ults, to indulge his
inclination towards peace, and to employ himself in supporting and
improving the internal government of his kingdom. He maintained a body
of disciplined troops; which he quartered in the north, in order to keep
the mutinous Northumbrians in subjection, and to repel the inroads of
the Scots. He built an supported a powerful navy;[*] and that
he might retain the seamen in the practice of their duty, and always
present a formidable armament to his enemies, he stationed three
squadrons off the coast, and ordered them to make, from time to time,
the circuit of his dominions.[**] [3] The foreign Danes dared not to
approach a country which appeared in such a posture of defence: the
domestic Danes saw inevitable destruction to be the consequence of
their tumults and insurrections: the neighboring sovereigns, the king of
Scotland, the princes of Wales, of the Isle of Man, of the Orkneys, and
even of Ireland,[***] were reduced to pay submission to so formidable
a monarch. He carried his superiority to a great height, and might have
excited a universal combination against him, had not his power been so
well established, as to deprive his enemies of hopes 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.[****] 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.

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 favored their scheme for dispossessing the
secular canons of all the monasteries;[*****] 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; [******] and
to place Ethelwold, another of them, in that of Winchester;[*******] he
consulted these prelates in the administration of all ecclesiastical
and even in that of many civil affairs; and though the v