and without even an oar, to be launched upon the ocean, and left to chance, and the mercy of the waves. For some time the unfortunate prince continued to keep afloat within sight of land, until at last the wind rose, and perceiving that every billow but rolled him further into the hopeless ocean, he preferred an instant to a lingering death, and leaped boldly into the deep. His body was afterwards washed ashore, and for seven years Athelstan is said to have mourned over his brother's death, with deep and bitter sorrow. Athelstan died about the year 940 or 941; and, as he left no children, he was succeeded by his brother Edmund.
Edmund, surnamed the Elder, had scarcely attained his eighteenth year, when he ascended the Saxon throne. Many of Athelstan's former enemies were still alive, and Anlaf, who had played so prominent a part at the battle of Brunanburg, again came over from Ireland, and placed himself at the head of the Northumbrian Danes, with whom he marched into Mercia, attacked Tamworth, and, in his first battle, defeated the Saxons. England was not yet destined to be subject to the sway of one king, for, after several defeats, Edmund employed the Archbishops of York and Canterbury to negotiate with Anlaf, and peace was concluded on the conditions that the Northumbrian prince was to reign over that part of England which extended to the north of Watling Street—the boundaries of which it is difficult to define. Another clause was also annexed, which placed the Saxon throne in greater jeopardy than it had ever before been; for Edmund entered into an agreement with Anlaf, that whoever survived the other should become the sole and undisputed sovereign of England. Death saved the Saxons from the degrading and dangerous position into which they had fallen, for Anlaf died in the following year, and after his death Edmund lost no time in taking possession of that portion of the kingdom which had been wrested from him by the valour of the Danish king.
It may be that the youth or inexperience of Edmund made him fearful of measuring his strength against a veteran like Anlaf, for when he had once resolved to reduce the Danes to authority, he acted as became a descendant of Alfred, and not only subjected Northumbria to his sway, but drove the Danes from the towns they had so long occupied on the frontiers of Mercia, clearing the whole line of country from Stamford to Lincoln; and, crossing the Trent, he drove them from the cities of Leicester, Nottingham, and Derby, thus sweeping the whole of the midland counties of the Danes, and peopling the strongholds from which he had driven them with Saxons, and amply making up for the vacillating weakness which marked the first year of his reign. Neither did his conquests end here; he next invaded Cumbria, unnecessarily tortured the sons of Dunmail, and then gave the small state to Malcolm of Scotland, on condition that he should defend the northern dominions, both by sea and land, against all invaders. Strange as it may appear, he was assisted in the subjugation of this petty kingdom by one of the Welsh kings, although Cumberland and Westmoreland, which formed the kingdom of Cumbria, were at this time inhabited by a remnant of the ancient Britons, over whom reigned Dunmail, its last Celtic king. Although the reign of Edmund is among the briefest of our early Saxon kings, containing but the mere entry of his name, a battle or two, and then his untimely death, embracing, from his first assuming the crown to his being borne to the grave, not more than five years, it offers to the contemplative mind much matter for meditation. He commenced his reign by a dishonourable concession, such as Athelstan would never have thought of, though it had cost him both his kingdom and his life in resisting it. He ended it by an act of cruelty, causing the eyes of the sons of Dunmail to be put out. Shortly after this, he fell in his own banqueting-hall, by the hand of a robber, in the midst of his nobles; while the wine-cup was circulating in celebration of the great Saxon feast held in memory of St. Augustine, he was struck dead by the dagger of Leof. At what place the deed was done, how the robber obtained admittance into the hall, whether angry words were exchanged between the assassin and the king, nothing certain is known—so much do the accounts vary in the old chronicles, although all admit the fact.
Leof had been banished for six years; he suddenly appeared in the presence of the king; his object, beyond doubt, was to slay him. Could we but prove that the murderer belonged to the ancient Cymry, we should probably not be far in error in concluding that he came to revenge the tortures which had been inflicted on the British princes, who were blinded by the command of Edmund. Vengeance only could have induced an armed and banished robber to rush into the presence of the king, when he was feasting in the midst of his nobles, and there, on his own hearth, to deprive him of life. Strange that the scene of an event so well known, should be buried in obscurity. There must have been motives that impelled the murderer to perpetrate such a deed, which were unfavourable to the character of Edmund, or we should have met with something more than the mere entry of his violent death in the early chronicles. He was slain in his twenty-third year—in the dawn of manhood; but where he fell, or in what place he was buried, history has not left a single record that we can rely upon. Malmesbury says, "His death opened the door for fable all over England." How ominous his rising! how dark and sudden his setting! what splendour surrounded his noonday career; yet, withal, his life might be written in four brief sentences—"He perilled his kingdom in his youth—nobly redeemed the false step he had taken—committed an act of inhuman cruelty—was afterwards murdered, in the year 946."
