Note 93 — PART I.

See Mr. Albert Way’s paper on “The Tradition of Flaying Inflicted in Punishment of Sacrilege,” Archæological Journal, vol. v. The Worcester doors are said to have been fixed originally in the west entrance, and to have been removed thence by Bishop Wakefield. The Dean of Chichester (Life of Wulfstan, p. 7,) remarks that the west side of the cathedral, fronting the Severn, was that from which a Danish attack might naturally be expected; and suggests that the doors are as old as the eleventh century, when the citizens of Worcester, like other Englishmen, resisted the imposition of the Danegelt, and killed (May, 1041) Feadu and Thurstan, the huscarls of Hardicanute, who had been sent to Worcester to collect it. Their skins may have been stretched on the church doors. In the following November a Danish army plundered the town and ruined the cathedral, from which the monks had fled. The sight of the skins, it is suggested, may have been the especial cause of this latter act of vengeance.