144

EDGAR'S LICENTIOUSNESS.

[A.D. 958-975, former times in England, could be justly and fairly compared to Edgar."* We trace the absurd praise to its source, when the same writer records that "scarcely does a year elapse in the Chronicles in which he did not build some new monastery." But it is important that, even with regard to such a poor atom of past humanity, the great distinctions of right and wrong should not be confounded. The stories which even his panegyrists record of his private

actions, and the attributes which they assign to him of regal pomp, would seem rather to belong to a luxurious age of monarchical despotisın, than to that of a limited Saxon king. Edgar, of whom it is written, "He reared up God's honour, he loved God's law, he preserved the people's peace, the best of all the kings that were before in the memory of man,"t -is recorded, in the same pages, to have murdered his friend and fosterbrother, that he might marry his widow; and to have torn a nun from her convent to be the victim of his gross appetites. The story of Elfrida was a popular one in Malmesbury's time; and it will hold a place in history, for it belongs to the romance of history. The king heard of the lady's beauty, and he sent his favourite, Athelwold, to report to him if the universal praise was true, of one who lived in seclusion from the court. Athelwold became violently in love with the lady; and upon his return concealed from the king the impression which her charms had made upon himself; spoke disparagingly of her attractions; and subsequently married her. The truth came to the knowledge of the luxurious king; and he announced to his thane that he would visit him and his bride. The terrified Athelwold exhorted his wife to exhibit herself as a slattern, and to conceal her fascinations under a coarse deportment. The ambitious woman had another policy. She put on her gayest adornings and her most encouraging smiles. Edgar and Elfrida came to a perfect understanding. Athelwold was run through by the king with a javelin, when hunting with him. Elfrida became Edgar's queen. To make up the complete picture, Malmesbury records that Edgar extended his protection to an illegitimate son of Athelwold, because the youth, being asked by his royal master how he liked the sport in which his father fell, replied, "I ought not to be displeased with that which gives you. pleasure." The duplicity of Athelwold, the profligate ambition of Elfrida, * Malmesbury, book ii. chap. viii.

+ Quoted in Lingard from the Saxon Chronicle.

A.D. 958-975.]

EDGAR'S OSTENTATION.

145

the ferocity of Edgar, and the dastardly coldness of the sycophantic boy, exhibit a state of morals which is not favourable to the cultivation of Saxon sympathies.

To cover the memory of Edgar's crimes we are summoned by his admirers to gaze upon his pomp. Of the most diminutive body, he would challenge any person, however great in stature, to fight with him. Kenneth, king of Scotland, who was a guest at his court, made some offensive remark as to the power which had been established by "such a sorry little fellow." Edgar , invited him to a private conference in a wood, and then proposed a duel. The sturdy Scot fell at his feet, say the chroniclers, and tendered his submission. Edgar made kings his watermen. At Chester, Kenneth, king of the Scots; Malcolm, king of the Cumbrians; Maccus, king of the Isles; kings of the Britons; kings of the Irish; do homage to him, and say each, "I become your man." Then, the king of Albion, the supreme king, takes his barge, and, sitting at the helm, is rowed down the Dee by his eight royal vassals; and at the banquet he exultingly tells his nobles, that his successors may well call themselves kings, since they will be the inheritors of his honour and glory. His immediate successor will perish at the bidding of his infamous wife; and the son of the guilty marriage will grovel in the dust before the Danish power, and reduce his kingdom to the lowest depth of disgrace.

