been assumed as settled. After receiving the submission of Thurcytel and his 'holds,' Eadward went to Bedford early in November, stayed there a month, and fortified it with a burh' on the southern side of the river. After a while Thurcytel and his Danes, finding that England was no place for them under such a king, obtained his leave to take ship and depart to Frankland.' Eadward restored Maldon and put a garrison there, perhaps in 917 (A.-S. Chron., Winton, 920; FLORENCE, 918), and the next year advanced to Towcester, built a 'burh' there, and ordered the fortification of Wigmore in Herefordshire. Then a vigorous effort was made by the Danes of Mercia and East Anglia to recover the ground they had lost. They besieged Towcester, Bedford, and Wigmore, but in each case were beaten off. A great host, partly from Huntingdon and partly from East Anglia, raised a 'work' at Tempsford as a point of attack on the English line of the Ouse, leaving Huntingdon deserted. This army was defeated, with the loss of the Danish king of East Anglia and many others, and an attack made on Maldon by the East Angles, in alliance with a viking fleet, was also foiled. Finally Eadward compelled the jarl Thurferth and the Danes of Northampton 'to seek him for father and lord,' and fortified Huntingdon and Colchester. The year was evidently a critical one; the struggle ended in the complete victory of the English king, who received the submission of the Danes of East Anglia, Essex, and Cambridge.

Meanwhile the Lady of the Mercians had, after some trouble, compelled the Welsh to keep the peace, and had then turned against the Danes of the Five Boroughs, subduing Derby and Leicester. She lived to hear that the people of York had submitted to her, and then died at Tamworth on 12 June 918 [on this date see under ETHELFLEDA]. Her vigorous policy had done much to forward the success of her brother. Between them they had succeeded in setting up a line of strongly fortified places which guarded all the approaches from the north from the Blackwater to the Lea, from the Lea to the Ouse, and from the Ouse to the Dee and the Mersey. Eadward was completing the reduction of the Fen country by the fortification of Stamford, when he heard of her death. He reduced Nottingham, another of the Five Boroughs, and caused it to be fortified afresh and colonised partly by Englishmen and partly by Danes. This brought the reconquest of the Mercian Danelaw to a triumphant close, and Eadward now took a step by which the people of English Mercia, as well as of the newly conquered district, were brought into im

mediate dependence on the English king. Æthelflæd's daughter Elfwyn was, it is said, sought in marriage by Sihtric, the Danish king of York (CARADOC, p. 47). This marriage would have given all the dominions that Ethelflæd had acquired, and all the vast influence which she exercised, into the hands of the Danes. Eadward therefore would not allow Elfwyn to succeed to her mother's power, and in 919 carried her away into Wessex. The notice of this measure given by Henry of Huntingdon probably preserves the feelings of anger and regret with which the Mercians saw the extinction of the remains of their separate political existence. The ancient Mercian realm was now fully incorporated with Wessex, and all the people in the Mercian land, Danes as well as English, submitted to Eadward. A most important step was thus accomplished in the union of the kingdom.

The death of Æthelfled appears to have roused the Danes to fresh activity; Sihtric made a raid into Cheshire (SYMEON, an. 920), and a body of Norwegians from Ireland, who had perhaps been allowed by Ethelfled to colonise the country round Chester, laid siege to, and possibly took, the town (urbem Legionum,' Gesta Regum, § 133. Mr. Green appears to take this as Leicester, and to believe that the passage refers to the raid of the Danes from Northampton and Leicester on Towcester, placed by the Winchester chronicler under 921, and by Florence, followed in the text, under 918. The help that the pagans received from the Welsh makes it almost certain that William of Malmesbury records a war at Chester, and possibly the siege that in the 'Fragment' of MacFirbisigh is assigned to the period of the last illness of the Mercian ealdorman Æthelred; see under ETHELFLEDA). Eadward recovered the city, and received the submission of the Welsh, for the kings of the North Welsh and all the North Welsh race sought him for lord.' He now turned to a fresh enterprise; he desired to close the road from Northumbria into Middle England that gave Manchester its earliest importance, as well as to prepare for an attack on York, where a certain Ragnar had been received as king, Accordingly he fortified and colonised Thelwall, and sent an army to take Manchester in Northumbria, to renew its walls and to man them. This completed the line of fortresses which began with Chester, and he next set about connecting it with the strong places he had gained in the district of the Five Boroughs, for he strengthened Nottingham and built a 'burh' at Bakewell in Peakland, which commanded the Derwent standing about midway between Manchester and Derby. After recording how he placed

