By the Rev. Canon J. E. Jackson, F.S.A. 173 
The occasion of the meeting was this Church matters had got 
into much confusion. Discipline was relaxed. There were two 
classes, the Monastic and the Secular or Parish clergy. It seems 
that owing to careless discipline and the confusion of the times, the 
monks were getting possession of the parishes, and, moreover, had 
the audacity to marry. The then King wasa mere youth. Dunstan 
was all-powerful. He was a most determined upholder of the purely 
monastic system, and was resolved to put an end to the irregularities 
that were creeping in. The King’s council met on this subject at 
Winchester. Nothing was settled (owing to the violence of both 
parties), and it was adjourned to a second meeting at Calne. You 
heard just now the very simple account in the Anglo-Saxon 
Chronicle. But this became strangely altered by historians. His- 
torical characters often come down to us, helpless and bewildered 
readers, either as black as ink, or as white as snow, according to the 
prejudices and complexion of the historian himself: and so it has come 
to pass that one writer will speak of Dunstan as an odious character, 
another as a model of everything that is good. Anti-Romanists 
have given this version of the story, viz.: that Dunstan had 
previously tampered with the floor, and that finding the day was 
going against him he suddenly gave some signal, the floor gave 
way, and all—but himself—came to grief, he having taken care to 
provide a safe perch to lay hold of. 
The Roman Catholic writers, of course, scout this as an idle and 
wicked tale: and with good reason, for surely more ridiculous 
nonsense never was written. 
Is it, in the first place, at all likely that an Archbishop of Canter- 
bury, were he ever so mischievous, ever so villainously inclined as 
to play Guy Fawkes (though not exactly in the same way) and 
contrive a plan for breaking the necks of the council of the nation, 
is it likely that he would so manage matters as to run the risk of 
breaking the necks of his own party as well as those of his opponents ? 
But setting all this aside, the trick is one which it would be 
hardly possible to play. On the stage of a theatre, when Harlequin 
raps it with his magical wand, a trap door suddenly opens, and up 
or down pops somebody or something, But to produce even so 