Edred succeeded Edmund, for the son of the latter was but a child when his father was slain. They were both sons of Edward the Elder by his second marriage, and, from the date of his death, must have been mere infants when he died. Both could claim the great Alfred as their grandfather.
During the short reign of Anlaf, and the subjection of Northumbria by Edmund, we lose sight of Eric, the son of Harold of Norway, to whom Athelstan had generously given the crown of this northern kingdom, out of the respect he bore to his father. But Eric cared not to occupy a peaceful throne: if he was to be a king at all, he was resolved it should be a sea-king, so he took to his ships, and left his subjects to shift for themselves as they best could; for he had often, during his sovereignty, whiled away the pleasant summer months with a little pirating—had often treated his followers to an agreeable excursion on the sea, where they plundered all the ships they could, and conquered and slew their crews, no doubt capturing our own merchants, whenever a chance offered. After amusing himself and his companions for some time, by preying upon all who came in his way, around the coast of Scotland, he ventured over into Ireland, gathered what he could there, crossed the sea again, and ravaged Wales, picking up along the northern coast, whenever he came near home, all the choice spirits he could find about the Orkneys and the Hebrides. With these he roamed at his pleasure, plundering wherever he could, and performing such feats on the ocean as Robin Hood and his merry men are, in a later day, supposed to have done in our old English forests. He was also joined by many of the most renowned sea-robbers from Norway, for the bold Vikingr found but little encouragement to plunder under the government of "Haco the Good." When Eric was weary of these rough Mid-summer holidays, he came back again to his kingdom, moored his ships, and placed his battle-axe upon the "smoky beam" until the following spring, never troubling himself about law or justice, but leaving his subjects either to do as they pleased, or follow the lawless example he set them:—he quaffed his cup, and sang his stormy sea-songs, and little recked Eric the Norwegian how the world went, so long as he could get out upon the windy ocean, and meet with prey and plunder upon the billows of the deep. All seems to have gone merrily with him, until, in an evil hour, he was either tempted or persuaded to ravage England. Where he landed is not known, but his success is said to have been great, and when he returned to Northumbria laden with plunder, his Danish subjects received him with warm welcome; although they had but just before sworn fidelity to Edred, still their hearts were with the daring sea-king, and they hailed him the more eagerly since Edred, after having received their oaths of allegiance, had turned his back upon the north. The Saxon king, although young, soon turned round, and punished the wavering Danes for their disloyalty. They again promised submission; but scarcely had he reached York before Eric was upon his heels, and so unexpectedly did he fall upon the army of the Saxon king, that he cut off the rear-guard before he retreated. Edred once more wheeled round, over-ran Northumbria, compelled them to renounce Eric, inflicted a heavy fine, again received hostages and promises of allegiance, and took his departure. Eric but lingered on the sea until he was fairly out of sight, and then prepared to take vengeance upon the subjects who had disowned him.
There is but little doubt that the Danes who renounced Eric were backed by a strong Saxon force which Edred had taken the precaution of leaving in the neighbourhood. A battle was fought, which is said to have lasted the whole day, and in it Eric, with five other sea-kings, was slain. Edred speedily availed himself of the advantages obtained by this victory. He carried away captive many of the Danish chiefs who had been engaged in the rebellion, imprisoned Wulfstan, an archbishop, who had been foremost in heading the revolt, divided the kingdom into baronies and hundreds, over which he placed his own officers, and overawing the country by strong garrisons, he at last reduced it into a greater state of order and subjection than it had ever before been since the Danes were first allowed to occupy it. Although still inhabited by Danes, they were no longer allowed even a sub-king to reign over them, but, like the rest of the Saxon states, were under the sole government of Edred, and thus rendered less independent than they had ever been during the reign of the victorious Athelstan.
So distinguished a sea-king as Eric was not likely to perish in battle without awakening the genius of the Scandinavian muse. "I have dreamt a dream," begins the northern poet; "at the golden dawn of morning I was carried into the hall of Valhalla, and bade to prepare the banquet for the reception of the brave who had fallen in the battle. I blew the brazen trumpet of Heimdal, and awoke the heroes from their sleep. I bade them to arise and arrange the seats and drinking-cups of skulls, as for the coming of a king."
"'What meaneth all this noise?' exclaimed Braghi; 'why are so many warriors in motion, and for whom are all these seats prepared?'
"'It is because Eric is on his way to Valhalla,' replied Odin, 'whose coming I await with joy. Let the bravest go forth to meet him.'
"'How is it that his coming pleaseth thee more than that of any other king?'
"'Because,' answered Odin, 'in more battle-fields hath his sword been red with blood; because in more places hath his deep-dyed spear spread terror, for he hath sent more than any other king to the palace of the dead.'
