Death
King Canute restored to Eadric the Earldom of Mercia. During Canute's reign, Eadric accompanied the Queen consort Emma of Normandy, widow of Ethelred and wife of Canute, to the Duchy of Normandy. At Christmas 1017, fearing further treachery, Canute had Eadric slain. According to the Encomium Emmae, Eric of Hlathir performed the execution. This is said to have been as a result of Eadric beating Canute at chess and refusing to change the rules in Canute's favour. During the ensuing row, Eadric is said to have argued that he had assassinated King Edmund Ironside for Canute's benefit - a fact of which Canute had been unaware - and Canute had him executed on the spot. The later chronicler Geoffrey Gaimar relates the story of Edmund Ironside being murdered on the privy by the sons of Eadric Streona, using a crossbow positioned in the midden pit to fire through the toilet seat. It is said that the missile passed so far into his body that it could not be extracted. Eadric Streona's head was said to have been placed on London Bridge and his body thrown into the Thames. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle adds: "and it was rightly done".
Read more about this topic: Eadric Streona
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“Thou hast made me, and shall thy work decay?
Repair me now, for now mine end doth haste;
I run to death, and death meets me as fast,
And all my pleasures are like yesterday.”
—John Donne (1572–1631)
“The child who enters life comes not with knowledge or intent,
So those who enter death must go as little children sent.
Nothing is known. But I believe that God is overhead;
And as life is to the living, so death is to the dead.”
—Mary Mapes Dodge (1831–1905)
“No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main.... Any man’s death diminishes me because I am involved in Mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”
—John Donne (c. 1572–1631)