134 EDWY AND ELGIVA-ODO. LA.D. 958. Dunstan, because he had been entrusted with the custody of the royal treasures." * Labouring under suspicion-perhaps reproached at that coronation feast, where even bishops might be inebriated without offence to public opinion, the bold minister of Edred seized upon a slight violation of propriety on the part of Edwy, to insult and degrade him. Dunstan was banished; and the king threw himself into the hands of the party who were opposed to the great abbot's authority. He chose his side, perhaps, indiscreetly. A strong party of the aristocracy, a fanatical and, therefore, influential party of the clergy, combined against him. In such contests there is little moderation; and Christian charity is trodden under foot by what is called Christian zeal. Edwy's new counsellors advised strong measures against their opponents; and their opponents revenged themselves by loading the king and his female friends with obloquy, such as Tacitus more justly bestowed upon the frightful profligacy of his time. Edwy met the scandal as alone it could be met. Elgiva became his wife. No monkish abuse can rail away the fact, that in a document of undoubted authority—an agreement for the exchange of lands between Bishop Byrhthelm and Abbot Ethelwold,— the following entry appears :-" And this was by leave of King Eadwig; and these are the witnesses: Elfgyfu, the king's wife, and Ethelgyfu, the king's wife's mother; Bishop Elfsige, Bishop Oswulf, Bishop Coenwald; Byrhthnoth, the ealdorman; Elfheah, the King's dapifer; Eadric, his brother." Mr. Kemble says, "This, then, was not a thing done in a corner, and the testimony is conclusive that Elgyfu was Eadwig's queen." The imputations against Elgiva thus signally failed. But there was something more terrible in reserve than the dirt which Dunstan and his adherents threw at her and her mother. A plot was got up to separate the young queen from her husband, under the plea that the marriage was within the forbidden degrees. They were "to gesybbe,"-too nearly related. There was no solemn act of separation. Upon the banishment of Dunstan, there was soon a revolt against the authority of Edwy. Odo, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was a Dane. His influence in Northumbria was very great, and he instigated a general rising in that old settlement of the Danes. In a very short time, Edwy had to divide his dominion with his brother Edgar, who was set up, not as a sub-ruler, but as a sole king. The rebellious subject came to Edwy and his queen with the terrible powers of the Church. Their marriage had been acquiesced in by prelates and nobles. Their consanguinity was probably of the slightest kind. But Odo was resolved to exercise his tyranny; as it was long exercised by ambitious popes and rapacious prelates, who would tear loving hearts asunder, or give them dispensation, as best suited their cold and calculating natures. Odo knew how to destroy Edwy through his affections, and thus remove the great obstacle to the projects of the monastic leaders. He dragged Elgiva from her husband. There is here some confusion in the narrative of the sad sequel of the violence. A lady was forcibly sent to Ireland, after being disfigured by hot searing irons; she escaped back to England; was seized by the adherents of the party opposed * : Lingard "History." Third edition. This note, from Wallingford, was subsequently omitted, after Mr. Allen had pointed out that Wallingford says, that on account of that suspicion the property of Dunstan was sequestered. D. 410. The document occurs in two manuscripts in the British Museum. See Kemble, vol. ii. A.D. 960.] DEATH OF EDWY. 135 to Edwy, and was put to a cruel death. It is pretended that the victim was the mistress and not the wife of Edwy; and that the mistress was Ethelgiva. Dr. Lingard has constructed his narrative of these events upon a principle which exhibits little of the impartiality of the historian's office, and his cold notice of the crimes of the churchmen is scarcely indicative of the humanity of a Christian. "At Gloucester, she (Ethelgiva) fell into the hands of the pursuers, who with their swords divided the sinews of her legs, a cruel but not unusual mode of punishment in that age. After lingering in great torments for a few days, she expired." We may believe, if the apologists of Odo so desire it, that two crimes were committed,—that the mother of the queen was hamstrung; and that the Queen met some unknown death in forced seclusion. Of Elgiva we hear no more. The lady who died under "the not unusual mode of punishment," met her fate at Gloucester. There, also, died Edwy, after a reign of four years. Whether he was murdered, or whether he died of a broken heart, we are not satisfactorily informed. It is sufficient for the monastic chroniclers to date the triumph of the Benedictine order in England from the "miserable end," as they honestly call it, of him whom they designate as "the wanton youth." We believe with Mr. Henry Taylor, that "the success of the monastic faction in decrying him with the people was not so complete as the merely political events of his reign might lead us to suppose; "and that "his name (Eadwig') having been supplanted by its diminutive 'Edwy,' seems to indicate a sentiment of tenderness and pity as popularly connected with him from the first." * * Preface to the beautiful historical drama of "Edwin the Fair." Dunstan; attribution to him of miraculous powers.-His elevation to the primacy.-State of the Anglo-Church.-Cathedrals and Churches.