ST. DUNSTAN
Edred, who succeeded his brother, made Dunstan Keeper of his Treasure, which was kept at Glastonbury; and, as we have seen, he appointed his mother, Queen Ediva, and Dunstan as his chief advisers and rulers in the government of the country.
Dunstan seems to have had visions and experiences all through his life; on one occasion he dreamed that he journeyed to Rome and that he met there Saints Peter, Paul and Andrew, the latter of whom gave him a blow with a rod because he had refused to accept the See of Crediton when it had been offered to him by Edred in 953; on another occasion when he was bringing the body of his brother, Wulfric, who was his seneschal at Glastonbury, for burial, his hat was knocked off his head by a blow from a thrown stone, which was said to have been thrown by the Devil.
After the death of Edred in 955, when his nephew Edwy came to the throne troubles began. Edwy had taken a great dislike to him, which culminated on the occasion noticed in the account of Odo, where Dunstan compelled the young King to return to the Coronation Banquet and his guests, and to leave his wife and her mother to entertain themselves.
Bishop Godwin[1] thought that the disapproval of the young King was mainly caused by the fact that Dunstan was supposed to have bewitched the King's predecessors in favour of the monastic orders to such an extent, that they not only extorted the incomes of the married clergy, but dissipated the Royal Treasure on the foundation of monasteries, instead of using it to wage war on the common enemy of God and man, the Dane. On this account Edwy became the oppressor of the monasteries and sought to annex their treasure, which he thought he might as well do as leave it to become the plunder of the pagan Dane. Dunstan fell into disgrace and fled to France, till the death of Edwy in 959. When the whole kingdom was united under Edgar, Dunstan was recalled and received by the King with great honour. He was promoted first to the Bishopric of Worcester in 957; then in 959 was translated to London, and in 960 became Archbishop of Canterbury. It was while Dunstan was in exile in France and Flanders that he had the opportunity of studying the Rule of St. Benedict, and observing the
- ↑ Catalogue of the Bishops of England, 1615.
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