for leaving this statement in the language of the villainous biographer upon whose word it rests; and you, Sir, had equal reason for suppressing what is too monstrous to be believed. Turner, whom, like yourself, I am proud to call our common friend, pronounces it to be incredible ;*...and I appeal to human nature if it be not so! I appeal to the common feeling and common sense of mankind, which is the more credible...that this unnatural, this monstrous charge should be true, or that the monk who advanced it should be a slanderer and a liar?

The counter-statement, which Drs. Milner and Lingard have chosen not to believe, is not only credible in itself, but so likely, that no unprejudiced person could for a moment hesitate between the two discordant relations. Edwy had married Elgiva, though she was related to him within the prohibited degrees; and when the King, who, be it remembered, was a mere boy, left the coronation dinner and went to his wife and her mother, he amused himself with putting his crown first on the head of one, then of the other, and this in an apartment so near the hall, that the guests either saw or

* History of the Anglo-Saxons, vol. ii. 403. 3d. edit.

heard how he was employed. Even monastic writers, who have eulogized Dunstan for all his actions, and, regarding him as one of the heroes of their order, have represented the most nefarious exhibitions of his craft as miracles, have felt that the statement of his contemporary biographer confuted itself by its monstrosity, and given in its stead the credible relation in which every Protestant historian has followed them.

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"That the Primate Odo," says Dr. Milner,† pronounced a sentence of divorce between Edwy and Elgiva, whom he believed to have been never married together; and that he caused the former to be dethroned and the latter to be put to death, are circumstances utterly destitute of historical authority, and mere fictions of the poet." Is it possible, Sir, that you should have read this passage when you expressed your approbation of the pamphlet which contains it, by saying that "if Dr. Milner had framed his

*The Coronica General de S. Benito, by Fr. Antonio de Yepes, is before me. The life of Dunstan in this very rare and valuable work is compiled from that by Osbert as printed by Surius, from Matthew of Westminster, Florence of Worcester, and Polidore Virgil: and thus Yepes relates the story.

† Strictures, p. 14.

Dedication to the Book of the Roman-Catholic Church.

Strictures upon the Book of the Church on a more extensive plan, they would have rendered any other answer to it unnecessary"? If these are indeed mere fictions of my invention, utterly destitute of historical authority, then am I utterly unworthy of belief, as being utterly destitute of truth. If, on the contrary, I have reported the facts as they are found in old and authentic documents,.. documents which must have been as well known to Dr. Milner as to yourself, I leave you to form your own judgement upon the person who charges me with inventing them. You say, Sir, that you have attentively perused all the authorities concerning St. Dunstan, to which Dr. Lingard and Turner have referred; you therefore cannot but know that such a sentence of divorce was pronounced by Odo;* that Elgiva was murdered †

* An. D. 958. her on pirrum geare Oda arcebiscop torpamde Eadpi cýning Ælfgуfe. For þæm þe hi pæɲon zo gerybbe.-Saxon Chronicle, 150. ed. 1823.

Dr. Milner must have seen this passage, though it is not in the earlier printed copies of the Saxon Chronicle, because it is given both by Mr. Turner, who first observed it in the MSS. Tib. B. 4., and by Dr. Lingard.

+ Ab hominibus Servi Dei comprehensa, et ne meretricio more ulterius vaga discurreret, subnercata, post dies aliquot malá morte præsenti vitâ sublata est. Erat quippe summus Pontifex Odo vir virtutum robore, et grandævitatis maturitate ac constantiá fultus,

by his people; and that he is eulogized by his

et omnium iniquitatum inflexibilis adversarius.-Osbern in Vitâ S. Odonis, Acta SS. Jul. t. ii. p. 71:

The same author, in his life of Dunstan, says, that after hamstringing the victim of their barbarity, they put her to death...ipsam quidem juxta Claudiam civitatem repertam, subnervavere, deinde quâ digna fuerat morte mulctavere.-Acta SS. Mai. t. iv. 368.

Dr. Lingard (Antiquities, N. V. pp. 524-527) labours, not only to support the old scandal, but to make it appear that it was the mother of Elgiva, not Elgiva herself, who in his gentle language was compelled to quit the kingdom, and venturing to return, perished during the revolt,"...that is, who had her face burnt with hot irons, for the purpose of disfiguring it, by S. Odo's orders, and was afterwards hamstrung by his people, and put to death. Were his argument conclusive, the conduct of Odo would be not the less atrocious; but it rests upon a subtlety of interpretation wherein he is opposed by every other writer, and upon uncertain dates. Elgiva is as plainly intended by all the elder authors as she is named by Spelman and Father Alford.

It is worthy of remark that Dr. Lingard in his History (vol. i. p. 235) omits all mention of the first barbarity practised upon Elgiva, that of disfiguring her face with red hot irons. These are his words:" Archbishop Odo undertook to remove the scandal by enforcing the punishment which the laws awarded against women living in a stage of concubinage. Accompanied by his retainers, he rode to the palace, arrested Ethelgiva, probably in the absence of her loyer, conducted her to the sea-side, and put her on board a ship, in which she was conveyed to Ireland. At his return to court, he waited on Edwy, and in respectful and affectionate language endeavoured to justify his

biographers for the act.* So much for Dr. Milner's assertions! Never let his bust be made in any thing but bronze, for that "undaunted metal" is the only material which can represent him to the life.

You venture next, with some valour, Sir, but more discretion, to touch upon the miracles of St. Dunstan. You remind me that "the period in which the miracles attributed to Dunstan were performed, was the darkest period in the Roman Catholic history." You observe, with Dr. Lingard, that men in that age were in a state of mind to expect miraculous events, and to be the dupes of their own credulity; and that, like those who are supposed to be

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gifted with the second-sight, they would see what they did not see, and hear what they did

own conduct, and to sooth the exasperated mind of the young prince." This is a fair sample of the treacherous manner in which Dr. Lingard's history is written wherever the interests of his Church are concerned.

* The Severe Odo is one of the epithets by which he was usually characterized (see the Comm. Prævius to his life in the Acta SS. § 13.) After what has here already been adduced, it would be needless to multiply testimonies for showing that he was the author of the act, and that he was commended for it they may be seen in F. Alford, who applauds the fact as intrepidly as Dr. Milner denies it. See his Annales, vol. iii. pp. 311-313.