"I heard a rushing sound as of mighty waters: the hall was filled with shadows. Then Odin exclaimed: 'I salute thee, Eric! Enter, brave warrior; thrice welcome art thou to Valhalla. Say what kings accompany thee?—how many have come with thee from the combat?'
"'Five kings accompany me,' replied Eric; 'and I am the sixth.'"
Although Eric was baptized, before he was placed on the throne of Northumbria by Athelstan, yet the northern scald was resolved to rescue him from his Christian paradise, and place him in those halls, which he thought were more befitting the spirit of a sea-king to dwell in. After the death of Eric, many of the Anglo-Danes became Christians, and several enrolled themselves amongst the religious orders, thus becoming servants in the churches, which it had hitherto been their chief delight to burn and destroy.
It was during the reign of Edred that the celebrated or notorious Dunstan rose into such notice, for there is scarcely another character throughout the whole range of history, upon which the opinions of writers vary so much as in their summary of this singular man. Madness, excessive sanctity, enthusiasm, hypocrisy, cruelty, cunning, ambition, tyranny, have all been called in, to account for the motives by which he was actuated. With some the saint, and with others the sinner, has predominated, according to the medium by which his actions have been surveyed by different historians. It is difficult to sit down and contemplate his character in that grave mood which is so essential to depict the truths of history, for with Satan on the one hand, and the saint on the other, the bellowing of the fiend, and the clattering of the anvil, we get so confused between the monk and the "brazen head," that we seem in a land of "wild romance," instead of standing on the sober shore of history. We will, however, deal as fairly with the dead, as the few facts we are in possession of enable us to do, without sacrificing our honest judgment. But first we must consign the remains of Edred to the grave of his forefathers. He died in 955, after having reigned nine years. He was afflicted with a slow, wasting disease, which gave to him the appearance of old age, although at his death he had numbered but little more than thirty winters. He was succeeded by Edwin, the son of Edmund the elder.
Edwin was not more than sixteen years of age when he ascended the throne. Although so young, he had married a beautiful and noble lady of his own age, who appears to have been somewhat too closely related to him to please the stern dignitaries who were then placed at the head of the church, for it was at this period when the rigid discipline of the Benedictine monks was first introduced into England. Odo, a Dane, and a descendant from those savage sea-kings who destroyed the abbeys of Croyland and Peterborough, was, at this time, archbishop of Canterbury, for it was not then uncommon to place the pastoral crook in warlike hands, as there are many instances on record which show that those who could best wield the battle-axe were entrusted with the crosier; and Odo had served both under Edward and Athelstan, and had fought and prayed at the battle of Brunanburg. But before describing the most important events of the reign of Edwin, we must give a brief sketch of the life of Dunstan, and endeavour to throw a little light upon the dark shadows which have so long settled down upon his character.
Dunstan, who plays so prominent a part at this period, appears to have lived near Glastonbury, and while yet a boy, seems to have been fond of visiting an ancient British church which had probably been erected by the Christians soon after the departure of the Romans. At a very early period of his life, he was a believer in dreams and visions, and while yet unknown, imagined that a venerable figure appeared to him and pointed out the spot on which he was one day to erect a monastery. His studies were encouraged, and his abilities are said to have been so great that he was soon enabled to outstrip all his companions in learning. We next find him suffering from a severe fever, probably the result of excessive application, and which at last produced a state of dreadful delirium. In the height of his madness, he seized a stick and rushed out of his chamber, running with the speed of a maniac over hills and plains; and fancying in his frantic flight that a pack of wild hounds were pursuing him. Night found him in the neighbourhood of a church, on which workmen had been employed during the day; the invalid ascended the scaffold, and without injuring himself, got safely into the church, where he sank into a heavy slumber, from which he awoke not until morning, when he found his intellects restored, though, to draw a charitable conclusion from any of his future actions, we should be justified in believing that there were intervals when the disease returned. He had sufficient patronage to obtain an introduction to the church or monastery at Glastonbury, where he again renewed his studies, and besides obtaining a thorough knowledge of the literature of that age, he appears to have excelled in mathematics, music, writing, engraving, and painting, and also to have been a skilful worker in metals. Such talents as these, when so few excelled in any branch of the polite or finer mechanical arts, could not fail of bringing him speedily into notice, and he seems to have had an introduction to the royal palace early in the reign of Edmund. No greater proof of his intellectual attainments can be adduced, than his being accused while at court of dealing in the arts of magic; for so far had he shot beyond the ignorance and error of the age, that what could now be readily comprehended by an ordinary understanding, was in that benighted period attributed to supernatural agency; and so strongly did the current of prejudice set in against him, that Dunstan was driven from the court.
