CHAPTER X
ST. ELFRIC, ARCHBISHOP AND CONFESSOR
995-1005
ELFRIC was the 26th Archbishop of Canterbury, succeeding Sigeric (or Siricius according to the Latinized form) in 995.
This Archbishop has been confounded with four other more or less eminent historical personages of the same name who were his contemporaries; viz. Elfric the Grammarian, a great theological scholar and divine; Elfric, the Archbishop of York; Elfric, who was Abbot of Malmesbury; and Elfric Bata (or The Bat), a monk of Winchester and disciple of Elfric the Grammarian.
Elfric, the Archbishop of Canterbury, had been a monk of Abingdon, where the celebrated Ethelwold was his teacher. Ethelwold's chief delight was to teach young men and boys, and give them rules for grammar: by his pleasant and delightful conversation he drew them to better and higher things, for he was a popular master, and is reported to have invented "cribs" for his pupils by turning Latin books into English.
Matthew Paris, in his Historia Anglorum says that Elfric the Archbishop was brother to Leofric who was the son of Eardwulf, ealdorman of Kent, a benefactor to Canterbury. It is possible that Elfric's mother had made a second marriage after the death of his own father, whose name is not known. Matthew Paris gives a long account of these two half-brothers, who both joined the abbey of St. Alban's, but modern authorities discredit much of what he says, for as the Rev. William Hunt declares in the Dictionary of National Biography, "it is wholly incomprehensible."
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