Still the use of wine and beer was not by any means forbidden in religious houses. Dunstan, Abbot of Glastonbury (A.D. 925-988), limited the supply of wine as follows:—After mass the officiating ministers received a quarter of a pound of bread and a quarter of a pint of wine; this was called _mixtus_. After collations (which did not mean lunch, as nowadays, but reading of Lives of the Fathers) on feast days, each monk received a cup of wine, which was followed by a few words of thanksgiving by the abbot; and both there and in other well-regulated monasteries drinking does not appear to have been excessive.[223] With time, however, as we shall see presently, great changes for the worse supervened. The Danes are said to have been much heavier drinkers than the Saxons, and from the stories which are told of them in the old chronicles, the soldiers seem to have set no bounds upon their intemperance. More than one anecdote is related of guards being overcome by drink;[224] and every child knows the story of King Alfred introducing himself in the disguise of a minstrel into the camp of Guthrum the Danish general, and finding his soldiers steeped in drunkenness and dissipation. The last Danish king, Hardicanute, was a great drunkard; in fact, his death is said to have resulted in 1042 from a debauch at Lambeth. * * * * * With the advent of the Normans new phases of social life were introduced into England, and at first there may have been a little less coarseness in the drinking customs of the conquerors than in those of the vanquished race. The former did not, however, long enjoy even that qualified reputation for sobriety, and they are said soon to have excelled the Saxons in their feats of debauchery. Our information regarding their ways and customs is derived from other sources besides those which we have hitherto examined. The French illuminated manuscripts as well as our own give us considerable insight into the habits of the time, and show that similar customs obtained in both countries. The chief sources of information are, however, the French and Anglo-Norman Fabliaux or tales in verse, written chiefly in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and the Bayeux tapestry. We learn a good deal from the wood carvings of the period still preserved in churches, and from the “men” which were used in the favourite game of chess; the chronicles of the monasteries, too, are a fertile source of instruction. Our attention will naturally be turned first to the nobles and knights, and along with them we shall consider the clerics, many of them priests-militant, and the monastic orders.