We can imagine with what shouts of derision he was pursued, and with what loathing and heartburning he must have quitted the palace as he fled before his insulting enemies, who, not content with having hurled him from his high estate, pursued him, and threw him into a miry ditch, beside a marsh, where they left him to escape or perish. We can picture him reaching his friend's house, at about a mile distant, the sorrow that wrapped his heart as he looked upon his blighted prospects, the anger that lighted his eye, and the burning scorn which he poured in withering words upon the unlettered herd, as he breathed his sorrow, and suffering, and disgrace, into the bosom of his friend, and, with a sigh, looked upon all his hopes thus undeservedly overthrown. For a short period, we here lose sight of Dunstan; when we next meet with him, he is on the point of marriage with a maiden to whom he appears to have been greatly attached. He is dissuaded from marriage by his relation, the bishop of Ælfheag, who tells him that such inclinations only emanate from the Evil one, and persuades him to become a monk. Love for a time made Dunstan eloquent, and our only marvel is, that a man who was so susceptible of the tender passion should, on a future day, become the unfeeling opponent of marriage, and wield the power he possessed with an unrelenting and iron arm over every priest who had entered into this honourable bond of union. For a long time the bishop argued in vain. Dunstan had then many reasons to urge in favour of love and marriage; and probably, at that period, never dreamed that he should have to use both force and argument against them; but he seems to have been doomed to suffer disappointment: and, although he endured it, it soured his better nature, for, like Jonah's gourd, all that promised him hope and delight seemed as if it only grew up to perish a withering mockery. Sickness again attacked him, a disease that brought him well nigh to death's door; he gave up all hopes of recovery, he renounced all earthly happiness, and when he began to turn his inward eye to that spiritual existence beyond the grave, earth heaved up slowly, and to him sadly, and shut out the coveted land of which he had obtained a dim glimpse, but that earth was no longer to him the garden of hope and love. He rose from his sick bed a melancholy and altered man; became a monk, and in his cold, grey, stony cell, which shut him up as in a grave, from the warm womanly heart he had once so fondly doted upon, he vowed to lead a life of celibacy.
Up to this period of his life, Dunstan wins our sympathy: we have seen him driven out, amid hooting and derision, from the court; we have seen the golden link of love, which still bound him to mankind, snapped heartlessly asunder; and now we behold him buried, with all his genius and learning, in the lonely cell of a silent monastery. No marvel that, like the weary lion who has been hard pressed by the cruel hunters, he at last got up and shook himself—looked round with disgust upon the narrow cave he had been driven into, and glared with scorn and rage as he thought upon the puny power he had fled from; then shook his majestic mane and rushed out, and filled the whole neighbourhood with his roar.
How from his soul he must have spurned the ignorant mass who came to look at him in the cell which he had dug in the earth, and which seems to have been but little larger than a common grave! What contempt he must have felt for the illiterate crowd, as he toiled in his smithy, to hear them attribute the roaring of his bellows, and the clattering of his hammer, to the howling and bellowing of the devil; and, even sick and weary as he was of the world, a suppressed smile must have played about the corner of his mouth, as he saw the credulous crowd gather around, who believed that he had seized the foul fiend by the nose. Still it is hard to suppose that a man of his learning and talent would for a moment lend himself to so improbable a tale: he might, however, have seen the power he was likely to gain from such a rumour, so let it take its course, leaving those to credit it who were simple enough to do so. The making for himself a narrow cell, and living in it for a given time, was no uncommon penance at that period, when hermits were found in lonely places, and priests, who had been driven from their monasteries by the Danes, were compelled to shelter in caves and forests, which they frequently never quitted until death. Guthlac, on the lonely island at Croyland, differed but little from Dunstan in his self-inflicted probation.
