Edgar, King of England
Edgar (or Eadgar;[1] c. 944 – 8 July 975) was King of the English from 959 until his death in 975. He became king of all England on his brother's death. He was the younger son of King Edmund I and his first wife Ælfgifu. A detailed account of Edgar's reign is not possible, because only a few events were recorded by chroniclers and monastic writers were more interested in recording the activities of the leaders of the church.
Edgar
Edgar mainly followed the political policies of his predecessors, but there were major changes in the religious sphere. The English Benedictine Reform, which he strongly supported, became a dominant religious and social force. It is seen by historians as a major achievement, and it was accompanied by a literary and artistic flowering, mainly associated with Æthelwold, Bishop of Winchester. Monasteries aggressively acquired estates from lay landowners with Edgar's assistance, leading to disorder when he died and former owners sought to recover their lost property, sometimes by force. Edgar's major administrative reform was the introduction of a standardised coinage in the early 970s to replace the previous decentralised system. He also issued legislative codes which mainly concentrated on improving procedures for enforcement of the law.
England had suffered from Viking invasions for over a century when Edgar came to power, but there were none during his reign, which fell in a lull in attacks between the mid-950s and the early 980s. After his death the throne was disputed between the supporters of his two surviving sons; the elder one, Edward the Martyr, was chosen with the support of Dunstan, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Three years later Edward was murdered and succeeded by his younger half-brother, Æthelred the Unready. Later chroniclers presented Edgar's reign as a golden age when England was free from external attacks and internal disorder, especially compared with Æthelred's disastrous rule. Modern historians see Edgar's reign as the pinnacle of Anglo-Saxon culture, but they disagree about his political legacy, and some see the disorders following his death as a natural reaction to his overbearing control.
Sources[edit]
Edgar is described by the historian Ann Williams as "an enigmatic figure" because of the very limited information available on him,[2] and Barbara Yorke describes his personality as "elusive".[3] The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (ASC) has only ten entries on his reign, and other sources dating to the late tenth and early eleventh centuries are mainly interested in the episcopal leaders of the English Benedictine Reform movement. There are further details in the works of post-Conquest monastic chroniclers, but their material is often legendary and unreliable. A few events have been recorded in detail, but it is not possible to write a chronological account of Edgar's reign.[2]
Background[edit]
In the ninth century, Anglo-Saxon England came under increasing attack from Viking raids, culminating in invasion by the Viking Great Heathen Army in 865. By 878, the Vikings had overrun the kingdoms of Northumbria, East Anglia, and Mercia, and nearly conquered Wessex, but in that year the West Saxons achieved a decisive victory at the Battle of Edington under King Alfred the Great. By 883, Æthelred, Lord of the Mercians, had accepted Alfred's overlordship, and in the 880s and 890s the Anglo-Saxons ruled Wessex and western Mercia, but the rest of England remained under Viking rule.[4] Alfred died in 899, and in the 910s his son King Edward the Elder and daughter Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians, who was Æthelred's widow, conquered Viking-ruled eastern Mercia and East Anglia. Æthelflæd died in 918 and the Mercians installed her daughter Ælfwynn as the second Lady of the Mercians, but Edward seized her and established full control over Mercia.[5]
Edward died in 924 and was succeeded by his eldest son Æthelstan, who may have been king only of Mercia at first, but ruled the whole of his father's realm by the next year. In 927, he conquered Northumbria, and thus became the first king of all England.[6] He died in October 939 and was succeeded by his half-brother and Edgar's father, Edmund, who almost immediately lost control of the north to the Vikings, but recovered full control of England by 944. In May 946, he was stabbed to death trying to protect his seneschal from attack by a convicted outlaw, and as his sons Eadwig and Edgar were infants, their uncle Eadred became king.[7] Like Edmund, Eadred inherited the kingship of the whole of England and soon lost it when York (southern Northumbria) accepted a Viking king, but he recovered it when the York magnates expelled Erik Bloodaxe in 954.[8]
Eadred was very close to Edmund and inherited his leading counsellors, which resulted in a high degree of continuity of government when he became king. These counsellors included their mother, Eadgifu; Oda, Archbishop of Canterbury; Ælfsige, Bishop of Winchester; and Æthelstan, ealdorman[a] of East Anglia, who was known as the Half-King because it was believed that kings depended on his advice.[10] Another key adviser was Dunstan, Abbot of Glastonbury and future Archbishop of Canterbury. Eadred suffered from ill health, which became much worse towards the end of his reign. Most surviving charters of the last two years of his reign were produced by an agency associated with Glastonbury Abbey, and almost all of these were not attested by the king, suggesting that Dunstan was authorised to issue charters in Eadred's name when he was too ill to carry out his duties.[11] Eadred was in his early thirties when he died on 23 November 955, and Eadwig succeeded at the age of around fifteen.[12] He was the first king since the early ninth century not to face the threat of imminent foreign invasion, and England remained free from Viking attacks until 980.[13]
Edgar in Eadwig's early reign, 955 to 957[edit]
Eadwig became king on Eadred's death on 23 November 955.[17] Historians have often been critical of Eadwig, portraying him as irresponsible or incompetent, and one piece of evidence cited for this view is the exceptional number of charters he issued in 956.[21] His sixty-odd gifts of land in that year make up around five per cent of all genuine Anglo-Saxon charters, and no other ruler in Europe is known to have matched that yearly total before the twelfth century.[22] The historian Ann Williams observes that the many charters may indicate that Eadwig had to buy support, but too little is known about the background to be certain.[23]
