ended appointed religion predecessor successor consecration death_date title see article_title name
867 824 catholic wigberht heahmund between 816 and 825 867 bishop of sherborne diocese of sherborne eahlstan
 eahlstan
eahlstan

eahlstan -lrb- or alfstan or ealhstan -rrb- was a medieval bishop of sherborne .
eahlstan was consecrated between 816 and 825 .
he died in 867 .
according to the `` anglo-saxon chronicle '' , he died in 867 after holding office for fifty years .
however , a forged charter -lrb- s 283 -rrb- of 824 appears to copy a genuine witness list of the mid-820s , and this describes eahlstan as `` electus in episcopatum scireburnensis æcclesiæ '' , implying that he was not appointed until 824 .
this would be consistent with the absence of a bishop of sherborne from records of the council of clofesho of 824 .
in the ninth century , the region `` west of selwood '' formed a separate political entity within the kingdom of wessex .
according to richard abels in his biography of alfred the great , the region gained much of whatever political coherence it possessed from its ecclesiastical organization .
the huge diocese of sherborne in the ninth century stretched over dorset , somerset , devonshire and cornwall .
in alfred 's youth , bishop ealhstan was undoubtedly the most politically powerful force in the south-west and one of the most influential magnates in all wessex .
in 825 , after the defeat of the mercians at the battle of ellandun , he was sent by king egbert of wessex with egbert 's son , the future king Æthelwulf , and an army to take control of kent .
according to alfred the great 's contemporary biographer asser , when king Æthelwulf returned from pilgrimage to rome in 855 , his son Æthelbald , together with ealhstan and eanwulf , ealdorman of somerset , conspired to keep the king from recovering his crown .
according to william of malmesbury eahlstan `` subjected malmesbury abbey to his own purposes '' , even though the abbey was in the neighbouring diocese of winchester .
he was probably the dominant figure in the west saxon church in Æthelbald 's reign and in the years until his death .
