Eadred was the patron and protector of the wise abbot Dunstan, the first of the great clerical statesmen who made a mark on the history of England. He was a man of great ability and learning, who had risen to be abbot of Glastonbury under Edmund, and became one of the chief advisers of the pious Eadred, who was attracted to him as much by his asceticism as by his eminent mental qualities. Dunstan was a man with a purpose. He wished to reform the English Church in the direction of monastic asceticism, and was most especially anxious to make compulsory the celibacy of the clergy, a practice which had not hitherto been enforced in England. There was undoubtedly much ignorance and a certain amount of ill-living among the secular clergy, and Dunstan, not content with warring against this, tried also to reform the monasteries all over the face of the land, and to enforce the rule of St. Benedict, "poverty, chastity, and obedience," in every place. Dunstan's method of carrying out his views was by winning court influence, which he was very fitted to obtain, for he was the cleverest, most versatile, and most learned man of his day. [Sidenote: =Eadwig, 955-959.--Quarrel with Dunstan.=] When the pious Eadred died, he was succeeded by his nephew Eadwig (Edwy), the son of his brother Edmund. This prince had been a child when Leofa the outlaw slew his father, and the Witan had put him aside in favour of his uncle, because the rule of a minor was always disliked by the English. But now he was seventeen, and a very rash and headstrong youth. Eadwig very soon quarrelled with Dunstan and with Oda, Archbishop of Canterbury, because he insisted on taking to wife the Lady Aelfgyfu (Elgiva), who was his near kinswoman, and within the "prohibited degrees" of the mediaeval Church. The churchmen declared her to be no true wife of the king, and treated the royal pair with such insult that Eadwig grew furious. The tale is well known how, when Eadwig at a high feast had retired betimes to his wife's chamber, Oda and another bishop followed him and dragged him back by force to the board where the thegns were feasting. [Sidenote: =Triumph of the Church party.=] The king, as was natural, quarrelled with the Church party, and drove Dunstan out of England. But his clerical opponents were too much for him: they conspired with the Anglo-Danes of Northumbria, and with many discontented thegns, and set up against Eadwig his younger brother Eadgar, whom Archbishop Oda crowned as King of England. There followed civil war, in which Eadwig had the worst; his wife fell into the hands of Oda, who cruelly branded her with hot irons and shipped her to Ireland. Only Wessex adhered to the cause of Eadwig, and he was at last compelled to bow before his enemies. He acknowledged his brother as King of all England north of Thames, and died almost immediately after (959). [Sidenote: =Eadgar, 959-975.--Ascendency of Dunstan.=]