The tale itself is intended to depict what the writer believes to be the true relative positions of Edwy and the great ecclesiastic; therefore he will not attempt to deal with the subject here. It will be noticed however, that he has shorn the narrative of the dread catastrophe with which it terminated in all the histories of our childhood. Scarcely any writer has made such wise research into the history of this period as Mr. E. A. Freeman, and the author has adopted his conclusions upon this point. With him he has therefore admitted the marriage of Edwy with Elgiva, although it was an uncanonical marriage beyond all doubt, and has given her the title of queen, which she bore in a document preserved by Lappenburg. But, in agreement with the same authority, the writer feels most happy to be able to reject the story of Elgiva’s supposed tragical death. All sorts of stories are told by later writers, utterly contradictory and confused, of a woman killed by the Mercians in their revolt. This could not be Elgiva, for she was not divorced till the rebellion was over; and even the sad tale that she was seized by the officers of Odo, and branded to disfigure her beauty, rests on no good authority. In spite of the reluctance with which men relinquish a touching tragedy, the calumny should be banished from the pages of historians; and it is painful to see it repeated, as if of undoubted authenticity, in a recent popular history for children by one of the greatest of modern novelists.
Edwy’s character has cost the writer much thought. He has endeavoured to paint him faithfully—not so bad as all the monastic writers of the succeeding period (the only writers with few exceptions) describe him; but still such a youth as the circumstances under which he became placed would probably have made him—capable of sincere attachment, brave, and devoted to his friends, yet careless of all religious obligations; bitterly hostile to the Church, that is to Christianity, for the terms were then synonymous; and reckless of obligations, or of the sanctity of truth and justice.
His measures against St. Dunstan, as they are related in the tale, have the authority of history; although it is needless to say that the agents are in part fictitious characters. The writer’s object has been to subordinate fiction to history, and never to contradict historic fact; if he has failed in this intention, it has been his misfortune rather than his fault; for he has had recourse to all such authorities as lay in his reach.i Especially, he is glad to find that the character he had conceived as Edwy’s perfectly coincides with the description given by Palgrave in his valuable History of the Anglo-Saxons: