re reduced to pay submission to so
formidable a monarch. He carried his superiority to a great height,
and might have excited an universal combination against him, had not
his power been so well established as to deprive his enemies of all
hope of shaking it. It is said, that residing once at Chester, and
having purposed to go by water to the abbey of St. John the Baptist,
he obliged eight of his tributary princes to row him in a barge upon
the Dee [f]. The English historians are fond of mentioning the name
of Kenneth III, King of Scots, among the number: the Scottish
historians either deny the fact, or assert that their king, if ever he
acknowledged himself a vassal to Edgar, did him homage not for his
crown, but for the dominions which he held in England.
[FN [c] Higden, p. 265. [d] See note [C] at the end of the volume.
[e] Spell. Conc. p. 32. [f] W. Malmes. lib. 2. cap. 8. Hoveden, p.
406. H. Hunting. lib. 5. p. 356.]

But the chief means by which Edgar maintained his authority, and
preserved public peace, was the paying of court to Dunstan and the
monks, who had at first placed him on the throne, and who, by their
pretensions to superior sanctity and purity of manners, had acquired
an ascendant over the people. He favoured their scheme for
dispossessing the secular canons of all the monasteries [g]; he
bestowed preferment on none but their partisans; he allowed Dunstan to
resign the see of Worcester into the hands of Oswald, one of his
creatures [h]; and to place Ethelwold, another of them, in that of
Winchester [i]; he consulted these prelates in the administration of
all ecclesiastical, and even in that of many civil affairs; and though
the vigour of his own genius prevented him from being implicitly
guided by them, the king and the bishops found such advantages in
their mutual agreement, that they always acted in concert, and united
their influence in preserving the peace and tranquillity of the
kingdom.
[FN [g] Chron. Sax. p. 117, 118. W. Malmes. lib. 2. cap. 8. Hoveden,
p. 425, 426 Osberne, p. 112. [h] W. Malmes. lib. 2. cap. 8.
Hoveden, p. 425.]

In order to complete the great work of placing the new order of monks
in all the convents, Edgar summoned a general council of the prelates
and the heads of the religious orders. He here inveighed against the
dissolute lives of the secular clergy; the smallness of their tonsure,
which, it is probable, maintained no longer any resemblance to the
crown