a garrison in Bakewell, the Winchester chronicler adds: And him there chose to father and to lord the Scot king and all the Scot people, and Regnald, and Eadulf's son, and all that dwelt in Northumbria, whether Englishmen, or Danish, or Northmen, or other, and eke the king of the Strathclyde Welsh and all the Strathclyde Welsh' (an. 924, A.-S. Chron., Winton; but this is certainly too late, and 921 seems a better date; comp. FLOR. WIG.) In these words the most brilliant writer on the reign finds evidence of a forward march of the king, of a formidable northern league formed to arrest his progress, of the submission of the allies, and of a visit to the English camp, probably at Dore, in which 'the motley company of allies 'owned Eadward as their lord (Conquest of England, pp. 216, 217). While there is nothing improbable in all this, the picture is without historical foundation. It is best not to go beyond what is written, especially as there is some ground for believing that the entry cannot be contemporary (ib.) We may, however, safely accept it as substantially correct. Its precise meaning has been strenuously debated, for it was used by Edward I as the earliest precedent on which he based his claim to the allegiance of the Scottish crown (HEMINGBURGH, ii. 198). Dr. Freeman attaches extreme importance to it as conveying the result, in the case of Scotland, of a solemn national act,' from which may be dated the 'permanent superiority' of the English crown (Norman Conquest, i. 60, 128, 610). On the other hand, it is slighted by Robertson (Scotland under her Early Kings, ii. 384 sq.) It must clearly be interpreted by the terms used of other less important submissions. When the kings made their submission they entered into exactly the same relationship to the English king as that which had been entered into by the jarl Thurferth and his army when they sought Eadward for their lord and protector.' They found the English king too strong for them, and rather than fight him they 'commended' themselves to him, and entered into his 'peace.' The tie thus created was personal, and was analogous to that which existed between the lord and his comitatus. It marked the preponderating power of Eadward, but in itself it should perhaps scarcely be held as more than an episode in the struggle for supremacy in the north' (GREEN). Eadward thus succeeded in carrying the bounds of his immediate kingdom as far north as the Humber, and in addition to this was owned by all other kings and their peoples in the island as their superior.

In the midst of his wars he found time for some important matters of civil and ecclesiasti

cal administration. Two civil developments of this period were closely connected with his wars. The conquest of the Danelaw and the extinction of the Mercian ealdormanry appear to have led to the extension of the West-Saxon system of shire-division to Mercia. While it is not probable that this system was carried out at all generally even in Mercia till after Eadward's death, the beginning of it may at least be traced to his reign, and appears in the annexation of London and Oxford with their subject lands Middlesex and Oxfordshire. Another change, the increase of the personal dignity of the king and the acceptance of a new idea of the duty of the subject, is also connected with conquest. The conquered Danes still remained outside the English people, they had no share in the old relationship between the race and the king, they made their submission to the king personally, and placed themselves under his personal protection. Thus the king's dignity was increased, and a new tie, that of personal loyalty, first to be observed in the laws of Alfred, was strengthened as regards all his people. Accordingly, at a witenagemot held at Exeter, Eadward proposed that all should be in that fellowship that he was, and love that which he loved, and shun that which he shunned, both on sea and land.' The loyalty due from the dwellers in the Danelaw was demanded of all alike. The idea of the public peace was gradually giving place to that of the king's peace. Other laws of Eadward concern the protection of the buyer, the administration of justice, and the like. In these, too, there may be discerned the increase of the royal pre-eminence. The law-breaker is for the first time said to incur the guilt of 'oferhyrnes' towards the king; in breaking the law he had shown 'contempt' of the royal authority (THORPE, Ancient Laws, pp. 68-75; STUBBS, Constitutional History, i. 175, 183). In ecclesiastical affairs Eadward seems to have been guided by his father's advisers. He kept Grimbold with him and, at his instance it is said, completed the 'New Minster,' Ælfred's foundation at Winchester, and endowed it largely (Liber de Hyda, 111; Ann. Winton. 10). Asser appears to have resided at his court (KEMBLE, Codex Dipl. 335, 337), and he evidently acted cordially with Archbishop Plegmund. The increase he made in the episcopate in southern England is connected with a story told by William of Malmesbury, who says (Gesta Regum, ii. 129) that in 904 the West-Saxon bishoprics had lain vacant for seven years, and that Pope Formosus wrote threatening Eadward and his people with excommunication for their neglect, that the

