Note 244 — HISTORY OF LYNN, PART II.

Canute, one of the greatest and wisest of our kings, next to Alfred, had a mighty veneration for relics, and even employed agents in foreign countries to purchase and collect them for him. One of these, an archbishop of Canterbury, called Agelnoth, being at Rome, in 1021, purchased, of the Pope, an arm of St. Austin, bishop of Hippo, for an hundred talents, or 6000 pound weight of silver, and one talent, or sixty pound weight of gold. A prodigious sum! greater (says Granger) than the finest statue of antiquity would then have sold for. It may enable us, as another historian observes, to form some idea of the unconscionable knavery of the sellers, and the astonishing folly and superstition of the purchasers of those commodities. Enormous sums were then expended in the purchase of relics, and the roads between England and Rome were so crowded with pilgrims, that the very tolls which they paid were objects of importance to the princes through whose territories they passed: few Englishmen, as Henry expresses it, imagined they could get to heaven without paying this compliment to St. Peter, who kept the keys of the celestial regions.—Such was the wisdom, and such the piety and christianity of the people of this country in former times, and for many ages.—Even Alfred, according to Rapin, was much attached to relics, and received, with no small satisfaction and gratitude, those sent him as presents from the Pope, and from Abel Patriarch of Jerusalem. His foibles, however, were greatly overbalanced by his great qualities, good deeds, and shining virtues.