The policy of Eadred and of his successors seems so closely connected with the rise of Dunstan, that it may be justly attributed to him. The monkish historians, to whom we owe our knowledge of this great man, have overlaid his history with mythical stories, and have given him a character and policy to suit their own purposes. In their eagerness to secure the name of the greatest statesman of the age in support of their pretensions against the secular clergy, they have drawn him as a youth of miraculous gifts, of severe monkish asceticism, whose claim to greatness consisted in the establishment of the Benedictine rule. In the same way they have painted his opponent King Edwy [Eadwig] in the blackest colours. The common story tells us that, after a childhood passed in learning, so deep as to excite a suspicion of magic, illness drove Dunstan to the cloister at Glastonbury; that he there established the Benedictine rule, entering with such vehemence into its spirit that his asceticism almost turned his brain. On the accession of Edwy, the young king, it is said, deserted the assembly of the nobles, to pass his time in the company of the beautiful Ælfgyfu [Elgiva], his mistress. Dunstan is represented as violently dragging the unworthy king back to his proper place, as securing the banishment of Ælfgyfu, and with his partisans cruelly putting her to death upon her return. Edwy is then described as raging fiercely against all the monks in his kingdom. In truth, it is in politics rather than in ecclesiastical discipline that Dunstan’s greatness must be sought, and he must take his place in history rather as a conciliatory and patriotic governor than as an ascetic and violent churchman.