His eldest son, Athelstan, being dead, Ethelbald, his second, who had
assumed the government, formed, in concert with many of the nobles, the
project of excluding his father from a throne which his weakness and
superstition seem to have rendered him so ill qualified to fill. The
people were divided between the two princes, and a bloody civil war,
joined to all the other calamities under which the English labored,
appeared inevitable, when Ethelwolf had the facility to yield to the
greater part of his son's pretensions. He made with him a partition of
the kingdom; and, taking to himself the eastern part, which was always,
at that time, esteemed the least considerable, as well as the most
exposed,[****] he delivered over to Ethelbald the sovereignty of the
western. Immediately after, he summoned the states of the whole kingdom,
and with the same facility conferred a perpetual and important donation
on the church.
[* Asser. p. 2. Chron. Sax. 76. H. Hunting, lib.
v.]
[** A mancus was about the weight of our present
half crown. See Spelman's Glossary, in verbo Mancus.]
[*** W. Malms, lib. ii. cap. 2.]
[**** Asser.
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