CHAPTER XVIII.

THE ANGLO-SAXON CHURCH.

TITHES.

PAROCHIAL SYSTEM.

The Church.

N the eighth chapter of this work, while briefly record- CHAP. XVIII. ing the ecclesiastical history of Kent to the death of Alfred, I spoke of the Christian religion as accepted by Ethelbert, and the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons, who then made an outward profession of faith; but this did not (as might be expected) at once put an end to paganism. The household gods still retained their influence, and the honour of putting down heathendom in Kent and destroying these idols is due to Erconbert, the grandson of Ethelbert.* Malmesbury says that he destroyed also their chapels. In process of time an episcopal hierarchy was established. Archbishops were finally placed over the two provinces of Canterbury and York, and bishops in every kingdom, by the King and Witan, but receiving their investiture from the Pope,t and under them a subordinate and parochial clergy were appointed. These men traversed the country propagating a doctrine and a discipline well calculated to supplant the pagan priesthood. Monasteries, cloisters, and churches were the first requisites of the newly-introduced faith, as places of meeting and shelter for the missionaries, teachers, and

*The worship of "forest trees of any kind," and "water-well worship," were prohibited by the laws of Canute (5).

+"Saxon England," says Kemble, "was essentially the child of Rome, Vol. II., p. 367. whatever obligations any of the kingdoms may have been under to the Keltic missionaries."

Turner, Vol. III., p. 371.

CHAP. XVIII. disciples devoted to piety; their gradual increase, and the wealth they acquired, explains the influence possessed by these different foundations. While Theodore was archbishop, he appointed Adrian to the monastery of St. Peter at Canterbury, who lived there thirty-nine years; and the presence of these two learned men made Kent the fountain of knowledge to all the rest of England. Bede extols the happy times which the island enjoyed under their tuition. Theodore has also the reputation of being the first archbishop who united all the English Church under his authority, and who also accomplished the division of the larger sees.

Harris's Kent, p. 511.

Spelman's
Gloss.

Ib.

In the thirteenth chapter I referred to the nineteen archbishops, including Plegmund (who held the see of Canterbury during the reign of Alfred), and the twenty bishops who held the see of Rochester during the same period. From Plegmund, the nineteenth archbishop, to Stigand (who held this see on the landing of William of Normandy), there were fourteen archbishops, Stigand being the thirty-third, but during the same interval there were only seven bishops of Rochester, Siward being the twenty-seventh.

Of these fourteen I will only mention Wlfelm, sometimes called Wolsinus, who came to the see A.d. 925, and was the first archbishop who held any secular office. Spelman styles him, by an odd anachronism, "Lord High Chancellor of England." He was succeeded by Odo, who was only a secular priest, and could not obtain his pall "until he entered the state of monkery." Dunstan was the next archbishop, of whom I shall speak shortly; he died in 988, "having seen seven kings of England," says Birchington. His relics were held in great veneration, and a contest long existed between the monks of Canterbury and Glastonbury as to who possessed them. Heylin, however, in his Life of Laud, page 206, says that Dunstan was buried in a chapel in Saint Paul's, London. Elfric, the twenty-seventh archbishop, was a learned divine, and translated the greater part of the Scriptures into the

Saxon tongue. He wrote also against the doctrine of the CHAP. XVIII. corporal presence of Christ in the Eucharist. In his will, which is preserved in the Cottonian library, he gave to the king his best ship, and sixty helmets and sixty breastplates. He gave one half of the remainder of his ships to the people of Cent [Kent] and the other half to the men of Wiltshire. His land lying west from Sittingtun [Sittingbourne] and at Newington he bequeathed to his sisters and to their children, and he forgave for God's sake to the Kentish men all the debts which they owed him, and emancipated all his slaves and villeins.* He died in 1005. Of Archbishop Alphage, or Elfeah, who succeeded him, and the cruelty practised towards him, I have already spoken.

Most of the Bishops who presided over the See of Rochester at this time were in a deplorable condition, their estates being constantly seized or plundered, and the bishopric at times vacant. When Siward, the last of the (which it is supposed was in

Anglo-Saxon bishops, died the year 1075), he left his church in a miserable state of Godwin, p.525. poverty, there being only four secular canons in it, living on scanty food, and clothed in a common lay habit.

We need not be much surprised at the poverty of the clergy here, when we reflect that the Isle of Sheppy was the favourite landing-place of the Danes, as the Isle of Thanet had been of the Saxons. They made it their principal resort, and took up their quarters there for a whole winter at a time. Thus Rochester, from its proximity to Sheppy, often became, as we have seen, the scene of their plunder, and the clergy residing there, the objects of their persecution.

The Danes at length learned the religion of the Saxons; and thus one cause of deadly animosity was removed. Intermarriages followed, and the mutual aversion of the races began to subside.

