men was fresh in the memory of all.

Athelney lay a

CHAP. VI.

the Danelaw.

937

955.

few miles off across the Polden hills; and Wedmore, Wessex and where the final frith was made and the chrism-fillet of Guthrum unloosed, rose out of the neighbouring marshes. Memories of Ine met the boy as he passed to school at Glastonbury, which still remained notable as a place of pilgrimage, though but a few secular priests clung to the house which the king had founded, and its lands had for the most part been stripped from it.' The ardour of Dunstan's temper was seen in the eagerness with which he plunged into the study of letters; and his knowledge became at last so famous in the neighbourhood that news of it reached the court. Dunstan was called there, no doubt as one of the young nobles who received their training in attendance on the king during boyhood and early youth; but his appearance was the signal for a burst of jealousy among the royal thegns, though many were kinsmen of his own; he was forced to his career as guide and counsellor of Eadred must have been between the ages of twenty-two and thirty-one. This seems very improbable, and the "oritur" may perhaps be fairly construed "rises into notice," which would throw back his birth into the days of Eadward. Granting this, Adelard's statement that Archbishop Æthelm, who died in the same year with Eadward, first brought him to court, may be true ("Memor." p. 55 and Introd. p. lxxviii.).

1 It had a church "built by no art of man"; to which Æthelstan went on pilgrimage, and where "Hiberniensium perigrini" came to visit the tomb of a younger Patrick, bringing their books with them, which Dunstan read (Sax. Biog. "Memor." pp. 7, 10, 11).

2 His age shows that this must be the meaning of the Saxon biographer's "inter regios proceres et palatinos principes electus." ("Memor." p. 21.)

CHAP. VI.

the Danelaw.

withdraw, and when he was again summoned on the Wessex and accession of Eadmund his rivals not only drove him from the king's train, but threw him from his horse as he rode through the marshes, and with the wild passion of their age trampled him underfoot in the mire.1

937955.

Made

Glastonbury.

The outrage brought fever, and in the bitterness of Abbot of disappointment and shame Dunstan rose from his bed of sickness a monk.2 But in England the monastic profession was at this time little more than a vow of celibacy and clerical life, and his devotion took no ascetic turn. His nature in fact was sunny, versatile, artistic, full of strong affections and capable of inspiring others with affections as strong. Throughout his life he won the love of women, and in these earlier years of retirement at Glastonbury he became the spiritual guide of a woman of high rank who lived only for charity and the entertainment of pilgrims. "He ever clave to her and loved her in wondrous fashion." Quick-witted, of tenacious memory, a ready and fluent speaker, gay and genial of address, an artist, a musician, an indefatigable worker alike at books or handicraft, his sphere of activity widened as the wealth of his devotee was placed unreservedly at his command. We see him followed by a train of pupils, busy with literature, harping, painting, designing. In one pleasant tale of these days a lady summons him to her house to design a robe which she is embroidering, and

1 Sax. Biog. (" Memor." p. 12).

2 Sax. Biog. ("Memor." p. 14). He had been tonsured as a clerk from boyhood (p. 10).

3 See Stubbs," Mem. of Dunstan," Introd. lxxxiii.-v.

CHAP. VI.

the Danelaw.

937

955.

as Dunstan bends with her maidens over their toil the harp which he has hung on the wall sounds without Wessex and mortal touch tones which the startled ears around frame into a joyous antiphon. But the tie which bound Dunstan to this scholar-life was broken by the death of his patroness; and towards the close of Eadmund's reign the young scholar was again called to the court. Even in Æthelstan's day he seems to have been known to both the younger sons of Eadward the Elder; and with one of these, Eadred, his friendship became of the closest kind. But the old jealousies revived; his life was again in danger; and the game seemed so utterly lost that Dunstan threw himself on the protection of some envoys who had come at this time from the German court of Otto to the English king. He was preparing to return with them to their home in Saxony when an unlooked-for chance restored him. suddenly to power. A red-deer which Eadmund was chasing over Mendip dashed down the Cheddar cliffs, and the king only checked his horse on the brink of the ravine. In the bitterness of anticipated death he had repented of his injustice to Dunstan; and on his return from the chase the young priest was summoned to his presence. "Saddle your horse," said Eadmund," and ride with me!" The royal train swept over the marshes to Dunstan's home; and greeting him with the kiss of peace, the king seated him in the abbot's chair as Abbot of Glastonbury."