It is a common mistake to imagine that the corrupt manners of a people, and the mistaken policy of their rulers, produce their instant retribution of national suffering and degradation. During the reign of Edgar we find many proofs of a vigorous administration. Dunstan was his constant director. In his hands the king was made the ready instrument of the ecclesiastical tyranny of his reign. The bulk of the people looked passively on the process; many nobles murmured and plotted. But the nation was corrupted by the conflict. Religion no longer wore an aspect of unity and peace; and the people naturally came to look with indifference on religion. Zealotry, working with obstinate passion for modes of faith rather than for the substance, is the parent of unbelief. Superstition may remain, but religion takes its flight, when her ministers hate and persecute each other with pagan virulence. Such persecution was going on in Saxon England during the rule of Dunstan. He wielded a despotic power; and he preserved a show of tranquillity. Nothing stood in the way of his stern justice. He made his king submit to seven years' penance for one of his outbreaks of licentiousness; and he hung three coiners of money before he would perform mass on a Whitsunday. Under him we recognise in the laws of Edgar a much stronger monarchical tone than Alfred or Athelstan ever ventured to assume. Alfred showed his laws to his witan, and promulgated them when to his council it seemed good. What Athelstan commanded "was established in the great synod." Edgar, according to the same precedent, takes counsel of his witan, but he ordains laws "in praise of God, and in honour to himself," as well as "for the behoof of all his people;" and concludes his ordinances in a strain of high and mighty patronage, which never before proceeded from a Saxon king to a free people :—“I will be to you a very kind lord, the while that my life lasts; and I am exceedingly well disposed towards you all." In Edgar's charters the king's titles are set out in the most inflated style. Malmesbury speaks of

"Ancient Laws and Institutions," p. 118.

146

ARBITRARY POWER.

[4.D. 958-975. the rigour of his justice. It appears that the most horrible punishments were inflicted upon offenders. We may judge of their severity when we find in a law of the unfortunate Ethelred, the son of Edgar, the following merciful relaxation: "And the ordinance of our lord and his witan is, that Christian men for all too little be not condemned to death; but in general let mild punishment be decreed, for the peoples' need; and let not for a little God's handywork and his own purchase be destroyed, which he dearly bought." The payment of dues to the Church was enjoined with a severity almost beyond belief. They are exacted in the names of "I and the archbishop." A day was appointed for a man to pay his tithes; and if they were not paid he was to forfeit nine-tenths of his tithable property. The interference of the archbishop with the social customs of the people is one of the stories told to his honour. They were in the habit of quarrelling about the quantity that each man should drink out of the common cup; and he enacted that pegs should be put in the vessels, that no thirsty soul should take more than his just proportion. The legend shows two things-that the Saxons were very sensual and selfish; and that the restraint was sought in arbitrary power, instead of enforcing improved habits by the spread of knowledge and true religion. Malmesbury says that the people learned drunkenness from the Danes. It was not necessary that a people, under such circumstances as the Saxons under Edgar, should be taught any vices. They would spread, naturally enough, in a condition of society where the obligations of a holy life were merged in the superstitions incident to a fierce polemical controversy. In that controversy the ordinary social ties were loosened. There was nothing in its conditions to raise the laity to that enthusiasm which begets public virtue, whilst it too often casts aside the domestic affections. It was an iron domination, in which a sullen obedience was enforced by the genius of one man, for a generation, but which ultimately broke out into violent persecution and as fierce resistance. Then that principle of nationality was

H

destroyed which had been growing up from the days of Alfred. Then came the time when no one could lift the wine-cup to his lips without a pledge for * "Ancient Laws and Institutions," p. 129.

A.D. 975.]

ACCESSION OF EDWARD.

147

his safety required and given.* Then the peace between Saxon and Dane was obliterated in a horrible butchery. Then the Dane won the land which had been long kept from foreign attack and internal outrage by the wisdom and courage of the line of Wessex. The talent of Dunstan was preparing the final fall of the kingdom, even whilst he retarded the instant catastrophe.

