as one side or the other was uppermost, Seculars were ejected from their benefices, and monasteries established; or Monks were ejected from the monasteries, and Seculars restored. But upon the whole, the fanatical party had been gaining ground for more than a century; and in the reign immediately preceding that of Edwin, monasteries had been multiplied throughout the land. The From this state of things, danger arose to the country in more ways than one. First, there was the weakness from internal divisions; and next, there was the exhaustion of the King's revenues, in the building and maintenance of monasteries, instead of ships and military defences. Danes saw their advantage, and after sixty years' remission of hostilities, they descended once more upon the British coasts. A monastery was more easily stormed than a castle, and yielded a richer recompense; and the prayer of the Anglo-Saxon liturgy, for deliverance "a furore Northmannorum, "brought no help to those who had renounced the duty of helping themselves. Thus the Regulars had hardly triumphed over the Seculars, before the latter were revenged by the Danes. In the treatment of my subject, I have brought these causes and consequences much more closely together than the mere chronology of history would warrant. Considering the meagreness of the records which remain of the Anglo-Saxons in that age, it would have been impossible to represent the spirit of the times by means of the events recorded as occurring in the brief reign of Edwin the Fair. I have not scrupled, therefore, to borrow from the bordering reigns incidents which were characteristic of the times, and acts which, though really performed by some of my dramatis persona, were not performed by them during that portion of their lives which is included in the reign of Edwin. I have taken the further liberty of choosing from amongst the accounts of the reign given by its earliest historians, where they conflict, those which best suited my purpose, whether or not they might have the best claim to be considered authentic. a country, perhaps the truth of history is to be sought, less in the accuracy of the record, than in the nature and character of the events recorded, and the manner of recording them; and the generalizations from the facts of such histories may be just, whether the facts be truly stated or not; provided only they be such facts as might probably and naturally have occurred in such times. The first decade of Livy's History has been proved of late years to be for the most part fabulous; but the fables are characteristic of the times, and the Discorsi of Machiavel, generalizing from them, have lost little or nothing of their value. To take an example from the subject of In the accounts of the earlier ages of my drama, William of Malmesbury relates of Edwin, "Nam et Malmesburiense cœnobium, plusquam ducentis septuaginta annis a Monachis inhabitatum, clericorum stabulum fecit." Whether it be true or not, that the monastery at Malmesbury had been established for more than 270 years, and that Edwin ejected the Monks and put Secular Clergy in their place, we derive from the relation the knowledge that such was the sort of event by which that age was agitated, and we learn also the spirit in which such an occupation. of a monastery was regarded by a Monk. But the historians of Edwin's reign are at variance upon more important events than this. Even the time and manner of his death are differently related; and I have not much cared to inquire whether the preponderance of authority be not against the account which I have followed. I have overleaped also, for the sake of compression, one of the vicissitudes in Dunstan's career-his |
