Framed tile, 6 x 6 inches. Brown on cream transfer. Raised maker's mark for Mintons China Works. This is one of the designs by John Moyr Smith for Mintons in the Early English History series of 12 tiles. This pattern depicts the story of Edy and Elgiva, or Eadwig and Ælfgifu in old English.

Ælfgifu was the consort of King Eadwig of England (r. 955–959) for a brief period of time until 957 or 958. What little is known of her comes primarily by way of Anglo-Saxon charters, possibly including a will, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and hostile anecdotes in works of hagiography. Her union with the king, annulled within a few years of Eadwig's reign, seems to have been a target for factional rivalries which surrounded the throne in the late 950s. By c. 1000, when the careers of the Benedictine reformers Dunstan and Oswald became the subject of hagiography, its memory had suffered heavy degradation.

It is probable that they are the two women who are portrayed as Eadwig's sexual partners in the Life of St Dunstan by author 'B' and that of St. Oswald by Byrhtferth of Ramsey, both dating from around 1000. Dunstan's Life alleges that on the banquet following the solemnity of his coronation at Kingston (Surrey), Eadwig left the table and retreated to his chamber to debauch himself with two women, an indecent noblewoman, later identified as Æthelgifu, and her daughter of ripe age. They are said to have attached themselves to him "obviously in order to join and ally herself or else her daughter to him in lawful marriage." Shocked by Eadwig's unseemly withdrawal, the nobles sent Dunstan and Bishop Cynesige, who forcefully dragged the king back to the feast. For this act, Dunstan had incurred the enmity of the king, who sent him into exile at Æthelgifu's instigation. Called a modern Jezebel, she would have exploited Eadwig's anger by ordering Dunstan's persecution and the spoliation of his property.

Mintons China Works was pottery, porcelain and tile manufacturers, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire. Factory founded 1793/6 by Thomas Minton in Stoke-on-Trent, taken over by Herbert Minton in 1836 until the latter’s death in 1858, when the china business was carried on by Colin Minton Campbell, in partnership with Michael Daintry Hollins, who ran the tile business. In 1868 the partnership ended and Campbell continued as Minton's China Works, also producing tiles, though not encaustic (inlaid) tiles, until 1918 when tile production ceased. From 1873, the name 'Minton' was changed to 'Mintons' without the apostrophe.