king then held a synod over which Plegmund presided, that the two West-Saxon dioceses were divided into five, and that Plegmund consecrated seven new bishops in one day. As it stands this story must be rejected, for Formosus died in 896. Still it is true that in 909 the sees of Winchester, Sherborne, and South-Saxon Selsey were all vacant, and that Eadward and Plegmund separated Wiltshire and Berkshire from the see of Winchester and formed them into the diocese of Ramsbury, and made Somerset and Devonshire, which lay in the bishopric of Sherborne, two separate dioceses, with their sees at Wells and Crediton. Five West-Saxon bishops and two bishops for Selsey and Dorchester were therefore consecrated by Plegmund, possibly at the same time (Anglia Sacra, i. 554; Reg. Sac. Anglic. 13).

6

The Unconquered King,' as Florence of Worcester calls him, died at Farndon in Northamptonshire in 924, in the twentyfourth year of his reign (A.-S. Chron., Worcester; FLORENCE; SYMEON; 925 A.-S. Chron., Winton). As Ethelstan calls 929 the sixth year of his reign (KEMBLE, Codex Dipl. 347, 348), it is obvious that Eadward must have died in 924, and there are some reasons for believing that he died in the August of that year (Memorials of Dunstan, introd. lxxiv n.) He was buried in the New Minster' of Winchester. By Ecgwyn, a lady of high rank (FLOR. WIG.), or, according to later and untrustworthy tradition, a shepherd's daughter Gesta Regum, ii. 131, 139; Liber de Hyda, 111), who seems to have been his concubine, he had his eldest son Æthelstan, who succeeded him, possibly a son named Elfred, not the rebel theling of the next reign, and a daughter Eadgyth, who in the year of her father's death was given in marriage by her brother to Sihtric, the Danish king of Northumbria. By 901 he was married to Elfled, daughter of Ethelhelm, one of his thegns, and Ealhswith (KEMBLE, Coder Dipl. 333). She bore him Ælfweard, who is said to have been learned, and who died sixteen days after his father, and probably Eadwine, drowned at sea in 933 (A.-S. Chron. sub an.), possibly by order of his brother (SYMEON, Mon. Hist. Brit. p. 686; Gesta Regum, § 139), though the story, especially in its later and fuller form, is open to doubt (FREEMAN, Hist. Essays, i. 10-15), and six daughters: Ethelflæd, a nun perhaps at Wilton (Gesta Regum, iii. 126) or at Rumsey (Liber de Hyda, 112); Eadgifu, married in 919 by her father to Charles the Simple, and after his death to Herbert, count of Troyes, in 951 (Acta SS. Bolland. Mar. xii. 750); Æthelhild, a nun at Wilton; Eadhild, married by her brother

to Hugh the Great, count of Paris; Ælfgifu, called in France Adela, married about 936 to Eblus, son of the count of Aquitaine (RICHARD. PICT., BOUQUET, ix. 21); Eadgyth or Edith, married in 930 to Otto, afterwards emperor, and died on 26 Jan. 947, after her husband became king, but before he became emperor, deeply regretted by all the Saxon people (WIDUKIND, i. 37, ii. 41). Eadward's second wife (or third, if Ecgwyn is reckoned) was Eadgifu, by whom he had Eadmund and Eadred, who both came to the throne, and two daughters, Eadburh or Edburga, a nun · at Winchester, of whose precocious piety William of Malmesbury tells a story (Gesta Regum, ii. 217), and Eadgifu, married to Lewis, king of Arles or Provence. Besides these, he is said to have had a son called Gregory, who went to Rome, became a monk, and afterwards abbot of Einsiedlen.

[Anglo-Saxon Chron. sub ann.; Florence of Worcester, sub ann. (Engl. Hist. Soc.); William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, §§ 112, 124-6, 129, 131, 139 (Engl. Hist. Soc.); Gesta Pontificum, 177, 395 (Rolls Ser.); Henry of Hunting, don, 742, Mon. Hist. Brit.; Symeon of Durham, 686, Mon. Hist. Brit.; Ethelweard, 519, Mon. Hist. Brit.; Liber de Hyda, 111, 112 (Rolls Ser.); Annales Winton. 10 (Rolls Ser.); Thorpe's Ancient Laws and Institutes, 68-75; Kemble's Codex Dipl. ii. 138-49; Three Irish Fragments by Dubhaltach MacFirbisigh, ed. O'Donovan (Irish Archæol, and Celtic Soc.); Widukind's Res Gestæ Saxonicæ, i. 37, ii. 41, Pertz; Caradoc's Princes of Wales, 47; Recueil des Historiens, Bouquet, ix. 21; Stubbs's Constitutional Hist. i. 176, 183, and Registrum Sacrum Anglic. 13; Freeman's Norman Conquest, i. 58–61, 610; Robertson's Scotland under her Early Kings, ii. 384 sq.; Green's Conquest of England, 189-215-the best account we have of the wars of Eadward and Ethelflæd; Lappenberg's Anglo-Saxon Kings (Thorpe), ii. 85 sq.]

W. H.

EDWARD or EADWARD THE MARTYR (963?-978), king of the English, the eldest son of Eadgar, was the child of Ethelflæd, and was born probably in 963 [see under EADGAR]. He was brought up as his father's heir, his education was entrusted to Sideman, bishop of Crediton, who instructed him in the scriptures, and he grew a stout and hardy lad (Vita S. Oswaldi, p. 449). He was about twelve years old when his father died in 975. The circumstances of his election to the throne will be found in the article on DUNSTAN. It should be added that the author of the 'Life of St. Oswald,' writing before 1005, says that the nobles who opposed his election were moved to do so by his hot temper, for the boy used not only to abuse but to beat his attendants. While it is likely enough that he was imperious and quick-tem

pered, the faction that, at the instigation of Eadgar's widow, Elfthryth, upheld the claim made on behalf of her son was of course swayed by other considerations. A notice of the meetings of the 'witan,' held to settle the dispute between the seculars and regulars, which constitutes the sole interest of this short reign, will also be found under DUNSTAN. It is evident that the monastic party was far less powerful under Eadward than it had been in the time of his father. Dunstan seems to have retained his influence at the court, though the East-Anglian party headed by Ethelwine certainly lost ground, and there is reason to believe that Elfhere the Mercian ealdorman had the chief hand in the management of affairs. The banishment of Oslac, whom Eadgar had made Earl of Deiran Northumbria, is perhaps evidence of an intention to undo the policy of the last reign by attempting to bring the Danes of the north into more immediate dependence on the crown. Eadward was assassinated on 18 March 978. According to the earliest detailed account of the murder (ib.) the thegns of the faction that had upheld the claim put forward on behalf of his half-brother Ethelred plotted to take away his life, and decided on doing so on one of his visits to the child. On the evening of his murder he rode to Corfe, or Corfes-gate, as it was then called, from the gap in which the town stands, in Dorsetshire, where Ethelred was living with his mother Elfthryth. He had few attendants with him, and the thegns, evidently of Elfthryth's household and party, came out with their arms in their hands, and crowded round him as though to do him honour. Among them was the cup-bearer ready to do his office. One of them seized the king's hand, and pulled him towards him as though to kiss him-the kiss of the traitor may be an embellishment, for the salute would surely not have been offered by a subject-while another seized his left hand. The young king cried, 'What are ye doing, breaking my right hand?' and as he leaped from his horse the conspirator on his left stabbed him, and he fell dead. His corpse was taken to a poor cottage at Wareham, and was there buried without honour and in unconsecrated ground. The murder excited great indignation, which was increased when it became evident that the king's kinsmen would not avenge him. 'No worse deed was done since the English race first sought Britain,' wrote the chronicler. In 980 Archbishop Dunstan and Elfhere, the heads of the rival ecclesiastical parties, went to Wareham and joined in translating the body with great pomp to Shaftesbury. There many miracles were wrought at the

