Eadred suffers towards the end of his life from a digestive malady that will prove fatal.

'Author B', the biographer and former apprentice of St Dunstan, describes with vivid memory how the king sucked out the juices of his food, chewed on what was left and spat it out.

Eadred dies on November 123 (St. Clement's Day), 955, at Frome (Somerset), and is buried in the Old Minster at Winchester.

He dies a bachelor, and is succeeded by his late brother Edmund's son Eadwig.

According to one legend, Eadwig’s feud with Dunstan began on the day of Eadwig's consecration, when he failed to attend a meeting of nobles.

When Dunstan eventually found the young monarch, he was cavorting with a noblewoman named Æthelgifu and refused to return with the bishop.

Infuriated by this, Dunstan dragged Eadwig back and forced him to renounce the girl as a "strumpet".

Later realizing that he had provoked the king, Dunstan fled to the apparent sanctuary of his cloister, but Eadwig, incited by Æthelgifu, followed him and plundered the monastery.

Though Dunstan managed to escape, he refused to return to England until after Eadwig's death.

The contemporary record of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle reports Eadwig's accession and Dunstan fleeing England - but does not explain why Dunstan fled.

Thus this report of a feud between Eadwig and Dunstan could either have been based on a true incident of a political quarrel for power between a young king and powerful church officials who wished to control the king and who later spread this legend to blacken his reputation, or it could be an urban legend; the Chronicle also tells of Odo of Canterbury putting aside the King's marriage on the grounds Eadwig and his wife were "too related".

The account of the quarrel with Dunstan and Cynesige, bishop of Lichfield, at the coronation feast is recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and in the later chronicle of John of Worcester and was written by monks supportive of Dunstan's position.

The "cavorting" in question consists of Eadwig (at this time only sixteen) being away from the feast with Ælfgifu and her mother Æthelgifu.

He will later marry Ælfgifu, who seems to have been the sister of Æthelweard the Chronicler.