Leicester : sanitation versus vaccination its vital statistics compared with those of other towns, the army, navy, Japan, and England and Wales / by J.T. Biggs.

  • Biggs, J. T.
Date:
[1912?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Leicester : sanitation versus vaccination its vital statistics compared with those of other towns, the army, navy, Japan, and England and Wales / by J.T. Biggs. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    35/832 (page 27)
    for valiant and patriotic deeds will be vividly enshrined in the pages of history, romance, and song. Algar, Earl of Leicester, succeeded to the Dukedom of Mercia, and his daughter, the beautiful Algitha, was wooed and won-by the Welsh King, . Griffith. Queen Algitha would probably spend much of her childhood with her grand-parents, the great Leofric and Lady Godiva, at Leicester Castle. Towards the close of the reign of Edward the Confessor, the famous Godwin, Earl of Wessex, was succeeded by his son Harold, who led the English forces against the Welsh under their King, Griffith. A long struggle ensued ; the latter was defeated, and afterwards assassinated by his followers. Queen Algitha was made captive, and Harold, after ascending the throne, made her his Queen. The felicity of their married life was of short duration, for within two years King Harold, the last of the Saxon Kings, was slain at the memorable Battle of Hastings. Thus the “ peerless ” Algitha, or, under her Norman designation, Edith the Fair, became suc- cessively the wife, Queen, and widow of two Kings, rivals on many a sanguinary battlefield, and each of whom met with an untimely death. After Harold fell, Earls Edwin and Morcar, the brothers of Algitha, the “ Swan-necked Queen,” sent her to Leicester Castle, the home of her maidenhood. When the Conqueror arrived, and seized the 27,000 acres comprising her estate, she retired to the cloister, living during the major