Note 7 — THE ANTIQUITIES OF BRIDGNORTH. PART I.
Reading edition
This narrative may possibly be somewhat tinctured with the superstition which prevailed at the time; but there is no reason to doubt the general truth of it. Mr. Eyton, to whom I am indebted for my acquaintance with it, after giving the whole of the narrative in detail, in Vol. 1, part 2, p. 107, of his Antiquities of Shropshire, makes this comment on it:—“The whole of this narrative is credible in itself, and minutely consistent with other ascertained facts; nor need we take exception even to the Priest’s dream, for who knows not that the feverish sleep of over fatigue will invest our hopes and anxieties with some garb of life-like reality. Moreover this priest lived at a time when priests were taught to believe in and to expect such special revelations of the divine will.”
“Parts of this story nevertheless, require explanation; and the whole of it must be tested by other facts and dates before we admit it to that credence, which the details of a legend most seldom deserve.”
He has applied such tests, and has been fully satisfied with the result.