Frithestan is first recorded in 904 as a deacon who witnessed two charters in which King Edward the Elder granted land to the Old Minster, Winchester.
[3] Shortly after he was appointed, the diocese of Winchester was divided, and the area which is now Wiltshire and Berkshire was transferred to the new bishopric of Ramsbury.
[1] When King Edward died in July 924, Ælfweard, his eldest son by his second wife Ælfflæd, was elected king by the nobles of Wessex at Winchester, while Æthelstan, Edward's son by his first wife Ecgwynn, was elected in Mercia.
[5] In 1827, St Cuthbert's tomb at Durham was opened, and among the objects found was a stole and maniple which appear from inscriptions on them to have been given by Queen Ælfflæd to Bishop Frithestan, presumably before Edward put her aside to marry his third wife in about 919.
He was buried in the Old Minster, but by William of Malmesbury's day in the twelfth century the location of his tomb had already been lost.