king's tomb, and great crowds resorted to kneel before it. Eadward was reverenced as a saint and martyr. He was officially styled martyr as early as 1001 (KEMBLE, Codex Dipl. 706), and the observance of his massday was ordered by the 'witan' in 1008 (THORPE), a law that was re-enacted by Cnut at Winchester (ib.) Political feelings can scarcely have had anything to do with the murder of a king whose burial rites were performed by Dunstan and Ælfhere in common. Although the biographer of St. Oswald says nothing of Elfthryth, it is evident from his account of the murder that it was done not by any of the great nobles, but by the thegns of her household, and his silence as to her name is accounted for by the fact that she may have been alive when the biographer wrote between 990 and 1005, for she seems to have died after 999 and before 1002, and that he wrote in the reign of her son Æthelred. Osbern, writing about 1090, is the first plainly to attribute the murder to Eadward's step-mother (Memorials of Dunstan, p. 114), and he is followed by Eadmer (ib. 215). Florence (i. 145) says that he was slain by his own men by Elfthryth's order. Henry of Huntingdon, while attributing his death to men of his own family, mentions the legend that tells how Elfthryth stabbed him as she handed him a cup of drink (748). This legend is elaborately related by William of Malmesbury (Gesta Regum, i. 258). The fact that his body, hastily as it was interred, was buried at Wareham gives some probability to the story that he was dragged for some distance by the stirrup. The deep feeling aroused by his death seems to show that the young king was personally popular, and the affection he showed for his half-brother and the story of the child's grief at his death are perhaps evidences of a loveable nature. Osbern's remarks on the general good opinion men had of him should not, however, be pressed, for Eadward's character had then long been removed from criticism. One charter of Eadward dated 977 is undoubtedly genuine (KEMBLE, Codex Dipl. 611).

[Vita S. Oswaldi, Historians of York, i. 448-52 (Rolls Ser.); Adelard, Osbern, Eadmer, Memorials of St. Dunstan, 61, 114, 215 (Rolls Ser.); AngloSaxon Chron. sub ann. 975-80; Florence of Worcester, i. 145 (Engl. Hist. Soc.); William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, i. 258 (Engl. Hist. Soc.); Henry of Huntingdon, Mon. Hist. Brit. 748; Thorpe's Ancient Laws, i. 308, 358; Kemble's Codex Diplomaticus, 611, 706; Robertson's Historical Essays in connection with the Land, the Church, &c., 169; Freeman's Norman Conquest, i. 288-93, 341, 365, 684; Green's Conquest of England, 353-7.]

