The ambitious hopes of Elfrida were justly doomed to meet with disappointment: the power she sought to obtain by the assassination of Edward eluded her grasp, and Dunstan, though aged and infirm, still stood at the head of his party, triumphant. The Saxons looked with disgust upon a woman who had caused her son-in-law to be stabbed at her own castle-gate; and there is but little doubt that the primate, for a time, so successfully raised the popular indignation against her, that she was compelled to seek shelter in a nunnery until the storm subsided. On the head of the son of the murderess, the primate placed the crown, in 978; and it is recorded that, instead of pronouncing a blessing upon it, the stern churchman gave utterance to a bitter malediction, foreboding that a reign which was begun with bloodshed and murder, could only end in sorrow, suffering, and dishonourable humiliation. Ethelred possessed not those qualities which, by their sterling worth, weigh down all unpopular opinion; where the darkness had once settled, it remained; for he illuminated it not by the brilliant achievement of glorious deeds. In the eyes of the Saxon nation the blood of Alfred was at last contaminated; the wisdom which had so long governed England peaceably, had waned away; and the arm which had struck terror into the hearts of five nations on the field of Brunanburg, was now weak and powerless; for the throne of England was at last occupied by the child of a murderess, whom Dunstan, from his apparent apathy, had already nick-named "The Unready." England had long been rent asunder by civil dissensions, which the accession of Ethelred only tended to increase instead of assuaging: the sceptre had before-time fallen into young and helpless hands without diminishing the kingdom's strength, but there were then none of those private heart-burnings to contend against; none of that party bitterness which divided family against family, for the state was supported by the united strength of its nobles, and its councils swayed by a feeling of union and harmony. It was not the monks and the secular clergy that this long contention alone affected; almost every town and village was divided against itself, for the quarrel extended to the domestic hearth. Dunstan could not drive a married priest from the church without making enemies of the whole family: there was the insulted wife as well as the husband to appease; then came a wide circle of relations and friends, while, on the part of the monks, no such extensive ramifications were arrayed. Thousands were therefore found ready to overthrow a government which was headed by the primate.