The teacher to whom the education of Ethelwulf when a boy had been entrusted by his father, and who retained considerable influence over him in manhood, was an ecclesiastic of noble birth named Swithun, who is chiefly now remembered on account of the meteorological phenomena connected with the day devoted to him in the calendar (July 15, 971).[118] The gentle and devout character of Ethelwulf seems to have retained through life the impress of the teaching of the unworldly St. Swithun, but he had also another counsellor by whom he was often braced to the performance of the difficult work of reigning. This was Ealhstan, a stirring warrior-prelate, who in 848 won a great and bloody victory over the Danes, at the mouth of the Parret, in Bridgwater Bay, fighting side by side with the ealdormen of Somerset and Dorset. Ealhstan was bishop of the great diocese of Sherborne (including the counties of Somerset and Devon), while Swithun in 852, towards the end of Ethelwulf’s reign, was enthroned in the more dignified see of Winchester. The influence, in some respects the diverging influence, of these two counsellors of the king is probably described with truth by the twelfth century historian, William of Malmesbury. “These two eminent bishops, seeing the king to be of somewhat dull and lethargic temperament, stirred him up by frequent admonitions to the performance of his kingly duties. Swithun, who looked on worldly things with disgust, moulded the mind of his lord to the love of things heavenly. Ealhstan, who thought that secular matters also should not be neglected, animated him to the war against the Danes, himself often furnishing money to the royal treasury, himself setting the battle in array. Any one who reads our annals will find that many such affairs were resolutely begun and gloriously ended by him.” The historian, however, remarks that he cannot give Ealhstan the unmingled praise which he would willingly offer, because of his unjust encroachments on the rights of the monastery of Malmesbury.