Saint Dunstan (925-988).
[897]I find in Mr. Selden's verses before Hopton's 'Concordance of Yeares,' that he was a Somersetshire gentleman. He was a great chymist.
The storie of his pulling the devill by the nose with his tongues as he was in his laboratorie[898], was[899] famous in church-windowes. Vide ... Gazaei Pia Hilaria, <where it is> delicately described.
He was a Benedictine monke at Glastonbury, where he was afterwards abbot, and after that was made archbishop of Canterbury. He preached the coronation sermon at Kingston, and crowned king <Edwy>. In his sermon he prophesyed, which the Chronicle mentions.
Mr. Meredith Lloyd tells me that there is a booke in print of his de lapide philosophorum; quaere nomen.
Edwardus Generosus gives a good account of him in a manuscript which Mr. Ashmole haz.
Meredith Lloyd had, about the beginning of the civill warres, a MS. of this Saint's concerning chymistrey, and sayes that there are severall MSS. of his up and downe in England: quaere Mr. Ashmole.
Edwardus Generosus mentions that he could make a fire out of gold, with which he could sett any combustible matter on fire at a great distance. Memorandum:—in Westminster library is an old printed booke, in folio, of the lives of the old English Saints: vide.
Meredith Lloyd tells me that, three or 400 yeares ago, chymistry was in a greater perfection, much, then now; their proces was then more seraphique and universall: now they looke only after medicines.
Severall churches are dedicated to him: two at London: quaere if one at Glastonbury.