By the Rev. Canon J". E, Jacfoon, 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 was a 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. An ti -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, o£ 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 



