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374 by refusing to admit any more married men to the community. Glastonbury thus led the way in reform in England, and became a school of piety and learning in which many men were trained who were to make their mark in the future. The most remarkable of these was Aethelwold, a native of Winchester. He, like Dunstan, had come as a youth under the influence of Bishop Aelfheah. At Glastonbury he rose to be "dean" and Dunstan's right-hand man, and about 950 by the influence of Eadgifu, the queen mother, he was selected by Eadred to take charge of Abingdon in Berkshire, one of Ine's foundations, which had become almost desolate. Very enthusiastic by nature, Aethelwold had hardly been satisfied with the amount of discipline enforced at Glastonbury. His first act accordingly, on reaching Abingdon, was to dispatch his friend Osgar, another of Dunstan's pupils, to Fleury, so that he might be furnished with first-hand knowledge of what was being done on the Continent, and then make his abbey a model for England. Backed by Eadred's patronage Abingdon soon grew to be a large and well endowed foundation, observing the rule of St Benedict in its most stringent form. Nor was its progress hindered under Eadwig, who went on showering benefactions on it notwithstanding Aethelwold's connexion with Dunstan and the curtailment of his own resources by the revolt of Mercia.

The acceptance of Edgar by the West Saxons gave the advocates of reform a much freer hand, as the young king from the first relied on Dunstan as his principal adviser. In 960 he promoted him to the see of Canterbury, and shortly afterwards proclaimed himself definitely one of the reforming party by appointing Oswald, Oda's nephew, to the see of Worcester and Aethelwold to that of Winchester. Though all three prelates were equally pledged to reform, they set about it in different ways. Dunstan, though he had a hand in the reform of Westminster and Malmesbury and perhaps of Bath, thought most of raising the tone of the laity and the parish priests, and consequently spent much of his energy in warring against drunkenness and immorality. Aethelwold on the other hand, holding that the state of the monasteries was the most crying evil, did little for the laity, and pressed on with a ruthless crusade throughout Wessex, beginning with Chertsey and the two minsters at Winchester, by which he hoped to set monks in the shoes of the collegiate clergy. He seems to have offered the clerks, whether married or not, only two alternatives, either complete acceptance of a most stringent monastic vow or instant expulsion, and at the old Minster, when argument proved of no avail, he actually resorted to violence, calling in lay assistance to expropriate his opponents from their property. In the Severn valley, the course pursued by Oswald was more tactful. Relying on example, he left the clerks of Worcester and Gloucester undisturbed, and merely established a small house for monks near Bristol at Westbury-on-Trym. Meanwhile the king started a movement in the Danelaw to refound some of the great abbeys which had been destroyed in the Danish wars and