Page:William of Malmesbury's Chronicle.djvu/141

whole life: he so divided the twenty-four hours of the day and night as to employ eight of them in writing, in reading, and in prayer, eight in the refreshment of his body, and eight in dispatching the business of the realm. There was in his chapel a candle consisting of twenty-four divisions, and an attendant, whose peculiar province it was to admonish the king of his several duties by its consumption. One half of all revenues, provided they were justly acquired, he gave to his^[1] monasteries, all his other income he divided into two equal parts, the first was again subdivided into three, of which the first was given to the servants of his court, the second to artificers whom he constantly employed in the erection of new edifices, in a manner surprising and hitherto unknown to the English, the third he gave to strangers. The second part of the revenue was divided in such a mode that the first portion should be given to the poor of his kingdom, the second to the monasteries, the third to scholars, ^[2] the fourth to foreign churches. He was a strict inquirer into the sentences passed by his magistrates, and a severe corrector of such as were unjust. He had one unusual and unheard of custom, which was, that he always carried in his bosom a book in which the daily order of the Psalms was contained, for the purpose of carefully perusing it, if at any time he had leisure. In this way he passed his life, much respected by neighbouring princes, and gave his daughter Ethelswitha in marriage to Baldwin earl of Flanders, by whom he had Arnulf and Ethelwulf; the former received from his father the county of Boulogne, from the other at this day are descended the earls of Flanders.^[3]

Alfred, paying the debt of nature, was buried at Winchester, in the monastery which he had founded; to build the offices of which Edward, his son, purchased a sufficient space of ground from the bishop and canons, giving, for every foot, a mancus of gold of the statute weight. The endurance of

1. Asser says he devoted one half of his income "to God;" which part was afterwards subdivided for the poor, for the two monasteries he had founded, for the school he had established, for other monasteries and churches, domestic and foreign.
2. This proportion was for both teachers and pupils in the school he founded for the young nobility.—Lappenberg, vol. i. p. 340.
3. Matilda, queen of William the First, was daughter of Baldwin earl of Flanders, the fifth in descent from Ethelswitha. See note, p. 110.