Editorial note — APPENDIX.

From what has been said already, the reader will be led to regard the story of Frithric as largely mythical, but he will view the words here put into the saint’s dying utterance, as prophetic of the ultimate supremacy of the Saxon race. The narrative is finely solemn, for as this “swan-song,” was being sung, the Crowland fugitives were wading through the deep fens on a November night, just near enough to hear the distant passing knell.

We are still ruled by the laws of King Eadward the Confessor—laws which owe something to Godwine and Harold. The Norman Conquest, however, had the effect, when the scathing had passed over, of developing the old principles of the Saxons—and thus “England was a gainer by the conquest.” This subject is ably discussed in Vol. V. of Freeman’s Norman Conquest.