As already related, Alfred had planned the important foundation of the Newan Mynstre, and had settled the site before his death. Its completion was the work of the early days of Edward the Elder, who, almost immediately on ascending the throne, convened a great meeting of the Witan at Winchester to discuss the matter at the outset. The king’s own views were limited and parsimonious, and he was anxious to lay the lands of the Ealden Mynstre under contribution as a means of defraying the cost, but the venerable Grimbald, now over eighty years of age, was inflexible. “God will not,” said he, “accept robbery for burnt-offering,” and he carried his point. The king made a liberal endowment for the purpose, and the walls of the minster rose apace. At the same time the abbey of St. Mary, founded by Alswitha, was proceeded with, and the monastic quarter of the city saw a trinity of fair monasteries, grouped side by side, rise rapidly into prominence. Accident served to invest the new abbey with peculiar interest and sanctity. A Danish descent on Picardy had driven a crowd of refugees to seek shelter across the sea, and they had crossed over to Hampshire, bearing with them their greatest treasure--the hallowed bones of their patron saint, St. Judocus or St. Josse. The king received them hospitably at Winchester, and the sacred relics were solemnly and splendidly enshrined within the partially completed church of the New Minster. Then in 903, in the presence of a great concourse of nobles and clergy, the dedication of the New Minster was solemnly performed by Plegmund, Archbishop of Canterbury. Scarcely was this completed ere another equally striking act was performed, viz. the translation within the walls of the new church of the remains of the founder, the great Alfred himself--a solemn and imposing rite, carried out with all the pomp and dignity of impressive circumstance: cum apparatibus regali magnificentia dignis (with solemn pomp befitting his royal state), as the _Liber de Hyda_ informs us.