Note 862 — Chapter VIII · THE BISHOP.

Though monks are not strictly speaking the clergy, so many prelates and presbyters were bound by monastic vows in this country, that I might be supposed to have fallen into confusion here, and forgotten the troubles of Eádwig’s reign. But it will be seen hereafter that I attach little credit to the exaggerations of the monkish authors respecting those events, and believe their clients to have done much less mischief than they themselves have recorded, or than their modern antagonists have credited.