y for the increase of their own
power and influence. Edgar, however, like a true politician,
concurred with the prevailing party; and he even indulged them in
pretensions, which, though they might, when complied with, engage the
monks to support royal authority during his own reign, proved
afterwards dangerous to his successors, and gave disturbance to the
whole civil power. He seconded the policy of the court of Rome, in
granting to some monasteries an exemption from episcopal jurisdiction;
he allowed the convents, even those of royal foundation, to usurp the
election of their own abbot: and he admitted their forgeries of
ancient charters, by which, from the pretended grant of former kings,
they assumed many privileges and immunities [l]
[FN [l] Chron. Sax. p. 118. W. Malmes. lib. 2. cap. 8. Seldeni
Spicileg. ad Eadm. p. 149, 157.]

These merits of Edgar have procured him the highest panegyrics from
the monks, and he is transmitted to us, not only under the character
of a consummate statesman and an active prince, praises to which he
seems to have been justly entitled, but under that of a of a great
saint and a man of virtue. But nothing could more betray both his
hypocrisy in inveighing against the licentiousness of the secular
clergy, and the interested spirit of his partisans, in bestowing such
eulogies on his piety, than the usual tenour of his conduct, which was
licentious to the highest degree, and violated every law, human and
divine. Yet those very monks who, as we are told by Ingulf, a very
ancient historian, had no idea of any moral or religious merit, except
chastity and obedience, not only connived at his enormities, but
loaded him with the greatest praises. History, however, has preserved
some instances of his amours, from which, as from a specimen, we may
form a conjecture of the rest.

Edgar broke into a convent, carried off Editha, a nun, by force, and
even committed violence on her person [m]. For this act of sacrilege
he was reprimanded by Dunstan; and that he might reconcile himself to
the church, he was obliged not to separate from his mistress, but to
abstain from wearing his crown during seven years, and to deprive
himself so long of that vain ornament [n]; punishment very unequal to
that which had been inflicted on the unfortunate Edwy, who, for a
marriage which, in the strictest sense, could only deserve the name
of irregular, was expelled his kingdom, saw his queen treated with
sing