age after his public labours, and died about thirty years from the time of his first visit to the ruins.

The time was, however, now approaching when a new rage for building monasteries, and under a different rule, arose in England, through the influence of the celebrated Dunstan.

CHAPTER XIII.

FROM THE REIGN OF EDMUND THE ELDER TO ETHELRED.
RISE OF THE BENEDICTINE MONKS, AND ACTS OF DUN-
STAN.

Me lists not of the chaff nor of the straw
To make so long a tale, as of the corn.

CHAUCER.

man was more honoured by the generation in which he lived, and for many following generations, than ST. DUNOn the other hand, no man has

STAN.

been more charged with fraud, imposture, and cruelty, by the writers of later ages. The cause of this has been, that the monks, who owed much to his efforts, and wished to honour his memory in their own way, several years after his death invented many wonderful stories of deeds which he never did, and embellished some that he really did in such new colours, that the real character is lost. It is very necessary, if we wish to judge of such a man, to follow the accounts which were written nearest to the time at which he lived, and not those which the monks afterwards made to serve their own purposes, or to find amusement for their readers. He was neither so good nor so bad as they have made him out.

Dunstan was born of a noble family in the West of England, not far from Glastonbury, in A.D. 925, the year in which Athelstan succeeded to the throne.1

1 This is the year in the Saxon Chronicle. All the stories, therefore, of his going to the court of Athelstan, and his ad

X

He went at an early age to be educated at the monastery of Fleury, near Rouen in France, and came back to England with a great love and zeal for the monkish life. At his return king Edmund appointed him one of his chaplains, and, though he was then not more than about twenty-one years of age, gave him the ruined abbey of Glastonbury to restore, and to assemble a society of monks under the rule of discipline which he had learnt abroad. The sudden and violent death of Edmund, immediately after, prevented Dunstan from at once proceeding with this work, to which he might also have thought his own age unequal. He continued to live for some years longer at the court of king Edred, with whom he was in great favour; and it was not till A.d. 954, that his foundation of Glastonbury was finished.

Among the first monks who joined his society was Ethelwold, who afterwards became bishop of Winchester, and for his great zeal in the same cause was called "the father of monks." Another was Oswald, who was made bishop of Worcester and archbishop of York. Through Dunstan's influence the king now restored the abbey of Abingdon, which was put under the charge of Ethelwold, and continued one of the most famous Benedictine abbeys till the time of Henry VIII.

While, however, these three friends were planning great things, king Edred died, and the two sons of Edmund divided the kingdom. It must be observed that the kings were in Saxon times chosen by the Witenagemot, or Council of the Wise, after the death of a former sovereign, unless he had made a will to

ventures there, being thrown into a pond for a conjuror, and his strange escape, must be pure invention. It is said that archbishop Athelm introduced him at court. But Athelm died the same year that Dunstan was born; and Wulfhelm was archbishop A.D. 925-940.

dispose of his dominions, as was done by Ethelwolf, the father of Alfred. It seems that on this occasion, both the princes being very young, the Council thought them unfit to be entrusted with the entire charge, and therefore divided it. Edwy, the eldest, succeeded to the government of Kent and Wessex and Edgar was placed on the throne of Mercia and Northumberland.2 Edwy was no friend to monkhood; and in the year following his accession, for some offence which is not certainly known, he banished Dunstan beyond sea. It is said that on his coming to the throne he gave a feast to his nobles; and here the behaviour of Dunstan gave offence. The Danes had brought in an ill custom of drinking to great excess, and pledging one another as long as the brains could bear; and this custom the Saxons unfortunately learnt from them. Thus Alfred is said to have suffered all his life afterwards from the excesses he was obliged to submit to at his coronation-feast; and Edred, at the foundation of Abingdon Abbey, remained all day drinking mead with his nobles. Edwy withdrew from this heavy-headed revel; but his reason is said to have been, that he might pay a visit to a married woman with whom he was too intimate. His departure gave great offence to his nobles, and they deputed Dunstan to go and remonstrate with him and bring him back. He did so; and finding him in the company of the woman and her daughter, using something between force and persuasion, led him back to the banqueting-hall. For this it is said that Edwy took occasion in the following year to banish Dnnstan. It appears that he also took back the lands which Edmund and

2 Sax. Chron. A.D. 955. The story of Edgar having been set up afterwards in rebellion against Edwy is therefore unfounded.

Edred had given to Glastonbury and Abingdon, and broke up those establishments.

Edwy was married in the third year of his reign to Elgiva, who appears to have been his cousin. The Roman Church, from the time of pope Gregory, had disapproved of marriages between persons so related; and in the laws of some of the Saxon kings it was forbidden. By degrees the following popes carried it further, and by forbidding marriages among cousins in very remote degrees, turned the law to great abuse. At present, however, the opinion in England being that the marriage of first cousins at least was unlawful, this match of king Edwy was a new offence; and archbishop Odo, who then presided at Canterbury, and had the authority of the law to interfere in such cases, obliged the new-married couple to separate from each other. There are some strange stories of cruelty, invented by the writers of legends in later ages; as that Odo caused Elgiva to be branded in the forehead; and, on her attempting to rejoin the king, to have the tendons of her legs severed, and finally, that he had her put to death. But as it is certain that the Saxon law gave no bishop any power to require any thing from a culprit of any rank but the doing of penance, and as the earliest accounts contain nothing of the kind, and there is no authority for it but a lying legend written one hundred and fifty years afterwards, we may very well believe it to be a fiction. It seems that Edwy was on bad terms with his people; some of them rose in rebellion against him; and a party of these are said to have slain Elgiva in a tumult at

3 Sax. Chron. A.D. 958.

4 "The holy canons forbid both bishops and priests to consent to any man's death, if they call themselves God's ministers."-Saxon Homily, on St. Edmund's Day.