spiritual
authority with the civil power, to purge effectually the temple of God
from thieves and intruders."[*]

[* Abbas Rieval. p. 360, 361. Spel. Concil. p.
476, 477, 478.]

It is easy to imagine that this harangue had the desired effect; and
that, when the king and prelates thus concurred with popular prejudices,
it was not long before the monks prevailed, and established their new
discipline in almost all the convents.

We may remark, that the declamations against the secular clergy are,
both here and in all the historians, conveyed in general terms; and
as that order of men are commonly restrained by the decency of their
character, it is difficult to believe that the complaints against their
dissolute manners could be so universally just as is pretended. It is
more probable that the monks paid court to the populace by an affected
austerity of life; and representing the most innocent liberties taken by
the other clergy as great and unpardonable enormities, thereby prepared
the way 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.[*]

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 beseems to
have been justly entitled,--but under that 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 tenor 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