Note 138 — 155 SIR HUGH, OR, THE JEW’S DAUGHTER

Nothing could be more just than these words of Percy: “If we consider, on the one hand, the ignorance and superstition of the times when such stories took their rise, the virulent prejudices of the monks who record them, and the eagerness with which they would be catched up by the barbarous populace as a pretence for plunder; on the other hand, the great danger incurred by the perpetrators, and the inadequate motives they could have to excite them to a crime of so much horror, we may reasonably conclude the whole charge to be groundless and malicious.” Reliques, 1795, I, 32.