LXXIX.—EDWARD THE CONFESSOR.LINGARD.John Lingard, D. D., was born in England in 1771; died in 1851. With the completion of the “History of England,” which has been republished in New York in thirteen volumes, the literary fame of Dr. Lingard became established throughout Europe. Cardinal Wiseman speaks of this history, and its learned author, in the following terms: “It is a Providence that in history we have had given to the nation a writer like Lingard, whose gigantic merit will be better appreciated in each successive generation, as it sees his work standing calm and erect amidst the shoals of petty pretenders to usurp his station. When Hume shall have fairly taken his place among the classical writers of our tongue, and Macaulay shall have been transferred to the shelves of romances and poets, and each thus have received his due meed of praise, then Lingard will be still more conspicuous as the only impartial historian of our country.”
LINGARD.
John Lingard, D. D., was born in England in 1771; died in 1851. With the completion of the “History of England,” which has been republished in New York in thirteen volumes, the literary fame of Dr. Lingard became established throughout Europe. Cardinal Wiseman speaks of this history, and its learned author, in the following terms: “It is a Providence that in history we have had given to the nation a writer like Lingard, whose gigantic merit will be better appreciated in each successive generation, as it sees his work standing calm and erect amidst the shoals of petty pretenders to usurp his station. When Hume shall have fairly taken his place among the classical writers of our tongue, and Macaulay shall have been transferred to the shelves of romances and poets, and each thus have received his due meed of praise, then Lingard will be still more conspicuous as the only impartial historian of our country.”
1. If we estimate the character of a sovereign by the test of popular affection, we must rank Edward among the best princes of his time. The goodness of hisheart was adored by his subjects, who lamented his death with tears of undissembled grief, and bequeathed his memory as an object of veneration to their posterity. The blessings of his reign are the constant theme of our ancient writers: not, indeed, that he displayed any of those brilliant qualities which attract admiration, while they inflict misery.
2. He could not boast of the victories which he had achieved; but he exhibited the interesting spectacle of a king, negligent of his private interests, and wholly devoted to the welfare of his people; and, by his labors to restore the dominion of the laws, his vigilance to ward off foreign aggression, his constant, and ultimately successful, solicitude to appease the feuds of his nobles,—if he did not prevent the interruption, he secured, at least, a longer duration of public tranquillity, than had been enjoyed in England for half a century.
3. He was pious, kind, and compassionate; the father of the poor, and the protector of the weak; more willing to give than to receive, the better pleased to pardon than to punish. Under the preceding kings, force generally supplied the place of justice, and the people were impoverished by the rapacity of the sovereign. But Edward enforced the laws of his Saxon predecessors, and disdained the riches that were wrung from the labors of his subjects.
4. Temperate in his diet, unostentatious in his person, pursuing no pleasures but those which his hawks and hounds afforded, he was content with the patrimonial domains of the crown; and was able to assert, even after the abolition of that fruitful source of revenue, theDanegelt, that he possessed a greater portion of wealth than any of his predecessors enjoyed. To him, the principle that the king can do no wrong, was literally applied by the gratitude of his people, who, if they occasionally complained of the measures of the government, attributed the blame not to the monarch himself, of whose benevolence they entertained no doubt, but to the ministers, who had abused his confidence, or deceived his credulity.
5. It was, however, a fortunate circumstance for the memory of Edward, that he occupied the interval between the Danish and Norman conquests. Writers were induced to view his character with more partiality, from the hatred with which they looked upon his successors and predecessors. They were foreigners; he was a native: they held the crown by conquest; he by descent: they ground to the dust the slaves whom they had made; he became known to his countrymen only by his benefits. Hence he appeared to shine with purer light amid the gloom with which he was surrounded; and whenever the people under the despotism of the Norman kings, had any opportunity of expressing their real wishes, they constantly called for “the laws and customs of the good King Edward”.