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 In comparing the two lists it will be well to work backwards, beginning with the latest names of the tenth-century list. For that list is here contemporary and may be accepted without misgiving, whereas for the whole of the tenth century William of Malmesbury is in difficulties owing to the rarity of charters containing abbots' names.

As Abbot Sigegar became bishop of Wells in 975, we may assume that Ælfward succeeded him at Glastonbury in the same year. The date of Abbot Sigegar's accession is not clear. William of Malmesbury used a composite charter by which K. Edgar granted to Sigegar three estates in 965. The first of these is Hamme: but the Hamme charter was granted in 973, and it does not mention the abbot's name. Sigegar's first attestation as abbot seems to be in 974, but he may possibly have been abbot as early as 965. Ælfric fills the gap, whatever it may have been, between Dunstan and Sigegar. Dunstan was consecrated bishop in 957 and became archbishop in 960: we do not know at what precise date he ceased to be abbot of Glastonbury.

It is perhaps useless to speculate as to the reasons which led William of Malmesbury to make Ælfric Dunstan's predecessor and not his successor. But we may note that a group of four or five abbots attest K. Athelstan's charters between 931 and 934; though after this no abbots attest either in his or in K. Edmund's reign. This group is regularly headed by 'Ælfric abbas'; and the first of the charters in question is a grant to an Abbot Ælfric. It is possible that William of Malmesbury saw some charter of K. Athelstan's