bable that the better qualities greatly preponderated. But they were so situated that it was scarcely possible for them to think, or act, justly towards each other."-Book of the Church, vol. ii. p. 274. If Dr. Milner ventures thus to misrepresent a living writer who is able to vindicate himself, and a book which any person may refer to without difficulty, the reader will judge how far such a controversialist is to be trusted in his references to those works of the dead which few have the opportunity of consulting, and fewer still the inclination. In the present instance it may seem strange that he should not have been deterred from such practices by the apprehension of exposure; but former success had emboldened him, and the Titular Prelate knew very well for whom he was writing. He knew that the persons among whom his Strictures would be circulated would think it a sin to look into any refutation of them; and that in the opinion of the few members of his own Church who understand what credit is due to his authority, such an exposure could do him no injury. The most learned of those Roman Catholics cannot think worse of him than they have already publicly spoken; and by the others, as long as he is true to their party, the tricks by which he supports it will be accounted meritorious. 241 ST. DUNSTAN. WE come now, Sir, to that well-known personage, St. Dunstan, concerning whom you and I differ toto cœlo. You are convinced that he "is entitled to the praise of probity, talent, and true religion."* I regard him, upon the statement of his own friends and accomplices, as a complete exemplar of the monkish character in its worst form. In your solicitude that his sanctity should appear to have been without alloy, you deny that the early part of his life exhibits any indication of ambition, and represent him as "retiring in his youth from the dignities and gaudes of the world." But the fact is not concealed even by Dr. Lingard, that he was a disappointed courtier; and the resolution of retiring from the world, which you represent as having been formed during the serious hours of a long illness, and, in common with that historian, as being executed after his recovery, was in reality a sudden resolution, taken and carried into effect under the immediate fear of death. * Page 57. We are told by his contemporary biographer that the disease came upon him suddenly, his kinsman, Bishop Elphege, R Misrepresentations of this kind detract something from the credit of an author when they originate in carelessness: they affect his character deeply if they are frequent and systematical; ... if they are always of the same. kind,... if there be a constant endeavour to put a false colouring upon facts, glossing and softening them down, or keeping in the shade those which will not bear daylight. But the manner in which you, and the living Romanists upon whom you pin your historical belief, have treated the story of Edwy and Elgiva, is of more importance. You repeat, Sir, without any apparent scruple, a statement which even Dr. Lingard did not at first hint at without saying, "if we may listen to the scandal of the Scandal I dare pronounce it to be,... age. having prayed God to inflict some chastisement upon him for wishing rather to marry a woman with whom he was in love, than to profess as a monk, as he had exhorted him to do, quod, Deo misericorditer favente, in parvi momenti spatio factum comprobatur fuisse. Eo namque modo turgentium vesicarum dolor intolerabilis omne corpus ipsius obtexit, ut elephantinum morbum se pati putaret, et spem vitæ propriæ penitus non haberet. Tunc festinanter, magno angore correptus, misit, et ad se Pontificem, jam ante à se spretum, humili prece vocavit, et obedire se velle ejus salutaribus monitis nuntiavit: et ille visitando veniens, consolatum et emendatum Deo monachum consecravit.-Acta SS. Mai. t. iv. p. 349. * Antiquities of the Anglo-Saxon Church, p. 400. and worse than scandal,...a slander of the foulest kind, invented and propagated by a successful faction for blackening the character of a Queen whom they had murdered. The Roman Catholic historian, however, who thus insinuates it in his text, has taken no common pains to support it in his notes, regarding the story, not without reason, as one in which the character of the Romish Church and two of its canonized worthies is implicated. Let us look at the circumstances as they are related by Romish or by Protestant writers, premising that both parties derive their statements from the same authorities. On the one side there are Dr. Milner (the John Merlin of whose veracity some samples have already been adduced) and Dr. Lingard; on the other there are Carte and Rapin and Hume and Henry and Turner; names which include the most sagacious, the most impartial, the most laborious, and the most accurate of our historians. You, Sir,* in accord with the two Romish writers, follow the contemporary biographer of Dunstan in asserting that a woman of high rank but weak intellects had laid a scheme for making the young King Edwy marry either herself or * Page 59. her daughter; that she sought to accomplish this end by seducing him with "familiar and shameful blandishments;" and that, in pursuance of this scheme, he was allowed to carry his intimacy with both as far as it could go. Having intimated thus much, you say "decency compels us to suppress the rest of the scandalous narrative." * Dr. Lingard gives the substance of that narrative in a note, but in the original Latin, saying, the reader must excuse these quotations, because it was necessary to oppose them to the contrary assertions of modern writers. It is necessary for me also to relate it, and in a language which every reader may understand; for though it be indeed as little fit to be uttered as believed, it is only by plainly stating it that its loathsome falsehood can be shown. The monkish calumniator in whose statements the modern Romanists think proper to place implicit credit, represents the young King as committing the grossest debauchery with mother and daughter at the same time,... in the same apartment... at noonday... and passing from the arms of the one to the arms of the other,..and this without an attempt at privacy or concealment! Dr. Lingard had good reason * Page 59. |