and they perished in the burning."
So says William of Malmesbury, who, so many years later, read the
story, as he says, in the records of the Church of St. Frideswyde.
There is another version of the story in the Codex Diplomaticus
(DCCIX.). Aethelred is made to say, in a deed of grant of lands to
St. Frideswyde's Church ("mine own minster"), that the Danes were
slain in the massacre of St. Brice. On that day Aethelred, "by the
advice of his satraps, determined to destroy the tares among the
wheat, the Danes in England." Certain of these fled into the
minster, as into a fortress, and therefore it was burned and the
books and monuments destroyed. For this cause Aethelred gives lands
to the minster, "fro Charwell brigge andlong the streame, fro
Merewell to Rugslawe, fro the lawe to the foule putte," and so forth.
It is pleasant to see how old are the familiar names "Cherwell,"
"Hedington," "Couelee" or Cowley, where the college cricket-grounds
are. Three years passed, and the headmen of the English and of the
Danes met at Oxford again, and more peacefully, and agreed to live
together, obedient to the laws of Eadgar; to the law, that is, as it
was administered in older days, that seem happier and better ruled to
men looking back on them from an age of confusion and bloodshed. At
Oxford, too, met the peaceful gathering of 1035, when Danish and
English claims were in some sort reconciled, and at Oxford Harold
Harefoot, the son of Cnut, died in March 1040. The place indeed was
fatal to kings, for St. Frideswyde, in her anger against King Algar,
left her curse on it. Just as the old Irish kings were forbidden by
their customs to do this or that, to cross a certain moor on May
morning, or to listen to the winnowing of the night-fowl's wings in