It is, after all, difficult to suppose that his fame spread amongst the highest ranks, through an idle and vulgar rumour being circulated of his having pulled Satan's nose. Such a report would never have drawn the Lady Ethelfleda, who had descended from Alfred the Great, to visit him—to extol his conversation, and to praise his piety; to introduce him to the king, and, at her death, to leave him all her wealth. Still less likely is it that such a fabrication would have raised him high in the estimation of the venerable Chancellor Turketul, the man who had so distinguished himself, in the reign of Athelstan, at the battle of Brunanburg. Nor can we believe that a grandson of the great Alfred would be so credulous as to appoint him abbot of Glastonbury, unless he had had some solid proofs of his learning and piety; for Edred made him his confidential friend and councillor, and entrusted to his care all his treasure.7 We will not acquit him of ambition, nor deny that he might have deviated a little from a fair and honest course to obtain power; that he became cautious and reserved; for the man who in his younger days had been driven from the court for his candour, and rolled in a ditch by those who were either envious of his talents or too ignorant to appreciate his high intellectual attainments, would naturally become more wary for the future. He who but received hardship and insult as a reward for his wisdom, would best display it afterwards by remaining silent. Martyrs to a good cause act otherwise; but all men covet not such immortality. We are painting the character of a man disappointed in ambition and love; yet eager as of old for power—such elements, though imperfect, are human. The man who inflicted stripes upon himself for refusing the see of Winchester, in the hopes of one day being made Archbishop of Canterbury, had before been whipped for his honesty; and although such deception would ill become one who aspired to be a saint, it would be pardoned in a disappointed statesman. A man kicked out of court, under the imputation of having "dealings with the devil," but played trick for trick when he put the lash into the hand of St. Peter. Dunstan had his eye upon an eminence, and was resolved to attain it. Usurers and misers sometimes fix their thoughts upon a given sum, which they resolve to obtain, and then become honest. Human nature a little warped was the same nine hundred years ago as now. We are drawing the character of one who was then a living and moving man, subject to human infirmities, for in his alleged saint-ship we have no belief whatever, though Dunstan himself might aspire to the title, and with a brain at times diseased, try at last to find that sanctity within himself which others attributed to him, even as a healthy man with a yellowish look discovers, through the allusions of his friends, that he has got the jaundice, although his countenance has only been exposed to the sun.
In miracles, the hand of God is manifested; when the dead are raised, and the blind suddenly restored to sight, we question not the Almighty power; but we doubt St. Peter lacerating the back of Dunstan, and even acquit the latter of so merry a joke, as that which was invented about his taking the devil by the nose with his red hot tongs, and alarming all the neighbourhood by his bellowings. If "possibility" is dragged into the argument, we must remain silent, for no one is impious enough to limit the power of the Deity. Where it would evince a want of faith to doubt the holiness of the apostles, it would be no sin to hesitate before we pronounced Dunstan, or Thomas-à-Becket, or Peter the Hermit, saints. What a simple-minded peasant would devoutly believe to be the truth in the present day, an intelligent person would be scarcely tolerated in enlightened society for asserting,—and by such homely facts as these are the truths of history only to be tested.
The first act which brings Dunstan so prominently forward in the reign of Edwin is his rude attack upon the king on the day of his coronation. Edwin had retired early from the banquet-hall, to seek the society of his beautiful wife Elgiva, in her own apartment, when his absence was remarked by the assembled guests. Odo, the Danish archbishop, was present at the coronation feast, and perceiving that the retirement of the king displeased the company, commanded those persons who were attendant upon him to fetch Edwin back. After some demur by the party whom Odo addressed, Dunstan and another bishop, his relation, undertook to bring back the king. Elgiva's mother was in the chamber with Edwin and her daughter when the two bishops entered, rudely, and unannounced. Edwin, it appears, at the moment of their entrance, was in one of his merry moods, and doubtless glad that he had escaped from the drunken revels of a Saxon feast, had taken off his crown and placed it on the ground, and was engaged in a playful struggle with his queen, when the bishops broke so rudely upon his retirement; or it is very probable that the crown had fallen off his head while toying with her, and that seeing the emblem of sovereignty thus cast aside like a bauble, may for a moment have chafed the temper of the irritable and decorous Dunstan. We could see nothing to condemn on the part of the bishop, if he had respectfully solicited the return of the king to the banquet; but when Edwin refused to go, and Dunstan dragged him rudely from his seat, and forced the crown again upon his head, the latter far out-stepped his commission, and acted more like a traitor than a loyal subject in thus attempting to coerce the king. It would, in those days, have been held a justifiable act on the part of Edwin to have laid the haughty prelate dead at his feet. Elgiva, with the spirit of a true woman, upbraided the bishop for his insolence, and Dunstan, we fear, made use of such epithets as belonged more to the smithy than the sanctum; and in which he alluded to the painted lady who is described in the Old Testament as having been thrown out of her window, and devoured by dogs. Nor should we think that the man who had the boldness to attempt to drag out the king by force, would hesitate to throw out a gentle hint, that, if opposed, he would adopt the same method of silencing her as that which was used in stilling the tongue of a "king's daughter." To account for this palace brawl, we must conclude that the Danish prelate and the Saxon bishop had pledged each other to such a depth in their cups as perilled their reason, or, in other words, there is but little doubt, the reputed saint was the worse for the wine-cup. Edwin's first act was, however, sufficient to restore him again to his senses, and although he was the friend of Turketul, the chancellor, and stood high in the estimation of Odo, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the young king deprived Dunstan of all the offices he held, confiscated his wealth, and sentenced him to banishment.
