Edgar immediately recalls Dunstan (who will eventually be canonized as St. Dunstan) from exile to have him made Bishop of Worcester (and subsequently Bishop of London and Archbishop of Canterbury).

Dunstan will remain Edgar's advisor throughout his reign.

Bishop Lyfing of Worcester had also been charged with complicity in the crime and deprived of his see, but in 1041 he makes his peace with Harthacnut and is restored to his position.

The English had become used to the king ruling in council, with the advice of his chief men, but Harthacnut had ruled autocratically in Denmark, and he is not willing to change, particularly as he does not fully trust the leading earls.

At first he had been successful in intimidating his subjects, though less so later in his short reign.

He has doubled the size of the English fleet from sixteen to thirty-two ships, partly so that he has a force capable of dealing with trouble elsewhere in his empire, and to pay for it he has severely increased the rate of taxation.

The increase coincides with a poor harvest, causing severe hardship.

Two of his tax gatherers are so harsh in dealing with people in and around Worcester in 104 that they riot and kill the tax gatherers1.

Harthacnut reacts by imposing a legal but very unpopular punishment known as 'harrying'.

He orders his earls to burn the town and kill the population.

Very few people are killed, however, as they know what is coming and flee in all directions.

Ealdred was probably born in the west of England, and could be related to Lyfing, his predecessor as bishop of Worcester.

His family, from Devonshire, may have been well-to-do.

Another relative is Wilstan or Wulfstan, who under Ealdred's influence will become Abbot of Gloucester.

Ealdred had been a monk in the cathedral chapter at Winchester Cathedral before becoming abbot of Tavistock Abbey about 1027, an office he had held until about 1043.

Even after leaving the abbacy of Tavistock, he continues to hold two properties from the abbey until his death.

During his tenure as abbot, he has supported the abbey with gifts; the medieval chronicler William of Malmesbury says that they were splendid and many.

No contemporary documents relating to Ealdred's time as abbot have been discovered.

Ealdred is made bishop of Worcester in 1046, a position he will hold until his resignation in 1062.

He may have acted as suffragan, or subordinate bishop, to his predecessor Lyfing before formally assuming the bishopric, as from about 1043 Ealdred had witnessed as an episcopus, or bishop, and a charter from 1045 or early 1046 names Sihtric as abbot of Tavistock.

Lyfing dies on March 26, 1046, and Ealdred becomes bishop of Worcester shortly after.

However, Ealdred does not receive the other two dioceses that Lyfing had held, Crediton and Cornwall; King Edward grants these to Leofric, who will combine the two sees at Creditonis an advisor to King Edward, and is often involved in the royal government.

He is also a military leader, and in 1046 he leads an unsuccessful expedition against the Welsh in retaliation for a raid led by the Welsh rulers Gruffydd ap Rhydderch, Rhys ap Rhydderch, and Gruffydd ap Llywelyn.

Ealdred's expedition is betrayed by some Welsh soldiers who are serving with the English, and Ealdred is defeated.

Viking Irish raiders ally with Gruffydd ap Rhydderch of Gwent in raiding along the River Usk.

Ealdred, Bishop of Worcester, is unsuccessful in driving them off and is again routed by the Welsh.

This failure underscores Ealdred's need for a strong earl in the area to protect against raids.

Normally, the bishop of Hereford would have led the defense in the absence of an Earl of Hereford, but in 1049 the incumbent, Æthelstan, is blind, so Ealdred has taken on the role of defender.

Earl Godwin's rebellion against the king in 1051 had come as a blow to Ealdred, who was a supporter of the earl and his family.

Ealdred had been present at the royal council at London that banished Godwin's family.

When he was sent later in 1051 to intercept Harold Godwinson and his brothers as they fled England after their father's outlawing, Ealdred "could not, or would not" capture the brothers.

The banishment of Ealdred's patron had come shortly after the death of Ælfric Puttoc, the Archbishop of York.

York and Worcester had long had close ties, and the two sees had often been held in plurality, or at the same time.

Ealdred probably had wanted to become Archbishop of York after Ælfric's death, but his patron's eclipse led to the king appointing Cynesige, a royal chaplain, instead.

Godwin had returned from exile Iin September 1052, however, and his family had been restored to power.

Ealdred by late 1053 is once more in royal favor.

At some point, he was alleged to have accompanied Godwin’s son Sweyn on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, but proof is lacking. (If he did accompany Sweyn, the historian Frank Barlow argues that it was probably in 1058.)

Ealdred makes a pilgrimage in 1058 to Jerusalem.

The first English bishop to make the journey, he travels through Hungary, and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle states that "he went to Jerusalem in such state as no-one had done before him".

While in Jerusalem, he had made a gift of a gold chalice to the church of the Holy Sepulchre.

It is possible that the reason Ealdred traveled through Hungary was to arrange the travel of Edward the Exile's family to England.

Another possibility is that he wished to search for other possible heirs to King Edward in Hungary.

It is not known exactly when Edward the Exile's family returned to England, whether they returned with Edward in 1057, or sometime later, so it is only a possibility that they returned with Ealdred in 1058.

Very little documentary evidence is available from Ealdred's time as Bishop of Worcester.

Only five leases that he signed survive, and all date from 1051 to 1053.

Two further leases exist in Hemming's Cartulary as copies only.

How the diocese of Worcester was administered when Ealdred was abroad is unclear, although it appears that Wulfstan, the prior of the cathedral chapter, performed the religious duties in the diocese.

On the financial side, the Evesham Chronicle states that Æthelwig, who became abbot of Evesham Abbey in 1058, administered Worcester before he became abbot.

The earliest part of the cathedral building at Worcester, a city overlooking the River Severn in the present county of Hereford and Worcester in west central England, is the multi-columned Norman crypt with cushion capitals remaining from the original monastic church begun in 1084 by St. Wulfstan.

Worcestershire priest Layamon retells Wace's account of the Arthurian legend in English in his sixteen-thousand-line poem “The Brut,” written in about 1205 as the first truly English version of the tale of Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. (“Brut,” a shortened name for Brutus, is the mythical founder of Britain.)

His poem will provide inspiration for numerous later writers, including Sir Thomas Malory and Jorge Luis Borges, and have an impact on medieval history writing in England.

John’s body is escorted south by a company of mercenaries and he is buried in Worcester Cathedral in front of the altar of St. Wulfstan.

Warwick has also used his time on the Continent to establish contact with Charles VII of France and Philip the Good of Burgundy.

It is therefore with a solid military reputation and with good international connections that he brings a part of his garrison to England, where in the summer of 1459 he meets up with his father and York.