(A. Mw.)
[1] See Stevenson’s article in Eng. Hist. Rev. vol. xiii. pp. 71-77. The whole chronology of this reign is very difficult and certainly is often impossible of attainment.
[2] It is possible that these battles are one and the same; the places are within 2 to 3 m. of each other.
EDWARD, “The Martyr” (c. 926-978), king of the English, was the son of Edgar by his wife Æthelflæd. Edward’s brief reign was marked by an anti-monastic reaction. Ælfhere, earl of Mercia, once more expelled many of the monks whom Bishop Æthelwold had installed. There seems also to have been some change in administrative policy, perhaps with regard to the Danes, for Earl Oslac, whom Edgar had appointed to Northumbria, was driven from his province. In ecclesiastical matters there were two parties in the kingdom, the monastic, which had its chief hold in Essex and East Anglia, and the anti-monastic, led by Ælfhere of Mercia. Conferences were held at Kirtlington in Oxfordshire and at Calne in Wiltshire in 977 and 978, but nothing definite seems to have been decided. On the 18th of March 978 Edward’s reign was suddenly cut short by his assassination at Corfe Castle in Dorsetshire. The crime was probably inspired by his stepmother, Ælfthryth, who was anxious to secure the succession of her son Ælthelred. The body was hastily interred at Wareham and remained there till 980, when Archbishop Dunstan and Ælfhere of Mercia united in transferring it with great ceremony to Shaftesbury. Edward seems to have been personally popular, and the poem on his death in the chronicle calls his murder the worst deed in English history. Very shortly after his death he was popularly esteemed to be both saint and martyr.
See Saxon Chronicle; Vita S. Oswaldi (Hist. of Ch. of York, Rolls Series); Memorials of St Dunstan (ed. Stubbs, Rolls Series).
(A. Mw.)
EDWARD, “The Confessor” (d. 1066), so called on account of his reputation for sanctity, king of the English, was the son of Æthelred II. and Emma, daughter of Richard, duke of Normandy, and was born at Islip in Oxfordshire. On the recognition of Sweyn as king of England in 1013, Æthelred, with his wife and family, took refuge in Normandy, and Edward continued to reside at the Norman court until he was recalled in 1041 by Hardicanute. He appears to have been formally recognized as heir to the throne, if not actually associated in the kingship, and on the death of Hardicanute in 1042 “all folk received him to be king,” though his actual coronation was delayed until Easter 1043. A few months later Edward, in conjunction with the three great earls of the kingdom, made a raid on the queen-mother Ælfgifu, or Emma, seized all her possessions and compelled her to live in retirement.