Athelston

[1][2] [3] Modern scholars often classify it as a "Matter of England" romance, because it deals entirely with pre-Conquest English settings and characters.

[5] The poem survives in only one manuscript, the early 15th-century Gonville and Caius MS 175, which also includes the romances Richard Coer de Lyon, Sir Isumbras and Beves of Hamtoun.

Athelston succeeds to the throne, and takes the opportunity to make Wymound and Egeland earls, and Alryke archbishop of Canterbury.

The people side with the archbishop, and Athelston is forced to offer the accused parties the chance to clear themselves by undergoing the ordeal by fire.

Several legends about the historical Æthelstan, grandson of Alfred the Great, were current in the later Middle Ages,[8] but it is disputed whether this poem should be included among them.