" 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
the dusk above the lake of Tara; so the kings of England shunned to
enter Oxford, and to come within the walls of Frideswyde the maiden.
Harold died there, as we have seen, but there he was not buried.
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