Here we behold Dunstan once more driven from court, and he no longer carries our sympathies with him, as before-time. A private gentleman, much less a king, could not calmly have brooked the insult Dunstan offered to his sovereign. Ten thousand men might be found in the present day, who would have rebuked the proudest bishop that ever wore a mitre, had he but dared to intrude thus upon their privacy. We have before stated that Elgiva was somewhat closely related to her husband, though it is pretty clear that this kinship extended not nearer than to that of cousin. Such as it was, however, the savage Odo made it a plea for divorce, and separated the king from his wife. Not contented with this, the bloody-minded and cruel archbishop sent a party of savage soldiers to seize her—to drag her like a criminal from her own palace, and, oh! horrible to relate, to brand that beautiful face, which only to look on was to love, with red hot iron—the lips and cheeks which the young king had so proudly hung over and doted upon, were, by the command of the cursed Odo, burnt by the hands of ruffianly soldiers—by the order of this miscalled man of God—yet the lightning of Heaven descended not to drive his mitre molten into his brain. Oh, what heart-rending shrieks must that beautiful woman have sent forth!—what inhuman monsters must they have been who held her white wrists, as she writhed in convulsive agony. Death, indeed, would have been mercy compared to such bloody barbarism; after this, she was banished, in all her agony, to Ireland.
Time, that, like sleep, is the great soother of so many sorrows, healed the wounds which the hard-hearted Odo had caused to be inflicted on the youthful queen, and her surpassing beauty once more broke forth, and erased the burning scars with which it had been disfigured,—like a rose, that, in its full-blown loveliness, leaves no trace of the blight that had settled down upon the bud. With a heart, yearning all the more fondly for her youthful husband, through the sufferings, which had been embittered by his absence, she rushed, on the eager wings of love, to pour her sorrows into his bosom, and to pillow her beautiful head on that heart which had known no rest since their cruel separation; but the demons of destruction were again let loose upon her. She was pursued and overtaken before she had reached those arms which were open to receive her, and so dreadfully was the body of that lovely lady mangled, that the blood rolls back chilly into the heart, while we sit and sigh over her sufferings. We will not pain our readers by describing this unparalleled butchery. But Odo reaped his reward. "Vengeance is mine," saith the Lord; and before His unerring tribunal the spirit of the mitred murderer, centuries ago, trembled.
From the hour of Elgiva's murder, the spirit of Edwin drooped. He seems to have sat like a shadow with the sceptre in his hand, "nerveless, listless, dead." His subjects rebelled against him. Dunstan was recalled from banishment, and new honours were heaped upon his head. Edwin's kingdom was divided, and though his brother Edgar was not more than thirteen years of age, the dominions of Northumbria and Mercia were placed under his sway. The infamous Odo, and his emissaries, were at last triumphant; and there is scarcely a doubt but that, a few years after the death of his wife, Edwin himself was murdered in Gloucestershire. In several old chronicles it is darkly hinted that he met with a violent death: in one, which is still extant in the Cotton Library, it is clearly asserted that he was slain.
A youthful king, on whose head the crown, with all its cares and heart-aches, was placed at the age of sixteen, was but ill-armed to battle with the hoary-headed, cunning, and grey iniquity which surrounded his throne. He, who would cast his crown upon the ground to toy with his beautiful wife, was no match for that hypocrisy which was hidden beneath the folds of a saintly garb. When, with a spirit far beyond his years, he boldly resented the insult that Dunstan had offered to him, the whole power of the court was at once arrayed against him, for Dunstan was already venerated by the ignorant people as a saint: he had the chancellor and the primate on his side; and few would be found to make head against a cause on the part of which such powerful authorities were arranged as leaders. The respect which was due to a king must have been greatly lessened by the insult which Dunstan had offered to his sovereign. It resembled more the conduct of a schoolmaster towards an unruly pupil than that of a subject to his superior. Edwin closed his troublous career about the year 959; and by his death Edgar, who had for three years ruled over the northern dominions, became king of England.
