EDGAR ATHELIXQ. 



EDGAR AT H ELI NO. 



of UM Saxon king; and it wu not till towards UM close of the reign 

 of th Confessor that the authority of the Enulish law wu fully 

 steaded over the nut of the country which they occupied. Edgar 

 however had apent his earliest yean among the Danes, and it wu by 

 their aid chiefly that he had acquired bit firat throne ; he consequently 

 wu attached to them, and during hia reign their preponderance wai 

 studiously maintained a cirouinitanoe which perha{ more than the 

 king'i 3600 ships served to preserve the country from Danish invaaion. 



The mookiah chrooiclera gire the loftie*t deacriptiona of the power 

 and extensive authority of Edgar, telling ua that he waa acknowledged 

 M their supreme lord by all the other kingi of Britain and the Bur- 

 rounding uland*. The itory told in the Saxon chronicle and eUewhere 

 of hia having been rowed in hia barge on the Dee by the euht aubject 

 kingi of Scotland, Cumberland, Angleaey with the lale of Han and 

 the Hebrides, Westmorland, Oalloway, North. South, and Middle 

 \Valee, it well known. It it also affirmed that the greater part of 

 Ireland had submitted to hia authority. The dominion which he 

 arrogated to himself appear* in fact not to have been inferior to what 

 we find claimed for him by his panegyrists. Among the title? assumed 

 by him on his seals and in charters are ' Edgaras Anglorum Basileus, 

 omniumque regum insularum ocean! qua? Britanniam circumjacent, 

 cunctarumque nation um qua) infra earn iocludnutur, Iinperator ot 

 Dominua' 'Rex et Primioerius tocius Albionis' 'Batilcus dilecto 

 insulae Albionis, subditia nobis sceptris Scottorum, Cumbrorum>|uo, 

 atque Brittonum, et omnium circumciroa regiouum,' &c. Those 

 " pompous and boastful titles," observes Mr. Turner, " sometimes run 

 to the length of fifteen or eighteen lines." Much difficulty in believing 

 that this ansumption of power had any real foundation is occasioned 

 by the absence of any record or notice of the subjugation of the more 

 important of these neighbouring kingdoms by any of the Anglo-Saxon 

 monarch*. What event ever happened, for instance; that could possibly 

 have induced the king of Scotland to acknowledge himself in this 

 manner as the vassal of the king of England ? The pacific character 

 claimed for the reign of Edgar, who is said never to have had occasion 

 to draw the sword against an enemy, makes it still more difficult to 

 understand how he should thus have compelled all his neighbours to 

 do him homage, and take him for their lord and master. 



The monkish writers, with whom Edgar is such a favourite, hare 

 not altogether concealed the fact that he was no saint in his morals. 

 The story appears to be sufficiently authenticated which attributes to 

 him the violation of a lady of noble birth, and that too while she was 

 resident in a convent. He was twice married, first to Elfleda the Pair, 

 by whom he had a son, Edward, who succeeded him ; and, secondly, 

 to Klfrida, the daughter of Ordgar, earl of Devonshire, who bore him 

 Edmund, who died in his infancy, and Ethelred, for whom his infamous 

 mother opened a way to the throne by the murder of Edward. The 

 circumstances of the marriage of Edgar and Elfrida the commission 

 given by the king to Kthelwold to visit the lady and ascertain the 

 truth of the reports of her beauty the treachery of Ethelwold, who 

 represented her to his ro.val master as unworthy of her fame, and then 

 married her himself the discovery by her and Edgar of the deceit 

 that had been practised on both of them and the subsequent assassi- 

 nation by the king of his unfaithful emissary are related by Malmabury 

 on the faith of an ancient ballad. There is nothing in the character 

 cither of Klfrida or Edgar that need occasion us any difficulty in 

 believing the story. 



Edgar was not solemnly crowned till the fourteenth year after he 

 succeeded to the throne. This boa been accounted for by stating that 

 Dunntan imposed on Edgar a severe penance of seven years duration 

 for the abduction of the nun Wulfrida, with the additional penalty 

 that during that period Edgar should not wear the crown : but this 

 would not account for ths ceremony being deferred for fourteen years. 

 The ceremony was at length performed at Akemanceastre, that is, 

 Bath, on the llth of May 973. He lived only two year* longer, dying 

 in 975, when ho was succeeded by his eldest ion Edward, afterwards 

 designated tin- M.n- vr. 



I I KiAlt ATHKLIXO, that is, Edgar of the blood royal, or Prince 

 Edgar, as we should now say. The personage commonly und. i .tood 

 in Kngluh history by this title is Edgar, the grandson of King E'limiml 

 Ironside through bis son Edward, surnamcd the Outlaw. Edward and 

 hi* lirothrr bad bren sent from England by Canute ill 1017, the year 

 after bis accession, to bis half-brother Ulave, king of Sweden, by whom 

 M was probably intended that they should be made away with; but 

 Clave spared the lives of the children, and had them removed to the 

 court of the king of Hungary. All the English historians make the 

 Hungarian Unf by whom they were received to be Solomon ; but this 

 must I* a miiUke, for that king did not ascend the throne till 10fl2, 

 and was only Iwrn in 1051. The king of Hungary at the time when 

 the children of K Itnnnd Ironride were sent to that country was 

 Stephen I., who reigned from 1001 to 1038. The story, as commonly 

 related, goes on to state that one of the brothers, Edmund (or, as 

 some call him, Edwin), married a daughter of the Hungarian king but 

 died without issue ; and that the oilier, Edward, married Agatha, the 

 daughter of the Emperor Henry II. aud the sinter of Queen Sophia, 

 the wife of Solomon. Here again there must be some great mistake, 

 for the Emperor Henry II. never had any children. Who Agatha 

 really waa, therefore, it ii impossible to say. She bore to her 

 husband, bolides Kdgar, two daughters, Margaret and Christina. 



