A HISTORY OF HAMPSHIRE 



of England and in the south of Mercia were much altered about this 

 period, the limit of Winchester remained as before. Frithstan, a monk 

 of much piety who had been a scholar of St. Grimbald, was at this time 

 appointed to the bishopric of Winchester. Having ruled his diocese 

 with faithfulness for twenty years, like his predecessor Daniel, he resigned 

 the see in 931 to end his days in devotion, and died the following year. 

 The splendid stole and fanon of this good bishop, with numerous figures 

 of Old and New Testament saints and inscriptions embroidered in gold, 

 crimson, blue and green, are in the capitular library at Durham ; an 

 inscription on both stole and fanon says that 'dirked caused it to be made 

 for the pious Bishop Frithstan.' They were discovered in 1 827, when the 

 coffins of St. Cuthbert were ransacked. ./Elflaed or Ethelfled, who died in 

 o 1 6, was queen of Edward the Elder. It seems likely that these vestments 

 were the gift of Athelstan, illegitimate son of Edward the Elder, to the 

 shrine of the saint on the occasion of his visit to Chester-le-Street in 

 934. 1 Frithstan nominated Beornstan as his successor, who had been his 

 brother monk of the New Minster; Beornstan left behind him a blessed 

 reputation for charity to the poor and earnestness in prayer. William 

 of Malmesbury pictures him as walking about daily through the church- 

 yards of the city praying for the dead that he had known, whose lives 

 had been such as grieved him. 



Alphege the Bald, a monk of Glastonbury, best known as being an 

 uncle of Dunstan, was the next bishop. On his death Dunstan was 

 offered the see, but refused. After two short and insignificant episco- 

 pates came Athelwold (963-84), afterwards canonized, a monk of 

 Glastonbury and the son of a wealthy citizen of Winchester. His 

 industry in church building equalled his piety, learning and zeal as a 

 preacher. It was through his personal exertions and superintendence 

 that the great churches so cruelly used by the Danes up and down the 

 country were renovated, as at Abingdon, Chertsey, Ely, St. Neots, 

 Peterborough, and Thorney. He rebuilt his cathedral church at Win- 

 chester, removing the bones of St. Swithun from the churchyard to a 

 shrine in the church on 15 July, 971. The terrific thunderstorm and 

 downpour of rain that gave rise to a weather tradition which seems to 

 be imperishable are inventions of a comparatively late date. The monk 

 Wulfstan, who had watched the growth of this great and then won- 

 drous pile of buildings, celebrated it in rough elegaic verse. He 

 describes the chapels, aisles and columns as being so numerous that 

 a man might easily be lost in their maze, and tells how it was 

 crowned with a mighty tower having pinnacles and balls of burnished 

 gold, the whole surmounted by a glistening weathercock which, when 

 it caught the morning sun, filled the traveller descending to the city 

 with amazement. The Benedictional of St. Ethelwold, that priceless gem 

 of the Chatsworth library, yields in the background of one of the illu- 



1 Rom illy Allen's Monumental History of the British Church, pp. 240-3 ; see also Thorpe's Difhma- 

 tarium, pp. 321-4, for an account of the visit to Durham of Eadwine, a monk of New Minster, Win- 

 chester, for the investiture of the body of St. Cuthbert. 



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