Over the reign of Edgar, who ascended the throne in his sixteenth year, the shadow of Dunstan again falls, and those who had rent the kingdom asunder, and placed him, when a mere boy, upon the throne of Mercia, kept a more tenacious hold of the crown as its circle widened, and gathered closer round Edgar as they saw his power increased. Dunstan had by this time risen to the dignity of bishop of London. The infamous Odo had died about the close of the reign of Edwin, and, weakened as the power of that unfortunate king was, he had spirit enough to appoint another to the primacy of England. The bishop that Edwin had nominated perished in the snow while crossing the Alps; for the pontiffs had issued a decree that no one should be established in the dignity of archbishop till he had first visited Rome, and received the pallium; which, as we have before described, was a tippet made of the whitest and purest of lamb's wool, chequered with purple crosses, and worn over the shoulders. Another bishop was appointed in his place, but he was soon compelled to resign the primacy, the objections raised against him being, that he was modest, humble, and of a gentle temper—virtues which, although they form the very basis of the Christian character, but ill accorded with the views of the ambitious churchmen who now surrounded the throne of the young king. In 960, only a year after the accession of Edgar, Dunstan, although he held the sees of Winchester, Worcester, Rochester, and London, was appointed archbishop of Canterbury, and received the pallium from the hand of Pope John the Twelfth, at Rome. Dunstan lost no time in promoting the interests of those who had assisted in raising him to his new dignity. He appointed Oswald, a relation of Odo, to the bishopric of Worcester; and Ethelwold, with whom he had been educated in his early years, he made bishop of Winchester. They also, by the intercession of Dunstan, became the king's councillors. By this means, he had ever those who were his sworn friends and servants at the elbow of the sovereign. That he contributed to the spreading of education and to the encouragement of the fine arts will ever redound to the credit of Dunstan; while the supernatural gifts to which he laid claim—the vision of his mother's marriage with the Saviour—the song which, he said, the angel taught him, and with which he roused every monk in the monastery, at morning light, to learn—we must, in charity, attribute to that temporary insanity to which he was at times subject, and which did not even pass unnoticed by his contemporaries.
Nearly the first act of the primate appears to have been the establishment of the Benedictine rules in the monasteries; for the severe and rigid tenets which were adhered to by this new order of monks appear to have suited the cold, stony nature of the new archbishop, the warm emotions of whose heart had now died out, and faded into that cold, ashy grey, which, having lost all sympathy with the living and breathing world, lies as if dead and in a grave, while the heartless body still lives and acts.
Sorry we are that Edgar so implicated himself with the views of the ambitious primate, that whatever Dunstan planned, the king executed, and in every way favoured the new order of monks. The following may be taken as a sample of Edgar's eloquence in favour of the Benedictine order; it was delivered at a public synod, over which the king presided. After condemning the secular clergy for the smallness of their tonsure, in which the least possible patch of baldness was displayed, and finding fault with them for mixing with the laity, and living with concubines, for that was the new name by which Dunstan now designated the wives of the clergy, he addressed the primate as follows: "It is you, Dunstan, by whose advice I founded monasteries, built churches, and expended my treasure in the support of religion and religious houses. You were my councillor and assistant in all my schemes; you were the director of my conscience; to you I was obedient in all things. When did you call for supplies which I refused you? Was my assistance ever wanting to the poor? Did I deny support and establishments to the clergy or the convents? Did I not hearken to your instructions, who told me that these charities were of all others the most grateful to my Maker, and fixed a perpetual fund for the support of religion? And are all our pious endeavours now frustrated by the dissolute lives of the priests? Not that I throw any blame on you; you have reasoned, besought, inculcated, inveighed: but it now behoves you to use sharper and more vigorous remedies, and, conjoining your spiritual authority with the civil power, to purge effectually the temple of God from thieves and intruders."
Although Edgar was such an unflinching advocate of celibacy, and is said to have made married priests so scarce, that it was a rarity to see the face of one about his court, he appears to have fixed no limits to his own vicious propensities. While his first queen was yet surviving, he carried off a beautiful young lady, of noble birth, named Wulfreda, from the nunnery of Wilton, where she was receiving her education, under the sanctity of the veil. This, however, was no protection for her person; but Dunstan had the courage to step in, and inflict a penance upon the royal ravisher; which was, to fast occasionally; to lay aside his crown for seven years; to pay a fine to the nunnery; and, as if to make all in keeping with the action, for which he was thus mulct, he was to expel all the married clergy, and fill up their places with monks. Such was the penalty imposed upon him by Dunstan, who, himself disappointed in love in his earlier years, was now the sworn enemy of all married priests. Whether such edicts as he promulgated, and rigidly enforced, were calculated to check or increase such infamous acts as the above, there can scarcely remain matter of doubt; but how many Wulfredas the enforcing of his unnatural laws of celibacy were the means of violating can never now be known.