Sax.

1 66 Regni orientis nuncii cum rege tunc hospitantes." Biog. ("Memor." p. 23). I follow the suggestion of Professor Stubbs as to this "Eastern Realm."

2 Kemble places this before 940, on faith of a charter (Cod,

CHAP. VI.

Wessex and the Danelaw.

937955.

Eadred.

From that moment Dunstan may have exercised some influence on public affairs; but it was not till Eadmund's murder that his influence became supreme. Eadmund was but twenty-five years old when he died; and as his children, Eadwig and Eadgar, were too young to follow him on the throne, the crown passed to his last surviving brother, the Ætheling Eadred.1 Eadred had long been bound by a close friendship to Dunstan; and a friendship as close bound the young abbot to the mother of the king, the wife of Eadward the Elder, who seems to have wielded the main influence at Eadred's court.

2

of even greater moment that Dunstan seems to have been linked by a close intimacy with the "Half-King" Æthelstan. The fact that Ethelstan's wife Elfwen is said to have been the foster-mother of Eadgar, as well as his own elevation, proves the influence of the East-Anglian ealdorman in the reign of Eadmund; he was in fact already "Primarius,” a post which reminds us of the office of Alfred as "Secundarius," as possibly a germ of the later Justiciarship, and which at any rate placed him near to the king himself in the government of the realm. Under Eadred his influence became yet greater; he seems to

Dip. 384) of that year; but Professor Stubbs regards his signature as a later insertion. He certainly signed as abbot in 946 (Cod. Dip. 411); and his nomination was probably not much earlier (Stubbs, "Mem. of Dunstan," Intro. p. lxxx.).

1 Eng. Chron. a. 946.

2 Robertson, "Hist. Essays," 180.

3 Sax. Biogr. ("Memor. of Dunstan "), p. 44. Cujusdam primarii ducis, utpote Ælfstani;" and again, "prædicto comitante secum Primario."

CHAP. VI.

have displaced Wulfgar, whose signature through Eadmund's days had preceded his own, as the leading Wessex and counsellor of the crown, and signs first of all secular

nobles through the coming reign.' It was with the support of Æthelstan that Dunstan from this moment stood among Eadred's advisers.

2

the Danelaw.

937.

955.

realm.

Of his political work indeed we know little, but The fourfold we can hardly mistake his hand in the solemn proclamation which announced the king's crowning at Kingston. The crowning of Eadred indeed was a fresh step forward towards a national kingship. His election was the first national election, the first election by a witenagemot where Briton and Dane and Englishmen were alike represented, where Welsh under-kings and Danish jarls sate side by side with English nobles and bishops. His coronation was in the same way the first national coronation, the first

1 See the charters of these reigns in the Codex Diplomaticus. 2 Cod. Dip. 411, a grant to the "pedisequus" Wulfric, apparently one of a number of coronation grants, at any rate of the first year, 'quo sceptra diadematum Angul-Saxna cum Nordhymbris et Paganorum cum Brettonibus (Eadredus) gubernabat," is prefaced by what looks like a general proclamation of the new sovereign. "Concedente gratia Dei. . contigit post obitum Eadmundi regis, qui regimina regnorum AngulSaxna, et Nordhymbra, Paganorum Brettonumque, septem annorum intervallo regaliter gubernabat, quod Eadred frater ejus uterinus, electione optimatum subrogatus, pontificali auctoritate eodem anno catholice est rex et rector ad regna quadripartiti regiminis consecratus, qui denique rex in villa quæ dicitur regis, Cyngestun, ubi consecratio peracta est, plura plurimis perenniter condonavit carismata." This is attested by the two archbishops, Odo and Wulfstan, ten bishops, "Howael regulus, Marcant, Cadmo," and by "Urm, Imorcer eorl, Grim, Andcoll eorl," and "Dunstan abbud."