ons, and suppress any
insurrection on its first appearance. He obliged also Malcolm, King
of Scotland, to renew his homage for the lands which he held in
England.

Edred, though not unwarlike, nor unfit for active life, lay under the
influence of the lowest superstition, and had blindly delivered over
his conscience to the guidance of Dunstan, commonly called St.
Dunstan, Abbot of Glastonbury, whom he advanced to the highest
offices, and who covered, under the appearance of sanctity, the most
violent and most insolent ambition. Taking advantage of the implicit
confidence reposed in him by the king, this churchman imported into
England a new order of monks, who much changed the state of
ecclesiastical affairs, and excited, on their first establishment, the
most violent commotions.

From the introduction of Christianity among the Saxons, there had been
monasteries in England; and these establishments had extremely
multiplied, by the donations of the princes and nobles; whose
superstition, derived from their ignorance and precarious life, and
increased by remorse for the crimes into which they were so frequently
betrayed, knew no other expedient for appeasing the Deity than a
profuse liberality towards the ecclesiastics. But the monks had
hitherto been a species of secular priests, who lived after the manner
of the present canons or prebendaries, and were both intermingled, in
some degree, with the world, and endeavoured to render themselves
useful to it. They were employed in the education of youth [e]: they
had the disposal of their own time and industry: they were not
subjected to the rigid rules of an order: they had made no vows of
implicit obedience to their superiors [f]: and they still retained the
choice, without quitting the convent, either of a married or a single
life [g]. But a mistaken piety had produced in Italy a new species of
monks called Benedictines; who, carrying farther the plausible
principles of mortification, secluded themselves entirely from the
world, renounced all claim to liberty, and made a merit of the most
inviolable chastity. These practices and principles, which
superstition at first engendered, were greedily embraced and promoted
by the policy of the court of Rome. The Roman pontiff, who was making
every day great advances towards an absolute sovereignty over the
ecclesiastics, perceived that the celibacy of the clergy alone could
break off entirely their connexion with the civi