A Balclutha Romance

New Zealand Tablet, 26 July 1906, Page 22

A Balclutha Romance

The quacks we have always with us. Their brazen impudence and their vociferous pretence may— and doimpress the ignorant, the credulous, and the groundlings generally. But they make the judicious to grieve, or move them to scorn. The theological quack and the historical quack we know. They get the taste of our rawhide from time to time. But one of the worst specimens of the quack-in history that we hay© come across for some time is one who, under, the name of Warren Hughes, contributes a ' Famous Lpve Story '— that of ' Bdwy and E.lgiva '—to the Balolutha • Froo Press ' of July 17.

Tie • famous love story ' runs in substance as follows in the * Free Press ' :— Ed-wy (Earwig) 'became King '(of Wessex, in 955) ' at the early age of sixteen.' He 'openly sided with the churchmen ' against Abbot Dunstan's 'drastic measures ' to restore ecclesiastical discipline. Edwy was then 'on the eve of being married to the beautiful Etgiva or Aelgifu, whom he passionately ,. adored. 1 Dunstan then ' went further, and, finding that Elgfra was within the prohibited degrees of kinship to her husband, he declared the marriage void, and commanded him to dismiss her to her home.' But ' Edwy proceeded with marriage, in defiance to the monk's objections,' and so the ' ill-feeling progressed on both sides. 1 At his coronation feast, Edwy- left the table, and sought ' thecompany of his young wife.' ' His trusty barons ' and ' the nobles of his Council ' were ' greatly incensed at his iude neglect of them ' ; a nd ' Dunstan, glowing with religious zeal, offered to bring him back '—and did so. Of course ' there was a stormy scene.' Elgiva w a s in due course ' proclaimed queen, and instigated a series of persecutions against her enemy,' Dunstan. 'He was deprived of his position as abbot,' and subsequently banished. ' The monks, however, with Oda the bishop at their head, now roused all England against the king.'*" Result : Edwy soon ' found himself only king of England south of the Thames, while the northern portion declared for his younger brother Edfjar.' Edwy was finally forced 'to divorce ' ' his beloved wife.' She was deported t-o Ireland, her face disfigured, but nat seriously, as much of ' her marvellous beauty ' was still left. She escaped, travelled towards Winchester, was discovered by ' her enemies,' hamstrung, and left to die. Edwy soon passed in his checks ; ' and so ' (to slow music) ' ended the tragedy of a royal love. T * The story told abo-.e professes to be ' history '—of the ' honor-bright ' kind. As a matter of f a ct, it has only enough of history to make it historical romance. Taken altogether, it hardly reaches the level of the 4 lie which is half a truth,' which (according to Tennyson) (is ever the blackest of lies.' Unlike the gay romancer, Mr. Warren Hughes, we have taken the trouble to go to the works of the original authorities for the facts of the ' famous love story ' of Edwy and Elgiva. Now (1) it was not • the custom among the English clergy to consider themselves free to marry if they ohose.' (2) The dispute between the fierybrained young Edwy and his tutor, Abbot Dunstan, did not arise out of questions of ecclesiastical discipline, as stated. (3) Elgiva was not Ed'wy's wife when the incident of the coronation feast took place. She is described by the chroniclers, William of Malmesbury, Eadmer, Matthew of Westminster, and Osbexne, by two' terms (grossly mistranslated by Carte) that we do not care to .transfer to these columns, e\en in the original Latin. The ' gentle ' Elgiva of the ' Free Press ' romance is described by th~e original historians and chroniclers as a beautiful but very lewd woman, who was very nearly related (proxime cognatam) to Edwy. Elgiva is mildly described by the Protestant historian Wakeman as a ' worthless and ambitious woman.' She, with her grown-up daughter (adulta filia) corrupted the dissolute young king, a nd acquired such an ascendancy over him as to entice him away from the company of his nobles at his coronation feast for the purpose of giYiiHt, himself up to their lewd company. The scandalous incident is described by the chroniclers (whose words are before us) with the extreme plainness -and directness of speech of their time, a nd is unfit for transcription in our columns. It ""is sufficient to state that young Edwy was a gross libertine, and that he allowed himself to be made the puppet of a pair of women of degraded morals and evil life. Edwy's conduct on the occasion naturally exasperated the -nobles Dunstan, however, did not « offer to bring him back.' Osberne, in his life of St. Dunstan, says that the great afcbot was « compelled ' by the thanes or nobles to dp'

so ; and (accompanied by an episcopal relative of Edwy) he conducted the way_w a rd youth to his place in the assembly. The vengeance of these two lurid females soon burst upon the head of Dunstan. He was deprived of his abbacy, outlawed a nd Vanished, and all the monasteries that .favored him were plundered by the orders of the worthless Edwy. (4) In 957 (two years after the coronation scandal) Edwy married. His bride was not Elgiv a (as the ' Free Press ' fiction states), but his other pa-amour, Elgiva's daughter. And it was not Dunst-an (who was then in exile) but Archbishp Gdo (not Oda), who declared the marriage null and void, on account of the near relationship of the parties. The ' Free Press ' writer seems incapable of stating facts e\en fey chance or good luck. * Edwy's evil life, his lawless a n d oppressive conduct, his illegal exactions and plunderings, raised his noDl-es in revolt against him and cost him the crown of IMercia. There is no evidence whatever in the original historians of the period that the monks preached or urged a rebellion against the rule of the young roue. The Protestant historian, W a keman ('Church of England, sth cd., p. 69), Grren (' History of England,' vol. i., p. 95), and others pay a high tribute to the patriotism and love of liberty that guided Dunstan in his action in those difficult times. 'I n the question between Eadwig and Dunsian,' says Wakeman, ' there can be no doubt as to the side on which the interests of the nation and of religion lay. The timely death of Eadwig in 958 saved England from a civil war.' Finally : one of the wicked females that exercised so evil an influence over young Edwy was branded on the face, according to the law and custom of the time. But the original authorities do not say which. Neither do they say which of them was hamstrung, when captured near Gloucester by the nobles then at war with Edwy. The imaginative writer in the 'Free Press' has ewdcntly gore, not to original authorities, but to the writers of historical romance, such as Carte and Guthric, by whom (as the Anglican Bishop Short says) ' the conduct of Dunstan with regard to Edwy and Elgiva has, without much foundation, been workpa up into a pathetic tale ' (' History of the Church of England,' p. 12). The ' famous love story ' of Edwy and Elgiva, as told by original historians, is a sordid talc of the vulgar intrigues, the vengeance, and the tyranny of about as worthless a trio as ever made a smudge upon the page of England's history.