absence: they filled the public with high panegyrics on his sanctity: they exclaimed against the impiety of the king and queen; and having poisoned the minds of the people by these declamations, they proceeded to still more outrageous acts of violence against the royal authority. Archbishop Odo sent into the palace a party of soldiers, who seized the queen; and having burned her face with a rod-hot iron, in order to destroy that fatal beauty which had seduced Edwy, they carried her by force into Ireland, there to remain in perpetual exile.[****] Edwy, finding it in vain to resist, was obliged to consent to his divorce, which was pronounced by Odo;[*****] and a catastrophe still more dismal awaited the unhappy Elgiva. That amiable princess being cured of her wounds, and having even obliterated the scars with which Odo had hoped to deface her beauty, returned into England, and was flying to the embraces of the king, whom she still regarded as her husband; when she fell into the hands of a party whom the primate had sent to intercept her. Nothing but her death could now give security to Odo and the monks, and the most cruel death was requisite to satiate their vengeance. She was hamstringed; and expired a few days after at Glocester in the most acute torments.[******] [* Wallingford, p. 542.] [** W. Malms, lib. ii. cap. 7. Osberne, p. 83, 105. M. West. p. 195, 196.] [*** Wallingford, p. 542. Alured. Beverl. p. 112.] [**** Osberne, p. 84. Gervase, p. 1644.] [***** Hoveden, p. 425.] [****** Osberne, p. 84. Gervase, p. 1645, 1646] The English, blinded with superstition, instead of being shocked with this inhumanity, exclaimed that the misfortunes of Edwy and his consort were a just judgment for their dissolute contempt of the ecclesiastical statutes. They even proceeded to rebellion against their sovereign; and having placed Edgar at their head, the younger brother of Edwy, a boy of thirteen years of age, they soon put him in possession of Mercia, Northumberland, East Anglia, and chased Edwy into the southern counties. That it might not be doubtful at whose instigation this revolt was undertaken, Dunstan returned into England, and took upon him the government of Edgar and his party. He was first installed in the see of Worcester, then in that of London,[**] and, on Odo’s death, and the violent expulsion of Brithelm, his successor, in that of Canterbury;[***] of all which he long kept possession. Odo is transmitted to us by the monks under the character of a man of piety: Dunstan was even canonized; and is one of those numerous saints of the same stamp, who disgrace the Romish calendar. Meanwhile the unhappy Edwy was excommunicated,[****] and pursued with unrelenting vengeance; but his death, which happened soon after, freed his enemies from all further inquietude, and gave Edgar peaceable possession of the government.[*****] [2] [** Chron. Sax. p. 117. Flor. Wigorn. p. 605. Wallingford, p. 544]