A child of about seven years old, named Kenelm, succeeded to the throne in the Anglo-Saxon line.

Being too young to act for himself, he was put under the charge of a sister, who was to act as regent until the boy became of age.

The sister, ambitious of making the power thus delegated to her entirely her own, decided on destroying her brother.

She commissioned a hired murderer to perpetrate the deed.

The murderer took the child into a wood, killed him, and hid his body in a thicket, in a certain cow-pasture at a place called Clent.