THE REIGN OF EDGAR.
"The royal letters are a thing of course;
A king, that would, might recommend his horse,
And deans, no doubt, and chapters with one voice,
As bound in duty, would confirm the choice.
Behold your bishop! well he plays his part,
Christian in name, and infidel in heart."--COWPER.
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.
[Illustration: _The Welch tribute of Wolves Heads._]
Edgar died in the year 975, at the age of thirty-two. By his first
wife he had a son named Edward, who succeeded him; also a daughter who
ended her life in a nunnery. By Elfrida, the widow of the murdered
Athelwold, he had two sons, Edmund, who died young, and Ethelred, who
in his turn obtained the crown by the murder which Elfrida caused to be
committed.
Elfric, who lived a few years after the death of Edgar, has left the
following highly-coloured testimonial in praise of his character: "Of
all the kings of the English nation, he was the most powerful. And it
was the Divine will that his enemies, both kings and earls, who came to
him desiring peace, should, without any battle, be subjected to him to
do what he willed. Hence he was honoured over a wide extent of land."
This panegyric, we think, is somewhat overdrawn: it is true that he
kept up a large fleet, consisting of twelve hundred ships, which he
stationed on different points of the coast--that he punished those who
plundered the vessels of his merchants--executed the law rigorously on
the coiners of false money, and left England as free from robbers as
it had been at the close of the reign of Alfred. Still, with all his
high-sounding titles, which in some of his charters run to the length
of eighteen lines; he rivets not the eye, nor interests the heart, like
many of his predecessors who grace the great gallery of our early Saxon
kings.