The general character of Dunstan's ecclesiastical administration may be gathered from the laws and canons of Eadgar's reign. The laws mark a step in the history of tithes, for they contain the first provision for enforcing payment by legal process, by the joint action of civil and ecclesiastical officers, and they declare the right of the parish priest in certain cases to a portion of the payment made by the landowner, independently of any distribution by the bishop. When a thegn had on his estate of inheritance a church with a burying-ground, it was ordered that he should give one-third to the priest; if his church had no burying-ground, he might give the priest what he pleased. The payment of Peter's pence is also commanded. It is evident from the canons that Dunstan endeavoured to make the clergy the educators of the people; priests were to teach each his own scholars, and not take away the scholars of others; they were to learn handicrafts and instruct their people in them, and to preach a sermon every Sunday. The laity were to avoid concubinage and practise lawful marriage. And both in continence, and in every other respect, the necessity of raising the clergy to a higher level of life than that of the society round them was fully recognized; they were not to hunt, hawk, play at dice, or engage in drinking-bouts, and greater attention was to be paid to ritual, especially in celebrating the Eucharist. While they were thus to be brought, as regards both their lives and the performance of their duties, to a deeper sense of the dignity of their calling, they were socially to hold a high place; a priest engaged in a suit with a thegn was not to be called on to make oath until the thegn had first sworn, and the quarrels of priests were to be decided by a bishop, and not taken before a secular judge. In these and other efforts to raise the character and position of the clergy Dunstan did not desire to make the Church less national, or to separate her ministers from the life of the nation and subject them to the authority of Rome. He worked, as the spiritual ruler of the national Church, for the good both of the Church and the nation, and evidently maintained an independent attitude towards the Pope. A noble, whom he had excommunicated for contracting an unlawful marriage, obtained a papal mandate ordering the archbishop to absolve him. Dunstan flatly refused to obey the order, declaring that he would rather suffer death than be unfaithful to his Lord. [Sidenote: Coronations.]