On this account all Europe resounded with his praises, and extolled his valour to the skies: foreign princes with justice esteemed themselves happy if they could purchase his friendship either by affinity or by presents. Harold king of Norway sent him a ship with golden beak and a purple sail, furnished within with a compacted fence of gilded shields. The names of the persons sent with it, were Helgrim and Offrid: who, being received with princely magnificence in the city of York, were amply compensated, by rich presents, for the labour of their journey. Henry the First, for there were many of the name, the son of Conrad, king of the Teutonians and emperor of the Romans, demanded his sister, as I have before related, for his son Otho: passing over so many neighbouring kings, but contemplating from a distance Athelstan’s noble descent, and greatness of mind. So completely indeed had these two qualities taken up their abode with him, that none could be more noble or illustrious in descent; none more bold or prompt in disposition. Maturely considering that he had four sisters, who were all equally beautiful, except only as their ages made a difference, he sent two to the emperor at his request; and how he disposed of them in marriage has already been related: Lewis prince of Aquitania, a descendant of Charles the Great, obtained the third in wedlock: the fourth, in whom the whole essence of beauty had centred, which the others only possessed in part, was demanded from her brother by Hugh king of the Franks.[167] The chief of this embassy was Adulph, son of Baldwin earl of Flanders by Ethelswitha daughter of king Edward.[168] When he had declared the request of the suitor in an assembly of the nobility at Abingdon, he produced such liberal presents as might gratify the most boundless avarice: perfumes such as never had been seen in England before: jewels, but more especially emeralds, the greenness of which, reflected by the sun, illumined the countenances of the by-standers with agreeable light: many fleet horses with their trappings, and, as Virgil says, “Champing their golden bits:” an alabaster vase so exquisitely chased, that, the cornfields really seemed to wave, the vines to bud, the figures of men actually to move, and so clear and polished, that it reflected the features like a mirror; the sword of Constantine the Great, on which the name of its original possessor was read in golden letters; on the pommel, upon thick plates of gold, might be seen fixed an iron spike, one of the four which the Jewish faction prepared for the crucifixion of our Lord: the spear of Charles the Great, which whenever that invincible emperor hurled in his expeditions against the Saracens, he always came off conqueror; it was reported to be the same, which, driven into the side of our Saviour by the hand of the centurion,[169] opened, by that precious wound, the joys of paradise to wretched mortals: the banner of the most blessed martyr Maurice, chief of the Theban legion;[170] with which the same king, in the Spanish war, used to break through the battalions of the enemy however fierce and wedged together, and put them to flight: a diadem, precious from its quantity of gold, but more so for its jewels, the splendour of which threw the sparks of light so strongly on the beholders, that the more stedfastly any person endeavoured to gaze, so much the more he was dazzled, and compelled to avert his eyes; part of the holy and adorable cross enclosed in crystal; where the eye, piercing through the substance of the stone, might discern the colour and size of the wood; a small portion of the crown of thorns, enclosed in a similar manner, which, in derision of his government, the madness of the soldiers placed on Christ’s sacred head. The king, delighted with such great and exquisite presents, made an equal return of good offices; and gratified the soul of the longing suitor by a union with his sister. With some of these presents he enriched succeeding kings: but to Malmesbury he gave part of the cross and crown; by the support of which, I believe, that place even now flourishes, though it has suffered so many shipwrecks of its liberty, so many attacks of its enemies.[171] In this place he ordered Elwin and Ethelwin, the sons of his uncle Ethelward, whom he had lost in the battle against Anlaf, to be honourably buried, expressing his design of resting here himself: of which battle it is now proper time to give the account of that poet, from whom I have taken all these transactions.