Assers Life of Alfred 856. 856. 15. Eadburh's Further Life.³⁶ King Beorhtric therefore being dead, the queen, since she could no longer remain among the Saxons, sailed beyond sea with countless treasures, and came to Charles³⁷, King of the Franks. As she stood before the dais, bringing many gifts to the king, Charles said to her: 'Choose, Eadburh, between me and my son, who stands with me on this dais.' She, without deliberation, foolishly replied: 'If I am to have my choice, I choose your son, because he is younger than you.' At which Charles smiled and answered: 'If you had chosen me, you should have had my son; but since you have chosen him, you shall have neither me nor him.' However, he gave her a large convent of nuns, in which, having laid aside her secular habit, and assumed the dress worn by the nuns, she discharged the office of abbess for a few years. As she is said to have lived irrationally in her own country, so she appears to have acted much more so among a foreign people; for, being finally caught in illicit intercourse with a man of her own nation, she was expelled from the monastery by order of King Charles. Henceforward she lived a life of shame in poverty and misery until her death; so that at last, accompanied only by one slave, as I have heard from many who saw her, she begged her bread daily at Pavia³⁸, and so wretchedly died.

Note 36. Original.

Note 37. Charlemagne.

Note 38. 'Pavia was on the road to Rome, and was hence frequented by English pilgrims on their journey to the latter' (Stevenson). The Chronicle says under 888: 'Queen Æthelswith (age 18), who was King Alfred's sister, died; and her body lies at Pavia.' 'With this story of Eadburh's begging in that city we may compare the statement of St. Boniface, written about 747, as to the presence of English prostitutes or adulteresses in the cities of Lombardy, Frankland, or Gaul (Dümmler, Epistolæ Karolini Ævi 1. 355; Haddan and Stubbs, Councils 3. 381). At the date of this letter the Lombards still spoke their native Germanic tongue, and it is probable that as late as Eadburh's time it was still the predominant speech in Lombardy' (Stevenson).