Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/75

 and Sentiments. t^^ fort of family poffeffion,* the priefts themfelves being what we fhould call family men ; fo that when the Anglo-Saxon people were Chriftians, and no longer pagans, the mafs of the clergy, whatever may have been their fincerity as Chriftians, could not underftand, or, at leaft, were unwilling to accept, the new Romifli do6trine which required their celibacy. In both thefe cafes, the Anglo-Saxon ecclefiaftical writers, who are our chief authority on this fubjed:, and were the moft bigoted of the Romifh party, fpeak in terms of exaggerated virulence, on the fcore of morality, againft pra6tices which the Anglo-Saxon people had not been ufed to confider as immoral at all. Thus, we lliould be led to believe, from the accounts of thefe ecclefiaftical moralifts, that the Anglo- Saxon clergy were infamous for their incontinence, whereas their decla- mations probably mean only that the Anglo-Saxon priefts pedifted in having wives and families. The fecular laws contain frequent allufions to the continuance of principles relating to the marriage Hate, which were derived from the older period of paganifm, and fome of thefe are extremely curious. Thus, the laws of king Ethelred provide that a man who feduces another man's wife, fhall make reparation, not only as in modern times, by paying pecuniary damages, but alfo by procuring him another wife ! or, in the words of the original, " If a freeman have been familiar with a freeman's wife, let him pay for it with his icer-gild (the money compenlation for the killing of a man), and provide another wife with his own money, and bring her home to the other." By a law of king Ine, " if any man buy a wife (that is, if the bargain with her father early history of Northumbria, which has much puzzled some antiquaries 5 I mean the story, given by Bede, of the conversion of king Edwin, and of the part acted on that occasion by the Northumbrian priest Coifi. The place where the priesthood was held, and where the temple stood, was called Godmundingaham, a name which it has preserved, slightly modified, to the present day. This name has been the victim of the most absurd attempts at derivation, which are not worth repeating here, because every one who knows the Anglo-Saxon language, and anything of Anglo-Saxon antiquities, is aware that it can only have one meaning — the home, or head residence, of the Godmundings, or descendants of Godmund. Perhaps the priesthood was at this time in the family of the Godmundings, and Coifi may have been then the head of the family. has
 * This fact of family priesthood may perhaps explain a circumstance in the