The writer can well remember the impression the tale made upon his youthful imagination, and the dislike, to use a mild word, with which he ever viewed the character of the great statesman and ecclesiastic of the tenth century, Dunstan, until a wider knowledge of history and a more accurate judgment came with maturer years; and testimonies to the ability and genius of that monk, who had been the moving spirit of his age, began to force themselves upon him.
Lord Macaulay has well summed up the relative positions of Church and State in that age in the following words: “It is true that the Church had been deeply corrupted by superstition, yet she retained enough of the sublime theology and benevolent morality of her early days to elevate many intellects, and to purify many hearts. That the sacerdotal order should encroach on the functions of the chief magistrate, would in our time be a great evil. But that which in an age of good government is an evil, may in an age of grossly bad government be a blessing. It is better that men should be governed by priest craft than by brute violence; by such a prelate as Dunstan, than by such a warrior as Penda.”
The Church was indeed the salt of the earth, even if the salt had somewhat lost its savour; it was the only power which could step in between the tyrant and his victim, which could teach the irresponsible great—irresponsible to man—their responsibility to the great and awful Being whose creatures they were. And again, it was then the only home of civilisation and learning. It has been well said that for the learning of this age to vilify the monks and monasteries of the medieval period, is for the oak to revile the acorn from which it sprang.
The overwhelming realisation of these facts, the determination to set up the dominion of truth and justice which they held to be identical with that of the Church, as that was identical with the kingdom of God, supplies the key to the lives and characters of such men as Ambrose, Cyril, Dunstan, and Becket. They each came in collision with the civil power; but Ambrose against Justina or even Theodosius, Cyril against Orestes, Dunstan against Edwy, Becket against Henry Plantagenet—each represented, in a greater or less degree, the cause of religion, nay of humanity, against its worst foes, tyranny or moral corruption.
Yet not one of these great men was without his faults; this is only to say he was human; but more may be admitted—personal motives would mix themselves with nobler emotions. Self would assert her fatal claims, and great mistakes were sometimes made by those who would have forfeited their lives rather than have committed them, had they known what they were doing. Yet, on the whole, their cause was that of God and man, and they fought nobly. Shall we asperse their memories because they “had this treasure in earthen vessels”?
The tale itself is intended to depict what the writer believes to be the true relative positions of Edwy and the great ecclesiastic; therefore he will not attempt to deal with the subject here. It will be noticed however, that he has shorn the narrative of the dread catastrophe with which it terminated in all the histories of our childhood. Scarcely any writer has made such wise research into the history of this period as Mr. E. A. Freeman, and the author has adopted his conclusions upon this point. With him he has therefore admitted the marriage of Edwy with Elgiva, although it was an uncanonical marriage beyond all doubt, and has given her the title of queen, which she bore in a document preserved by Lappenburg. But, in agreement with the same authority, the writer feels most happy to be able to reject the story of Elgiva’s supposed tragical death. All sorts of stories are told by later writers, utterly contradictory and confused, of a woman killed by the Mercians in their revolt. This could not be Elgiva, for she was not divorced till the rebellion was over; and even the sad tale that she was seized by the officers of Odo, and branded to disfigure her beauty, rests on no good authority. In spite of the reluctance with which men relinquish a touching tragedy, the calumny should be banished from the pages of historians; and it is painful to see it repeated, as if of undoubted authenticity, in a recent popular history for children by one of the greatest of modern novelists.
Edwy’s character has cost the writer much thought. He has endeavoured to paint him faithfully—not so bad as all the monastic writers of the succeeding period (the only writers with few exceptions) describe him; but still such a youth as the circumstances under which he became placed would probably have made him—capable of sincere attachment, brave, and devoted to his friends, yet careless of all religious obligations; bitterly hostile to the Church, that is to Christianity, for the terms were then synonymous; and reckless of obligations, or of the sanctity of truth and justice.
His measures against St. Dunstan, as they are related in the tale, have the authority of history; although it is needless to say that the agents are in part fictitious characters. The writer’s object has been to subordinate fiction to history, and never to contradict historic fact; if he has failed in this intention, it has been his misfortune rather than his fault; for he has had recourse to all such authorities as lay in his reach.[i] Especially, he is glad to find that the character he had conceived as Edwy’s perfectly coincides with the description given by Palgrave in his valuable History of the Anglo-Saxons:
“Edwy was a youth of singular beauty, but vain, rash, petulant, profligate, and surrounded by a host of young courtiers, all bent on encouraging and emulating the vices of their master.”
Another object of the tale has been to depict the trials and temptations, the fall and the recovery, of a lad fresh from a home full of religious influences, when thrown amidst the snares which abounded then as now. The motto, “Facilis descensus Averno,” etc, epitomises the whole story.