The canons of the church required all persons to make confession, and so
enter upon the fast tide, having "thus purified their minds;" [x]
it may, alas! be easily guessed how the guilty lads performed this duty,
how enforced confession only led to their adding the sin of further
deceit, and that of a deadly kind.
Thus they entered upon Lent: their abstinence was entirely compulsory,
not voluntary; and although they made up for it in some degree when they
could get away from the palace, yet even this was difficult, for it was
positively unlawful for butchers to sell or for people to buy meat at
the prohibited seasons, and the law was not easily evaded. But it was a
prayerless Lent also to Elfric, for he had, alas! even discontinued his
habit of daily prayer, a habit he had hitherto maintained from
childhood, a habit first learned at his mother's knee.
Holy Week came, and was spent with great strictness; the king seemed to
divide his whole time between the business of state and the duties of
religion.
Dunstan was absent at Glastonbury, but other ecclesiastics thronged the
palace, and there were few, save the guilty boys and Redwald, who seemed
uninfluenced by the solemn commemoration.
But it must not be supposed that Elfric was wholly uninfluenced: after
the preaching of the Passion by a poor simple monk on Good Friday, he
retired to his own little room, where he wept as if his heart would
break.
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