Page:Elizabeth Elstob - An English-Saxon homily on the birth-day of St. Gregory.djvu/46

, that Sentence stands entire: not excepting that most ancient one, belonging to the Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of Ely, which from many probable Circumstances, as well as from the manner of writing, Mr. Wanley judges to have been written about two Years after Bede''’s Death. Besides, by an exact and accurate Examination of the Chronology, Mr. Wharton seems to have decided this Matter; making it appear from William The Author of the Antiquitates Britannicæ could not dissemble the Authority of Thomas Spott, who was elder than Thorn; and of other Monks, who affirm, thai Augustine'' did not live till Six hundred and eleven, but died a long time before. And, he says, they asserted this to take off the Infamy and suspicion of the Welsh Massacre: and his Conjecture that they did so, is enough to destroy their Authority. But why shou'd not they, who were Monks, of St. Augustine and lived long before his time, understand the History of their Founder? and why must every Man's Fancy, without other Proof, cancel the Authority of Histories not disallow'd in other Points. Leland, as I have obferved in the Appendix, complains of the Loss of Spott’s Book, and charges the stifling of it upon poor Thorn. But if that Book be really lost, there is much more reason to suspect that it was supprest some time after, in an Age when, we see, such Authorities cou'd not be born. And the declaring such a truth, as that Augustine was not at the Welsh Massacre, was enough to ruin the Reputation of a Writer. But to demolish the Credit of one poor Historian, was a small Matter with those who spared not to plunder all the Libraries of the whole Kingdom. And it may be some farther defence of Thorn, what has been urged on a like Pretence of stifling Authors, on the behalf of Polydore Virgil, by the late Bp. of Worcefter, ''Orig. Sacr.'' p. 254. "Did he destroy them after he had used them? But this were Madness, to quote their Authority, and destroy the Authors; for these were his Vouchers, which ought most carefully to have been preserved." And this Opinion, I am apt to believe Thorn was of himself, for he owns himself to have taken the greatest part of his History from Spott, and appeals to him as his Voucher. And here I cannot but take Thorn, and other Authorities, that Augustine and Gregory