*This curious document, which I have only very briefly noticed from Harris, shows that an archbishop in those days had to assist in keeping p. 515. up an armoury, and be prepared for an enemy by sea as well as by land.

CHAP. XVIII.

Monasteries and

St. Dunstan.

The monastic establishments of the Anglo-Saxons attained a great though fluctuating popularity. Kings and nobles withdrew from the business of the world to enjoy the devout serenity of the cloister, and no doubt, while kept under proper control, they contributed to the happiness of thousands, and were for a long time of incalculable utility. The rule of St. Benedict was adopted by the Anglo-Saxon monks. They were not necessarily clergymen, but were subject to the control of the bishop. Many of them, however, took holy orders. It was not until the accession of Edwy, eldest son of Edmund the Elder, that the monks began to signalize themselves as a zealous, powerful, and ambitious body. Dunstan, their leader, one of the most conspicuous personages of Saxon history, after being long, says Mackintosh, an Vol. I., p. 51. object of unmingled panegyric among the monastic writers, has since their time been treated with unwarrantable severity by Protestant historians; and he thus proceeds:―

"Of noble birth, and said to be connected with the royal family of Wessex, he embraced the rule of St. Benedict with the same ardour which he had before shown in the business and pleasures of common life. His temperament was that of most earnest and zealous reformers, who have been exasperated by resistance and persecution: his personal disinterestedness and austere manners disposed the multitude to applaud the harsh discipline which he enforced and the cruel chastisements which he either advised or countenanced. There is no reason to suspect his sincerity; but the extension of his own power, and that of his order, doubtless mingled itself with zeal for the service of God and man; and the secret enjoyments of pride and ambition soothed the irritation which the renunciation of pleasures more openly immoral is apt to beget in passionate natures. To be very scrupulous in the choice of means is a very rare virtue in such enterprises, in such times, and in such men. It is unjust to make him answerable for the miracles which the credulity of his admirers has ascribed to him."

"Having fallen into disgrace in the reign of Athelstan, he regained his influence in that of Edmund, and at a very early age became the chief counsellor of Edred, the last grandson of Alfred. To enforce clerical celibacy, to reduce all the monasteries to the rule of St. Benedict, and to expel at least all the married clergy from canonries and prebends in cathedrals, that they might be succeeded by Benedictines, were the three main objects of his ecclesiastical policy. The result would have been a conformity of the English clergy to the law and usage of Christendom. Unless the clergy conformed to the first two regulations their conduct

seemed to be altogether set free from rule. It must have appeared to CHAP. XVIII. Dunstan that he was engaged in a contest against licentiousness struggling to throw off laws conducive at once to purity and order. On the other hand, it is to be remarked, that the unnatural interdiction of marriage is universally owned to have fallen into inobservance since the Danish wars, which had reigned for more than a century. As many parts of England were converted not long before that time, it is unlikely that the ancient liberty could have been so extirpated: the prohibitions and censures lavished on clerical marriages in the earlier times of the Saxons, if they prove the illegality of such unions, at least equally attest their prevalence. A natural liberty, thus sanctioned by general usage of more than a century, and by many examples in the former times, must have been considered, by a clergy not prone to historical or legal enquiry, as an established and inviolable right. The monks, who had enjoyed uncontrolled liberty, shrunk from a foreign and unknown rule, and it seemed unjust to deprive the seculars of their revenues from cathedrals, to which the habits of their life were adapted. But the reformer was too impetuous, or too ambitious of the honour of completing his own reformation, to submit to a gradual execution of his projects; although, if suddenly effected, they must have cruelly affected the greater number of churchmen, and reduced multitudes of women and children to shame and beggary."

The monks and nuns were governed by their own abbots, abbesses, and priors, assisted and in some respects controlled by conventual chapters, subject, but not always submitting to, the pope, and disclaiming dependence on the episcopal clergy. There were no friars or men- Turner, dicant orders among them, such being of later growth in Vol. III., the Church; but they encouraged hermits and pilgrims.

p. 469.

To our county attaches the fame of having possessed Nunneries. the first nunnery in these parts. This was the nunnery at Folkestone, founded by King Eadbald for his daughter, probably about the year 630. Weaver and Dugdale claim Tanner, the honour for Barking, in Essex; but as that was not PP. IV., 117. founded till 673 their assertion is clearly a mistake.

Though the royal will was in some measure controlled Bishops. by the Witan, kings appear to have done nearly as they

liked in the appointment of bishops, for we read of a

bishop in the person of Wine (Wini), an Anglo-Saxon, Lap.

who having been expelled from Winchester, yet purchased Vol. I., p. 168. the See of London, in which he continued until his death. The elevation of Anglo-Saxon ecclesiastics to the highest