In the reign of Canute a law was enacted by which any one found guilty of adultery was to be punished by the loss of the nose and the ears.[288] In the course of time the crime came to be punished by a fine paid to the husband of the woman. This penalty soon fell into disrepute, as it was found that some husbands and wives took advantage of it to extort fines from persons possessing more money than prudence. By a subsequent enactment the male adulterer became the property of the king, who might send him to the wars, or employ him at hard labor as he pleased. By a law of Edgar’s time the adulterer of either sex was compelled to live, for three days in each week, on bread and water for seven years. This was treating the evil on physiological principles.
We can not infer any very strict condition of morals as the result of this harsh legislation. When punishment is carried to an extreme entirely disproportioned to the offense, it is as likely to fail in its object as mistaken lenity. Forgery and arson were more frequent in England when punished with death than they are at present; and although we have no statistics of the time from which we can deduce any positive conclusions, we may reasonably imagine that neither the death penalty, nor the other barbarous punishments substituted for it, exercised any very powerful influence in the diminution of the crime among our hardy progenitors. It may have taught them greater caution and dissimulation in the prosecution of their evil purposes, but it did not render them the less eager to profit by the opportunities thrown in their way.
It has been already shown that the founders of Christianity treated illicit sexual indulgence as a sin, and resorted to extreme measures for its suppression, but yet, to some extent, tolerated prostitution. Shortly after he had established himself in Britain, Augustine put some curious queries to the Pope touching the manner in which chastity among converts to the new faith should be enforced. The nature of these interrogatories and replies forbids their appearance here.[289]
That Augustine required to be instructed on such prurient details proves that he was a believer in the Jewish observances of physical ablutions and cleansing of the person being necessary to the removal of moral impurities, and that he carried his scrutiny into the morals of his flock much farther than was consistent with modesty and good sense. However much his religious teachings might have improved the manners of the people, the regulations alluded to would have exercised no very salutary or efficacious influence over them.
The lives of the early kings and rulers of Britain serve to illustrate the morals of the nation during their respective reigns, not only by exhibiting individual examples where the condition of the masses is hidden from view, but by affording us an index to that condition when it is considered that the manners of the court have, in all ages and all countries, exercised an important influence on those of the people.
Augustine converted Ethelbert, but his son Endbald deserted the Christian Church because it refused its sanction to his mother-in-law becoming his wife. It is true that he afterward divorced her, and returned to Christianity, but in this he was influenced rather by satiety than by the promptings of a reviving faith. Many of the other kings of the Heptarchy were as remarkable for the headstrong ardor of their passion as Endbald. Canulph of Wessex had, in the year 784, an intrigue with one of his female subjects, and frequently quitted his court to enjoy her society in the country. During one of these clandestine excursions he was surprised and surrounded in the night by the followers of Kynchard, a rival pretender to the throne, and murdered in the arms of his mistress.
In the ninth century prostitution seems to have been a prevailing vice throughout the country, and frequent references are made to it in the discussions of the period. In the arguments used in favor of tithes, in the time of Athelstan, it was held by some canonists that the clergy had a right to demand one tenth of the profits earned by prostitutes in the exercise of their calling. It is but right to add that the Church did not persist in enforcing this extraordinary claim.[290]
Edwy, who ascended the throne at the early age of seventeen, became involved in a controversy with the monks on the question, then first started, of the celibacy of the clergy. The celebrated Dunstan favored the new doctrine, but Edwy opposed it. The youthful and inexperienced prince was no match for his sagacious antagonist, as he soon after discovered. On the day of his coronation, which took place soon after his marriage with his cousin Elgiva, whom he loved and resolved to wed, though she was within the degrees of consanguinity prohibited by the Church, his nobles were indulging in the pleasures of the banquet, when it was discovered that Edwy had stolen away. Dunstan and Odo, Archbishop of Canterbury, conjecturing the cause of his absence, proceeded to the private apartments of the queen, and found him in her company. They tore him from her, and dragged him back to the party. Elgiva’s face was seared with a red-hot iron to destroy her beauty, and she was transported to Ireland. Her wounds being soon healed, and all trace of the injuries removed, she returned to her own country, but was met by a party the archbishop had sent to intercept her, and put to death. Thus, professedly to preserve the morals of the king, these high ecclesiastics committed crimes of far greater gravity than a marriage even between persons more nearly related than Edwy and Elgiva.
Edgar, who succeeded Edwy, was of a still more passionate and licentious disposition. He broke into a convent, and carried off one of the nuns, named Editha, who was remarkable for her beauty. In the heat of passion, he violated her person; and for the double offense of abduction and rape, the Church, according to the peculiar morality of the times, punished him by compelling him to resign his crown for the period of seven years. By a curious inconsistency, he was permitted to retain possession of Editha, who lived with him as a concubine.
Another of his mistresses he obtained by a less violent process. In passing through Andover, he accidentally met the daughter of a neighboring noble, who fascinated him by her remarkable beauty. Listening only to the suggestion of his passion, he proceeded immediately to the residence of the maiden’s mother, and, informing her of the violent love with which she had inspired him, demanded that she should be permitted to share his bed that night. The mother, fearing to excite the king’s anger by a refusal, resorted to a stratagem, by which she hoped to evade his wrath, and, at the same time, preserve the chastity of her daughter. She directed a handsome waiting-maid to introduce herself into the young lady’s chamber, and the king was admitted after dark. When Edgar discovered the trick which had been played on him, he manifested no resentment, and the accidental partner of his bed became afterward his favorite mistress.