-Provision for the Clergy. The parish-priest. -Dunstan's reforms.-Edgar.-Extravagant praise of his reign.-His licentiousness and ostentation.-Edgar an instrument in the hands of Dunstan.-Edward; his accession and murder. It is the duty of the historian, however difficult it may be, to endeavour to represent actions "in sequence, as they were; not in the lump as they are thrown down before us." We use Mr. Carlyle's words when he points out the error, with regard to such men as Cromwell, of "substituting the goal of their career for the course and starting-point of it." For this reason, whatever might have been the early schemes of ambition floating in the mind of Dunstan, we make no attempt to show that it was a consistent plan of his life to degrade a king, to embitter his existence, to hunt him to the death. But men of Dunstan's vigour of character seize upon accidents to shape their speculations into deeds which shall determine all subsequent action. The "Heroes and Hero-worship." 4.D. 958-975.] DUNSTAN-ALLEGED MIRACULOUS POWERS. 137 indiscretion of the king was the opportunity of the monk. When he dragged Edwy from the ladies' bower to encounter the tumult of the banquetinghall, the moment had come at which the crafty 'ingener' should put the match to the mine. He risked the chance that he might "hoist on his own petar." He humiliated one who was his enemy; and in that humiliation he destroyed half the danger of the contest into which he foresaw that he must enter. There is, we conceive, no evidence which more distinctly shows the formidable nature of this contest, and the mode in which it was carried on, than the attribution to Dunstan of miraculous powers. Abbot first, then bishop, then archbishop, he was not to fight against married presbyters and secular canons with the simple weapons of his strong will and his vast ability; but all terrors and seductions of superstition were to be called in, to hallow his cause in the eyes of the people, whether earls or churls. The records of these things were not inventions of the monastic writers after his time, but were delivered to them upon the evidence of Dunstan's disciples and his contemporary biographer Osberne. There was nothing too extravagant or too impious to be narrated, which might raise Dunstan to the position of an idol, before whom the ignorant Saxon and the half-converted Dane might fall down and prostrate themselves in slavish adoration. His temptations in the cave at Glastonbury, when he assaulted the evil one with the instrument of his trade (even as Luther did with his great instrument, the inkstand), by tweaking him by the nose with his red-hot tongs, are ludicrous fables, adapted only to the coarsest minds. But they awed the peasant as he listened to the wondrous stories in his smoky hovel; and he trembled to know that the triumphant enemy of the devil and of the married priest was the highest in the land. The noble ladies, as they sat round the fire with their embroidery and their spindles, rejoiced that they were not such as the wicked Elgiva; and that they lived at a time so favoured by Heaven as to send down the holy dove to light upon the head of the great archbishop when he was performing his first mass. The fierce ealdorman hung up his armour when Edgar became king, for he was solemnly told that at Edgar's birth Dunstan heard an angelic voice saying, "Peace to England so long as this child shall reign and our Dunstan survives." Armed with these instruments of imposture, in addition to his own commanding ability-despising probably, in his inmost heart, the artifices of his partisans, but tolerating them as necessary means for the accomplishment of an important end-Dunstan was indisputable governor of the country through the reign of Edgar. The king was still a mere boy when Edwy was removed. He was only thirteen when the land was divided between him and his brother. Dunstan had then returned from his exile, and there was no formidable barrier to his highest exaltation. He first became bishop of Worcester. London at the same time with Worcester. Men of great talent and learning were his devoted supporters. Odo, the fierce primate, in consecrating him to Worcester, named him as archbishop of Canterbury, as if electing his own VOL. L Y R Silver Penny of Edgar. He was then allowed to hold the see of L 138 THE ANGLO-CHURCH. [A.D. 958-975. successor; and averred that he so spoke under the immediate influence of the Holy Ghost. Upon the death of Odo, which happened within two years of that of Edwy, whom Odo had truly murdered, Dunstan accomplished the audacious anticipation. To understand the position of the Anglo-Church at this remarkable perioda period which carried its influence onward through five centuries-we must look back, very briefly, upon its past history. The first ecclesiastical establishments were of the monastic character. Certain brethren, with a head or bishop, were planted in populous places, and lands were assigned to them for their support. From these houses were teachers sent forth to collect the people, for prayer and for exhortation, around holy crosses, or in convenient buildings. Sometimes these buildings were the temples of rough stones where the Saxons had worshipped Thor and Woden within the sacred boundary of a settled district. As the increase and spread of the population became a consequence of the progressive cultivation of the land, the going The existing crosses at Sandbach, in Cheshire, are held to belong to the first age of Christianity in England. |