A.D. 981. KTPTG ETHELBED MABBIE9. tion the blessed Dunstan, being full of the spirit of prophecy, foretold him all that would hereafter happen to him, and that he would suffer great tribulation in his kingdom, in these words—" Since you have aspired to the kingdom by. the death of your brother, whom your mother murdered, hear therefore the word of the Lord. Thus saith the Lord—' The sword shall never depart from your house, but shall rage against you all the days of your life, slaying your offspring, until your king dom is transferred to another family, whose manners and lan guage the nation which you govern knows not ; nor will your sin, and that of your mother, and of these men who assisted her wicked design, be expiated, except by a long course of punishment.' After this prophecy of the blessed Dunstan, the man of God, a cloud was seen over all England, at one time of a bloody and at another of a fiery colour, then it dis solved and became changed into different rays and various colours, and about dawn it disappeared. Moreover of this Ethelred William of Malmesbury speaks thus—"When, as a little child,*he was dipped in the font of baptism, he defiled the sacrament by the indulgence of his natural necessities, in the presence of the bishops who were standing round. And Dunstan, being disturbed at this, declared by the Lord and by his Mother, that he would be a lazy boy. When therefore he, being a boy of ten years of age, heard people cry out that his brother Edward was slain, he by his weeping so irritated his furious mother, that, because she had no whip at hand, she took up a torch and beat the innocent boy with that. On which account, he for the future so abhorred torches the whole of his life, that he never allowed their light to be borne before him." The same year, JElferius, duke of Mercia, came with a great number of people to Wareham, as has been said before, and caused the body of the precious king and martyr Edward to be raised from the tomb ; and when it was stripped it was found sound and free from all marks of any wound ; and then, having been washed and clothed in new garments, it was honourably buried at Shaftesbury. A.D. 980. Southampton was ravaged by pirates, and nearly all its citizens were either slain or carried away prisoners. After that, the pirates retreating plundered the Isle of Teneth, and subsequently they furiously attacked the city of Caerleon. A.D. 981. King Ethelred took the daughter of some duke