Edgar having heard rumours of the beauty of Elfrida, who was the daughter of Ordgar, earl of Devonshire, despatched one of his noblemen, named Athelwold, on some feigned business, to the castle of her father, to see if her features bore out the report he had heard of her beauty. Athelwold saw her, was suddenly smitten with her charms, and keeping the mission he was sent upon a secret, offered her his hand, was accepted, and married her. Though Athelwold had reported unfavourably of her beauty, and, through this misrepresentation, obtained Edgar's consent to marry her, influenced, as he said, by her immense wealth, the truth was not long before it reached the ears of Edgar, who resolved upon paying her a visit himself. The king's will was law; and all Athelwold could now do was to entreat of Edgar to allow him to precede him, pleading, as an excuse for his request, that he might put his house in order for the reception of his royal guest. His real object, however, was to gain time, and to persuade his wife to disguise her beauty by wearing homely attire, or to suffer another to personate her until the king's departure. But Elfrida, who, like Drida of old, concealed, under the form of an angel, the evil passions of a fiend, rebuked her husband sternly for having stepped in, and prevented her from ascending the throne, and for having himself snatched up that beauty which might have raised her to the rank of queen. All, however, was not yet lost; and never before had Elfrida bestowed such pains in decorating her person as she did on the day of the king's arrival. She was resolved upon captivating him; and as nature had done so much, she called in the charms of art to give a finish to her unequalled beauty. We can almost fancy poor Athelwold fidgeting about the turret-stair, and thinking every minute which she spent over her toilet an hour; and what a hopeless look the poor Saxon nobleman must have given, as, startled by the trumpets which announced the coming of the king, she rose from her seat with a proud step, and a kindling eye, glancing contemptuously upon her husband as she passed, and hurrying eagerly to the gate, to be foremost in welcoming the sovereign. The king was charmed; Athelwold was found murdered in a neighbouring wood; Edgar married Elfrida, and her name is another of those foul stains which disfigure the page of history. There is no proof that Edgar stabbed Athelwold with his own hand; on the contrary, there was a natural bravery about the king, more in keeping with the chivalric age than the barbarous times in which he lived. To cite a proof of his valour: it had been reported to him that Kenneth of Scotland, who was then on a visit at the English court, had one day said that it was a wonder to him so many provinces should obey a man so little; for Edgar was not only small in stature, but very thin. The Saxon king never named the matter to his guest, until one day when they were riding out together, in a lonely wood, when Edgar produced two swords, and handing one to the Scottish sovereign, said, "Our arms shall decide which ought to obey the other; for it will be base to have asserted that at a feast which you cannot maintain with your sword." Kenneth recalled his ill-timed remark, apologized, and was forgiven. Such a man would scarcely stoop to so base an act as assassination.
None of the Saxon kings had ever evinced such a love of pomp and display as Edgar. He summoned all the sovereigns to do homage for the kingdoms they held under him, at Chester; and, not content with this acknowledged vassalage, he commanded his barge to be placed in readiness on the river, and, seating himself at the helm, was rowed down the Dee by the eight tributary kings who were his guests. But with all his pride he was generous; and to Kenneth of Scotland, who had thus condescended to become one of his royal bargemen, he gave the whole wide county of Louth, together with a hundred ounces of the purest gold, and many costly rings, ornaments, and precious stones, beside several valuable dresses of the richest silk; only exacting in return that Kenneth should, once a year, attend his principal feast. Every spring he rode in rich array through his kingdom, accompanied by Dunstan and the nobles of his court, when he examined into the conduct of the rulers he had appointed over the provinces, and rigorously enforced obedience to the laws. He gave great encouragement to foreign artificers, regardless from what country they came; if they but evinced superior skill in workmanship, it was a sure passport to the patronage of Edgar. The tax which Athelstan imposed upon the Welsh, after he had won the battle of Brunanburg, Edgar commuted into an annual tribute of three hundred wolves' heads; and, by such a wise measure, the kingdom was so thinned of this formidable animal, that on the fourth year a sufficient number could not be found to make up the tribute. Three centuries after, and in the reign of Edward the First, we find England again so infested with wolves, that a royal mandate was issued to effect their extinction in the counties of Gloucester, Worcester, Hereford, and Stafford, and that in other places great rewards were also given for their destruction. Our Saxon ancestors called January Wolf-month, "because," says an old chronicle, "people are wont always in that moneth to be more in danger to be devoured of wolves than in any season els of the yere, for that through the extremity of cold and snow, those ravenous creatures could not find of other beasts sufficient to feed upon." The terror with which the wolf was regarded by our forefathers, doubtless caused many of the Saxon kings and leaders to assume the name of an animal which was so formidable for its courage and ferocity. Thus we find such names as Æthelwulf, the noble wolf; Berhtwulf, the illustrious wolf; Wulfric, powerful as a wolf; Eardwulf, the wolf of the province; Wulfheah, the tall wolf; Sigwulf, the victorious wolf; and Ealdwolf, the old wolf. So infested were the "cars" of Lincolnshire, and the wolds of Yorkshire, with wolves, which were wont to breed, in what are now the marshlands beside the Trent, amongst the sedge and rushes, that the shepherds were compelled to drive their flocks at night for safety into the towns and villages. And in the time of Athelstan, a retreat was built in the forest of Flixton, in Yorkshire, for passengers to shelter in, and defend themselves from the attacks of wolves.