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EDWARD (THE ELDER)

EDWARD I., surnamed the Elder, son and successor of Alfred, king of the West Saxons, ascended the throne in 901, died in 925. His claim to the throne, though recognized by the witenagemote, was disputed by his cousin Ethelwald, who gained the support of the Northumbrian and East Anglian Danes. The rebels marched through the counties of Gloucester, Oxford, and Wilts, and Edward, unable directly to oppose them, retaliated their ravages in the country of the East Angles. He thought proper to withdraw his army, loaded with booty, before the approach of the rebels, but the venturous Kentish men, greedy of more spoil, stayed behind in defiance of orders. They were assaulted by the East Angles, and resisted so valiantly that though obliged at last to retreat, it was not till after they had slain a great number of the bravest of the enemy, and had terminated the rebellion by causing the death of Ethelwald himself. The reign of Edward, as of many of his predecessors and successors, was occupied with subduing the turbulent Danes, who abounded and were constantly reenforced in the provinces of East Anglia and Northumbria. In this task he was assisted by his sister Ethelfleda, who governed Mercia. He protected his territories by fortresses which gradually became centres of trade and population. He gained two signal victories at Temsford and Maldon, and subjected all the tribes from Northumbria to the channel to his immediate control. He was twice married, and left a numerous family, and 3 of his sons, Athelstan, Edmund, and Edred, successively occupied the throne.

EDWARD II., surnamed the Martyr, king of the Anglo-Saxons, son and successor of Edgar, born in 962, ascended the throne in 975, and was murdered in 978. The intrigues of his stepmother Elfrida raised a faction in favor of her own son Ethelred, who was but 7 years of age. Ecclesiastical parties took opposite sides, the married clergy who had been ejected in the preceding reign regarding Elfrida as their patroness and supporting the pretensions of Ethelred, and the monastic followers of St. Dunstan maintaining the superior claim of Edward. A civil war had already begun, when at a general meeting of the witenagemote Edward was after much VOL. VII.-1

EDWARD (THE CONFESSOR)

opposition formally accepted as king. The strife among the clergy, however, still divided the kingdom, and the party opposed to St. Dunstan plotted the murder of the young monarch. He was stabbed in the back at Corfe castle, the residence of his stepmother, as he was drinking a cup of mead on horseback, and sinking from his seat he was dragged away by the stirrup by his frightened horse.

EDWARD III., surnamed the Confessor, king of the Anglo-Saxons, son of King Ethelred II., successor to Hardicanute, born in Islip, Oxfordshire, in 1004, ascended the throne in 1042, died Jan. 5, 1066. His mother was a Norman princess, Emma, and during the Danish domination which had succeeded the death of Edmund Ironside, he dwelt in exile in Normandy. When the news of the death of Canute in 1035 reached him, he determined to assert his pretensions to the crown, crossed the channel with a fleet of 40 ships, and landed at Southampton. He found himself opposed by his mother, who had become a second time queen of England by marriage with the Danish monarch, and was now regent of the kingdom. Menaced with destruction by a constantly increasing force, he hastily effected his retreat. With his brother Alfred he received a perfidious invitation from King Harold to cross the sea in 1037. Alfred was murdered at Guildford, and Edward, apprised of the fate which was awaiting him, escaped into Flanders. After the accession of his half brother Hardicanute, Edward was received with honor into England, presented with a princely establishment, and was at court when the king suddenly died in 1042. The Danish heir Sweyn was then absent from the kingdom; the rightful heirs of the Saxon line, the sons of Edmund Ironside, were in exile in Hungary; the Anglo-Saxons were determined to throw off the Danish yoke; the Danes were divided and dispirited; Edward was the nearest to the throne of any one present, and after a short period of hesitation and commotion he was recognized as king in a general council at Gillingham. His reign was the period when the mutual aversion of the two fierce Teutonic peoples, whose struggles for dominion had vexed the country during 6 generations, began to subside, when intermarriages