There is a curious circumstance in the reign of Edgar, of which no adequate explanation has been offered by any historian. He had been king fourteen years before he was consecrated. We have mentioned the tradition that he was forbidden by Dunstan to wear his crown for seven years, as a portion of the penance for the abduction of a nun. So writes Malmesbury. But this penance will not account for the suspension for fourteen years of that ceremony which was held essential to the recognition of the Saxon king. The ceremony was at last performed at Bath, with great pomp. Within two years Edgar died. He left two sons. Edward, the child of his first wife, Ethelfleda, was thirteen years old at his father's death. Ethelred, the son of Elfrida, was only seven. The question of succession to the vacant throne was immediately raised. A strong party of the nobles demanded that the choice between Edward and Ethelred should be determined by election. Dunstan, by one of his vigorous movements, quelled the dispute; and presenting Edward to the assembled thanes and ecclesiastics at Winchester, consecrated him on the spot. The question between an Edward and an Ethelred was the question, not of one brother, or the other, but of a secular or a monastic church. The reaction of violence now commenced. The Benedictines had expelled the secular clergy from the conventual churches; the married priests had been ejected from their parishes. Now one ealdorman expelled the monks from the monasteries, whilst another upheld them in their possessions. Many of the secular clergy had fled to Scotland during the reign of Edgar. They now returned. At their head was a bishop named Beornhelm, a Scottish or Irish bishop. "The choice of this advocate," says Sir F. Palgrave, "is a remarkable fact in ecclesiastical history, because it tends to prove that, at this period, the Church of the Scots, probably in Ireland, was not entirely subject to Rome."+ The great parties were headed by the most powerful nobles and ecclesiastics. At Calne, in Wiltshire, a witena-gemot was assembled to debate the points which divided the Church, and threatened the kingdom with civil war. There spoke Beornhelm. He spoke with no diminution of power, because a voice had previously spoken from a crucifix at Winchester, to determine the controversy in favour of the monks. He was not satisfied when, on that occasion, Dunstan exclaimed, "What wish ye more?" He was a daring unbeliever, and punishment was in store for him and his adherents. The assembly at Calne was held in an upper chamber. Dunstan rose. He was an aged man, he said, and would no longer contend with his opponents. He would commit the cause of the Church to the decision of Christ. The floor of the room gave way. But its

Strutt, who, in his "Manners and Customs," first engraved the ancient representation of a Saxon feast in the Cotton MS., points out that "the middle figure is addressing himself to his companion, who tells him that he pledges him, holding up his knife in token of his readiness to assist and protect him." It is usual to refer the pledge to the period of Danish tyranny in the time of Ethelred. "The custom of pledging healths, still preserved amongst Englishmen, is said to be owing to the Saxons' mutual regard for each other's safety, and as a caution against the treacherous inhospitality of the Danes." Wise; quoted in Brand's "Popular Antiquities.”

"History of England," chap. xiii.

148

EDWARD THE MARTYR.

[A.D. 978, strength was miraculously proportioned so as to destroy some, whilst others, including Dunstan, were saved. "This miracle," says Malmesbury, "procured the archbishop's peace, on the score of the canons."

The year of the catastrophe at Calne, 978, presented another proof of the terrible spirit of mutual hatred which had been engendered by these contentions. Dunstan had a struggle to hold his power-a struggle to which he had long been unfamiliar. It would be unjust to attribute the fall of the building at Calne to his devices. But it is clear that the enemies of his system were becoming desperate. He was the adviser and controller of the young king Edward, as he had been of his father. The innocent boy was to be sacrificed as a party victim by those opposed to the monastic domination; and his abandoned step-mother, who hated him for standing in the way of her son's elevation, was included in the plot. At Corfe, a royal manor, resided Elfrida and Ethelred. Edward had been hunting at Wareham, and became separated from his companions. A dwarf appears out of the forest-coverts, and proposes to guide him to a place of rest and refreshment. He reaches the home of the widowed queen, who meets him at the door with a betraying kiss. She brings out wine to the wearied boy; and as he lifts the goblet to his lips, sitting on his horse, he is stabbed in the back. He spurs his steed from the fatal porch; faints and falls; is dragged in the stirrups; and is traced by his blood. We may well believe that the guilty woman, as the chroniclers record, suffered the most fearful terrors of an evil conscience; and we may also believe that many a less innocent saint has been canonised than this poor boy "Edward the Martyr."

Anglo-Saxon Ornament.