W. H.

EDWARD or EADWARD, called THE CONFESSOR (d. 1066), king of the English, the elder son of Ethelred the Unready by his marriage in 1002 with Emma, daughter of Richard the Fearless, duke of the Normans, was born at Islip in Oxfordshire (KEMBLE, Codex Dipl. 862), and was presented by his parents upon the altar of the monastery of Ely, where it is said that he passed his early years and learnt to sing psalms with the boys of the monastery school (Liber Eliensis, ii. c. 91). When Swend was acknowledged king, in 1013, Emma fled to Normandy to the court of her brother, Richard the Good, and shortly afterwards Ethelred sent Eadward and his younger brother Ælfred [q. v.] to join her there under the care of Alfhun, bishop of London. On Swend's death, in February 1014, Eadward and his mother were sent to England by Ethelred in company with the ambassadors who came over to ascertain whether the 'witan' would again receive him as king. When Ethelred was restored to his kingdom he left Eadward and his brother to be educated at the Norman court, where they were treated with the honour due to their birth (WILL. OF JUMIÈGES, vi. 10). Towards the end of Cnut's reign, Duke Robert asserted their right to the throne, and Eadward set sail with the duke from Fécamp to invade England; the wind drove the Norman fleet to Jersey and the enterprise was abandoned (ib.; WACE, 1. 7897 sq.; Gesta Regum, ii. 180). The assertion of William of Jumièges that Cnut soon afterwards offered half his kingdom to the athelings may safely be disregarded. In 1036, when Cnut was dead, and Harold ruled over the northern part of England, while Harthacnut, though still in Denmark, reigned probably as an under-king over Wessex, the æthelings made an attempt to enforce their claim. Eadward is said to have sailed with forty ships, to have landed at Southampton, and to have defeated a force of English with great loss (WILL. OF POITIERS, p. 78). He probably sailed in company with his brother, and stayed at Winchester, where his mother dwelt, while Elfred tried to reach London. When the news came of his brother's overthrow and death, Emma is said to have helped him to leave the kingdom in safety (FLOR. WIG. i. 191-2; KEMBLE, Coder Dipl. 824, doubtful). He returned to England in 1041, probably at the invitation of his half-brother Harthacnut, then sole king, who was childless, and, though young, was in weak health. Several Normans and Frenchmen of high birth accompanied him, and chief among them his nephew Ralph, son of his sister Godgifu and Drogo of Mantes (Vita Eadwardi, 1. 335;

Historia Rames. p. 171). The king received him with honour, and he took up his abode at court, though the story that he was invited by Harthacnut to share the kingship with him can scarcely be true (Encomium Emma, iii. 13; SAxo, p. 202).

At the time of Harthacnut's death, in June ' 1042, Eadward appears to have been in Normandy (Vita, 1. 196; WILL. OF POITIERS, p. 85). Nevertheless, he was chosen king at London, even before his predecessor was buried. This election was evidently not held to be final, and was probably made by the Londoners without the concurrence of the' witan' (on the circumstances attending Eadward's election and coronation see Norman Conquest, ii. 517 sq.) Negotiations appear to have passed between Eadward and Earl Godwine, the most powerful noble in the kingdom, who was perhaps anxious to prevent him from bringing over a force of Normans (HENRY OF HUNTINGDON, p. 759), and these negotiations were no doubt forwarded by the Norman Duke William, though it is not necessary to believe that Eadward owed his crown to the duke's interference, and to the fear that the English had of his power. Godwine and other earls and certain bishops brought him over from Normandy, and on his arrival in England a meeting of the 'witan' was held at Gillingham. According to Dr. Freeman this was the Wiltshire Gillingham, for the meeting was, he holds, directly followed by the coronation at Winchester. On the other hand, Eadward's biographer speaks of a coronation at Canterbury, and as a contemporary writing for the king's widow can scarcely be mistaken on such a point, it seems not unreasonable to suppose that this was the Gillingham in Kent. Some opposition was raised in the assembly to Eadward's candidature, probably by a Danish party which upheld the claim of Swend Estrithson, the nephew of Cnut (Gesta Regum, ii. 197; ADAM OF BREMEN, ii. 74). Although Godwine, both as the husband of Swend's aunt Gytha and as the trusted minister of Cnut, must naturally have been inclined to the Danish cause, he must have seen that the nation was set on the restoration of the line of native kings, for he put himself at the head of Eadward's Supporters, and by his eloquence and autho rity joined with a certain amount of bribery secured his election, the few who remained obstinate being noted for future punishment. Eadward received the crown and was enthroned in Christ Church, Canterbury, and then, if this attempt to construct a consecutive narrative is correct, at once proceeded to Winchester, where it was customary for the king to wear his crown and hold a great