[1][2] The prominent position which he held among the English clergy of his time can best be appreciated from the fact that he was the intimate friend of Aldhelm at Sherborne, of Bede at Jarrow and of Boniface in Germany.
[3] Daniel was consecrated to succeed Hædde whose vast diocese was then broken up;[4] Dorset, Wiltshire, Somerset, and Berkshire became the see of Sherborne under Aldhelm, while Daniel retained only Hampshire, Surrey, and Sussex, and of these Sussex soon after was constituted a separate diocese.
There, no doubt, he had also learnt the scholarship for which he was famous among his contemporaries and which made Bede turn to him as the man best able to supply information regarding the church history of the south and west of Britain.
112, perhaps implies that he was considered to be lacking in energy; nonetheless it would follow from William of Malmesbury's reference (Gest.
Pont., I, 357) to a certain stream in which Daniel used to stand the whole night long to cool his passions, that he was a man of remarkable austerity.