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.