Soon after, when they had been secretly despatched by one of his servants named Thunre, which signifies Thunder, he buried them under heaps of rubbish, thinking that a murder perpetrated in privacy would escape detection. The eye of God however, which no secrets of the heart can deceive, brought the innocents to light, vouchsafing many cures upon the spot; until the neighbours, being roused, dug up the unsightly heaps of turf and rubbish cast upon their bodies, and forming a trench after the manner of a sepulchre, they erected a small church over it. There they remained till the time of king Edgar, when they were taken up by St. Oswald, archbishop[1] of Worcester, and conveyed to the monastery of Ramsey; from which period, granting the petitions of the suppliant, they have manifested themselves by many miracles.
Offa king of the Mercians murdered many persons of consequence for the security, as he supposed, of his kingdom, without any distinction of friend or foe; among these was king Ethelbert;[2] thereby being guilty of an atrocious outrage against the suitor of his daughter. His unmerited death, however, is thought to have been amply avenged by the short reign of Offa's son. Indeed God signalised his sanctity by such evident tokens, that at this very day the episcopal church of Hereford is consecrated to his name. Nor should any thing appear idle or irrelevant, which our pious and religious ancestors have either tolerated by their silence, or confirmed by their authority.
What shall my pen here trace worthy of St. Kenelm, a youth of tender age? Kenulf, king of the Mercians, his father, had consigned him, when seven years old, to his sister Quendrida, for the purpose of education. But she, falsely entertaining hopes of the kingdom for herself, gave her little brother in charge to a servant of her household, with an order to despatch him. Taking out the innocent, under pretence of hunting for his amusement or recreation, he murdered and hid him in a thicket. But strange to tell, the crime which had been so secretly committed in England, gained publicity in Rome, by God's agency: for a dove, from heaven, bore a parchment scroll to the altar of St. Peter, containing an exact account both of his death and