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and a blending of language and customs nearly effaced the distinction between the two races, and when the Normans began to exercise a potent influence in the country, both nations of which they were soon to prostrate. The first royal act of Edward was to strip his mother, whose resistance had defeated his first attempt to obtain the throne, of her immense treasures, and to confine her for life in a monastery at Winchester. The government was at this time in the hands of 3 powerful noblemen: Earl Godwin, who ruled all the southern provinces; Earl Leofric, who governed Leicester and the northern counties of Mercia; and Earl Siward, whose sway extended from the Humber to the confines of Scotland. Edward sought the protection of Earl Godwin by marrying his daughter Editha, a lady praised by the chroniclers for her learning, piety, and benevolence; yet the motive which prompted Edward to marry her was merely political, and the alliance proved therefore a source of enmity instead of friendshin ha he king and his father-inartial both to Norman manny foreign churchmen and red him to England, where qued influence in the government. A popular jealousy was already felt against them, when in 1050 Eustace, count of Boulogne, with his train, visiting England, quarrelled with the burghers of Dover, and in the tumult several persons were slain. The affray was reported to the king at Gloucester, by the discomfited Eustace, and Edward gave orders to Godwin, in whose government Dover lay, to chastise the insolence of the men of that city. The earl refused to obey; a rupture was therefore unavoidable, and 3 armies under the command of Godwin and his 2 sons immediately marched against the king in Gloucestershire. Edward summoned to his aid Leofric and Siward, and was quickly in a condition to intimidate his opponents, when it was agreed to refer the dispute to the decision of the witen agemote. Godwin, however, fled with his wife and sons to Flanders; their estates were then confiscated, Queen Editha was confined in a monastery, and the greatness of this family seemed completely destroyed. Tranquillity was hardly restored when William, duke of Normandy, the future conqueror, reached the coast of England to render assistance to his royal kinsman. He was received in a manner worthy of his great reputation, visited several of the royal villas, and was dismissed with magnificent presents. Godwin, however, having gradually collected a fleet, suddenly appeared in 1052 on the southern coast of England, swept away the ships from the different harbors, entered the Thames, menaced London, and extorted from the king the restoration of himself and his son Harold to their earldoms and the banishment of the foreigners; and the primate and the numerous other Norman functionaries fled for their lives. Godwin did not long survive this trih, and left his possessions to his son Harold, il in ambition and his superior in address.

At this period occurred the events which form the groundwork of Sha' speare's tragedy of "Macbeth." In 1039, cbeth, a turbulent nobleman, murdered Duncan, king of Scotland, chased Malcolm, his son and heir, into England, and usurped the crown. The exiled prince received from Edward permission to vindicate his rights with an English army, but for 15 years the power of the murderer defeated every attempt. At length in 1054 Malcolm was successfully supported by Macduff, the thane of Fife, and by Siward, earl of Northumberland. The fall of Macbeth cost the death of the son of Siward; the Northumbrian earl died soon after, when Harold obtained that earldom, in opposition to the rights of an infant heir, for his own brother Tosti. Thus the support which Edward gave to Malcolm resulted in adding largely to the power of his own most ambitious and dangerous subject. To oppose Harold's further progress, the king invested Algar, the son of Leofric, with the government of East Anglia, but the intrigues of Algar quickly led to his expulsion from his new possession. He, however, soon returned into Herefordshire with an army of Welsh and Norwegian auxiliaries, was opposed by the inconstant English monarch, but was able to maintain the cause of the king in spite of the king himself, and returning again, forced Harold to a compromise and was reinstated in East Anglia. He was again expelled and again restored, and at his death in 1058 Harold was left without a rival, the most powerful subject in England. Edward the Outlaw, the Saxon heir to the throne, after a life of exile, died within a few days of his arrival in England, and there now stood between Harold and the crown only the young and feeble Edgar. The infirm old king, inveterate in his animosity to the family of Earl Godwin, turned his eyes toward his kinsman across the channel, William of Normandy, as a person whose capacity and power would render him the most formidable rival to Harold. Harold, being thrown in a tempest upon the coast of Normandy, was obliged while thus in the power of William to swear that he renounced all hope of the crown, and to do homage for his lands and honors to William, as the appointed successor of Edward. He returned to England, and, as Hume says, deterred the king from abdicating in favor of William, increased his martial renown by an expedition against the robbers of Wales, which terrified them into submission during the next 4 reigns, extended his sway by marrying the sister of Morcar of Northumberland, and was crowned king on the very day of Edward's death. It was fortunate for the memory of Edward that he occupied the interval between the Danish and the Norman conquests; that his reign was a time of comparative tranquillity under a native prince, between two periods of subjection to conquerors. The laws and customs of "good King Edward" were long remembered with popular affection. He was highly esteemed for his sanctity, was the first English prince that touched for the king's evil, and was canonized