When Eadwig succeeded, the court was ruled by powerful factions,[24] and he appears to have been determined to show his independence of action from the start.[17] In the view of the historian Ben Snook, "Eadwig, unlike his brother Edgar, was clearly his own man. Immediately on coming to power, he acted to put a stop to all this."[25] Simon Keynes argues that "whether Eadwig and Edgar were able to assert their own independence of action, or remained at the mercy of established interests at court, is unclear".[26] Eadwig quarrelled with some of his uncle's leading counsellors, especially Dunstan, who he exiled abroad.[17] Eadgifu had frequently attested charters in the reigns of her sons Edmund and Eadred, but she only attested one of Eadwig's,[27] and she later alleged that she had been "despoiled of all her property" during his reign.[28] On the other hand, Edgar was prominent at his brother's court between 955 and 957, attesting many of his charters, in one of which he is shown as regulus (underking).[29]
Some of the hostility towards Eadwig was probably due to his promotion of his friends, especially Ælfhere, Ealdorman of Mercia, at the expense of the old guard, such as Dunstan.[30] Ælfhere and his brothers were acknowledged by several kings as relatives, but the nature of the relationship is unknown. They were close to Eadwig and he made the eldest brother, Ælfheah, his discifer (seneschal). Ælfheah and his wife Ælfswith, who was also acknowledged by Eadwig as a relative, benefited from his generosity. Ælfhere, who was to become the pre-eminent lay magnate until his death in 983, was appointed an ealdorman in Mercia in 956.[31] Other ealdormen appointed were Æthelstan Rota in Mercia in late 955 and Byrhtnoth, the future hero of the Battle of Maldon, who became ealdorman of Essex in 956.[32] Eadwig appointed Æthelwold, the eldest son of Æthelstan Half-King, as an ealdorman in East Anglia.[17] These were sound appointments of men from established families and Edgar kept them when he came to power. Frank Stenton, in his volume in the Oxford History of England, Anglo-Saxon England (described by Keynes as "magisterial and massively authoritative"[33]), comments that "it can at least be said for King Eadwig that he agreed to the promotion of good servants".[34]
King of Mercia, 957 to 959[edit]
In 957, the kingdom of England was divided between Eadwig, who kept Wessex, and Edgar who became king of Mercia, with the River Thames forming the boundary. It is uncertain whether this was the result of a coup against Eadwig or a decision to divide the kingdom between the brothers.[17] The historian Christopher Lewis sees the division as the solution to "a dangerously unstable government and a court in deep crisis";[35] Sean Miller and Rory Naismith attribute it to an unsuccessful attempt by Eadwig to promote a powerful new faction at the expense of the old guard.[36] According to Dunstan's first biographer, who only named himself as "B": "King Eadwig was totally abandoned by the people north [of the Thames]. They despised him for his imprudent discharge of the power entrusted to him. The wise and sensible he destroyed in a spirit of idle hatred, replacing them with ignoramuses like himself to whom he took a liking."[37] This is the view of a partisan of Dunstan, who was Eadwig's enemy. "B" was probably in exile with Dunstan when the division took place.[38] Archbishop Oda forced Eadwig to divorce his wife Ælfgifu on the ground that they were too closely related, but Edgar was on good terms with her when he became king.[39]
Four versions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle mention the division of the kingdom, and they all state that Edgar "succeeded" to the kingship of the Mercians, as if it was a normal and expected event. Manuscripts D and F of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (ASC D and ASC F),[b] date the division to 955, whereas ASC B and ASC C correctly date it to 957.[41] The difference in dates may be because it was agreed in Eadred's reign that the kingdom would be divided between the brothers, but he died before Edgar was old enough to act in person and had to wait until he reached the age of majority of fourteen in 957. Charter attestations show that the magnates did not decide which court to attend on the basis of personal loyalty: ealdormen and bishops with jurisdictions south of the Thames stayed with Eadwig, and those north of it served Edgar.[42] Keynes comments: "One need not imagine that the unity of England would have been regarded in the 950s as something necessarily desirable for its own sake, not least because it was of such recent creation."[43] Almost all thegns who had attested Eadwig's charters before the division stayed with him.[44] The historian Frederick Biggs argues that the division was a revival of the earlier Anglo-Saxon practice of joint kingship, against the opposition of the Church,[45] and Bishop Æthelwold complained that Eadwig had "through the ignorance of childhood dispersed his kingdom and divided its unity".[46]
Eadwig retained some degree of seniority, as he attested charters as "King of the English", whereas Edgar was usually "King of the Mercians", and also occasionally of the Northumbrians and the British.[47][c] All coins, including those issued in Mercia, were in Eadwig's name until his death,[49] The contemporary chronicler Æthelweard, who may have been Eadwig's brother-in-law, wrote that he "held the kingdom continuously for four years".[50] There is no evidence of rivalry between the brothers, but they did disagree over Dunstan. Edgar recalled him from his exile, and soon afterwards appointed him to the Mercian bishoprics of London and Worcester.[51] Æthelstan Half-King retired when the division took place, perhaps because Edgar had reached an age to take over.[43] In 958, Edgar gave an estate at Sutton in Nottinghamshire to Oscytel, Archbishop of York, probably in support of a policy initiated by Eadwig of strengthening control over this area of Viking settlement by granting land in it to the archbishop.[52]