This wonderful story ended to Dunstan’s liking, for the artful do flourish briefly sometimes.
The boy king Edred was in ill-health, and suffered from a lingering illness for years. He felt the need of the counsel of a good man. He said to himself,—
“There is Dunstan, a man who has given up all selfish feelings and aspirations, a man whom even the Devil cannot corrupt. I will bring him to court, and will make him my adviser.”
Then pure-hearted Edred brought the foxy prelate to his court, and made him—of all things in the world!—the royal treasurer.
Edred died in the year 955, having for nine years aimed to do justly and to govern well. His decease, like his brother’s before him, was sincerely lamented.
He left a well-ordered government, except in the department of the treasury. Some remarkable “irregularities”—as stealing is sometimes called nowadays—had taken place there, some of the public money having become mixed up with Dunstan’s.
The next of the six boy kings of England was Edwy the Fair,—fifteen years of age when he ascended the throne.
He was the son of Edmund,—a handsome boy, and as good at heart as he was handsome. Though so young, he had married a beautiful princess, named Elgiva. So we have here a boy king and a girl queen.
As if one bad prelate were not enough, there was, besides Dunstan, another great mischief-maker, Odo, the Dane, Archbishop of Canterbury.
The coronation of Edwy was the occasion of great rejoicing. They had a sumptuous feast in the evening, attended by all the prelates and thanes. Edwy liked the society of the girl queen better than that of these rude people, and in the midst of the festivities he retired to the queen’s apartment to see her and the queen mother.