Dead Man's Plack

The story of Æthelwald's murder was first described by William of Malmesbury, a 12th-century historian, in his Gesta regum Anglorum ("Deeds of the kings of the English"; 1125). William's account was later repeated by David Hume (1711–1776), a Scottish historian, philosopher, economist, diplomat and essayist, in his 6-volume work The History of England, published between 1754–1761. Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859), in his preface to Lays of Ancient Rome (1842), says the story has "a most suspicious air of romance" and "greatly resembles" some of the legends of early Rome. Macaulay writes: "when we turn to William of Malmesbury, we find that Hume, in his eagerness to relate these…

The monument consists of a stone cross on a pedestal with plain unmoulded details.}} An inscription on the north side of the plinth reads: "This Monument was erected by Col William Iremonger AD MDCCCXXV".

The story of Æthelwald's murder was revived by William Henry Hudson (1841–1922), a naturalist who, "fascinated like many before and after by this monument", published a romantic version of the legend in his Dead Man's Plack and an Old Thorn (1920). Hudson, who stated that he disliked Freeman "because he was so infernally cock-sure, so convinced that he and he alone had the power of distinguishing between the true and false", also went to some lengths to discredit the historian's dismissal of the story as untrue. The story is also the subject of The King's Henchman, an opera in three acts composed by Deems Taylor to an English language libretto by Edna St. Vincent Millay. It premiered on 17…