Kdgar, as well as his sisters, must have been born in Hungary ; but 

 the year of his birth has not, we believe, been recorded. His father, 

 after an exile of forty years, wu sent for to England, in 1057, by his 

 uncle King Edward the Confessor, who professed an intention of 

 acknowledging him u next heir to the crown : the Outlaw accordingly 

 came to this country with his wife and children, but he waa never 

 admitted to his uncle's pretence, and he died shortly after, not 

 without the suspicion of foul play, which one hypotheau attributes to 

 Earl Harold, another to the Duke of Normandy. There is nothing 

 like proof, however, of the guilt of either. The event in the mean- 

 time wu generally considered u placing young Edgar in the position 

 of his father u heir to the crown ; and it seems to have been now 

 that the title of Atheling (which had been borne by bis father) wu 

 assumed by or conferred upon him. He was at any rate tin- 

 fesaor's nearest relation ; aud if E Imund Ironside, from whom he 

 sprung, was illegitimate, u aotnt have supposed, the circumstance of 

 hit having worn the crown seems to have been regarded u sufficient 

 to wipe away the stain, and to bring his descendants into the regular 

 line of the succession. All Edmund's brothers and half-brothers, v, nli 

 the exception of the reigning king, had perished, moat of them having 

 been cut off by Canute and the other kings of the Danish stock ; and 

 the Confessor himself and his grondnephew, young Edgar, were now 

 the only remaining male descendants of Ethelrud 11. 



Edgar wu still in England when the Confessor died in January 

 1066 ; but he wu yet very young, and appeared to be feeble in mind 

 u wall u in body, aud therefore wu in nowise' fitted either to take a 

 part, or to be used u an instrument by others, in the first tumult of 

 the contest in which two such energetic spirits as Harold and the 

 Norman William now proceeded to try their strength. Insignificant 

 as he was however from his personal endowments, the Ath.-ling 

 derived an importance from his descent and hia position which after- 

 wards occasioned him to be conspicuously brought forward on various 

 occasions, and bu made him an historic character. On the destruc- 

 tion of the power of Harold at the battle of Hastings, he was actually 

 proclaimed u king by the citizens of London ; but on the approach of 

 the Conqueror, he was one of the first to go to him at Berkhamstead 

 and to offer full submission. He then took up hia residence at the 

 court of William, who allowed him to retain the earldom of Oxford, 

 which had been bestowed upon him by Harold. When the Conqueror 

 the following year visited his Norman dominions, we find him taking the 

 Atheling in his train. In 1068 however Edgar appears to have fallen 

 into the hands of the discontented Northumbrian lords Maerleswegen 

 (or Marleswine), Cospatric, and others, who, deserting the Norman 

 conqueror, carried the heir of the Saxon line and his mother and 

 sisters with them to the court of the Scottish king Malcolm Canmore. 

 This movement was attended with important consequences. Malcolm 

 toon after married Edgar's eldest sister Margaret, and of this marriage 

 came Matilda, whose union in 1100 with Henry I. of England waa 

 the first step towards the reconcilement of the Saxon and Norman 

 races. Meanwhile Edgar and his friends were followed to Sc < 

 by many other Saxon fugitives, who were the means of introducing 

 into that country much of the superior civilisation of the southern 

 part of the island. A connection between Scotland and Hungary 

 appears also to hare arisen out of this flight of Edgar, and the 

 subsequent marriage of his sister with the Scottish king. 



It wu not intended however by Cospatric and his associates that 

 Scotland should serve them merely as a place of refuge. A powerful 

 confederacy wu immediately formed against the English kin?, in 

 which they and their protcg<5 Edgar were associated with the men of 

 Northumberland and Sweyn Estridsen the king of Denmark. The 

 united forces of these several powers stormed the castle of York on 

 the 22nd of October 1069, and put the Norman garrison to the 

 sword ; on which, according to some authorities, Edgar Atheling was 

 a second time actually proclaimed king. Hut the approach of 

 William soon compelled him to fly for his life, and he again took 

 refuge in Scotland. Here he appears to have remained inactive till 

 the year 1073, when he was again induced to engage in .1 

 annoying the Engluh king at the instigation of PhiUp king of Franco, 

 who invited him to come to that country, promising to give him some 

 place of strength from which he might attack either England or 

 Normandy. Edgar on this sot out with a few ships; but he was 

 wrecked In a storm on the coast of Northumberland, from which he 

 with difficulty made his escape far the third time to Scotland, in a 

 state of almost complete destitution. He was now advised by his 

 brother in-law Malcolm to make his peace with William ; and that king 

 having received his overtures favourably, he proceeded to England, 

 where William gave him an apartment in hi* palace, and a daily 

 allowance of a pound of silver for his support. In thw state of 

 dependence he remained for some years; but at length he seems to 

 have gone over to Normandy, where, after the death of the Conqueror, 

 hit son Duke Robert made the Saxon prince, a grant of some" lands. 

 The grant however tor some reaion which does not appear, was soon 

 resumed, and the Atheling was compelled, for the fourth time, to 

 betake himself to Scotland in 1091. In the end of the same year it 

 is related that a peace was effected by the good offices of Edgar and 

 Duke Robert between Malcolm and William llufua, when their armies 

 had met and were ready to engage, in l.otheno or Loidis (that is, most 

 probably, tho part of Scotland now called Lothian, then considered as 



