EDMUND L 



EDIUSI. 



m 



Miss Edgeworth passed a quiet but useful life with her family ; she 

 maintained an extensive correspondence with many friends and literary 

 acquaintances, and at length died on May 81, 1849, at the venerable 

 age of eighty-three. 



EDMUND I., King of the Anglo-Saxons, was the son of King 

 Edward the Elder, by his third wife Edgiva, According to the 

 common statement, he was born in 1'23, or about two years before hU 

 father's death, but we are inclined to believe that his birth was some 

 yean earlier : he is said to have fought at the battle of Brunanburh 

 in 934, when, if 929 be the correct date of his birth, he oould have 

 been only eleven yean old ; and was twice married, and by one of his 

 wives had two children, yet his death took place in 946. 



Edmund succeeded his half-brother Athelstane on the 27th of 

 October 941. Immediately after his accession the Danish people of 

 Northumbria rose in revolt under the same Anlaf or Olave who had 

 been defeated by Athelstane in the great battle of Brunanburh, and 

 forced to flee to Ireland. After the war had lasted about a year, an 

 accommodation was brought about by the Archbishops Odo and 

 Wolstan, by which it wu arranged that all the territory to the north 

 of \Vatliug-ftrect should be given up to Anlaf. The Danish earl how- 

 ever died the next year, and Edmund, by a prompt and vigorous use 

 of the opportunity, was successful in recovering all that he bad lost. 

 In 945 he also succeeded in reducing the hitherto independent state of 

 Cumbria (including the modies, Cumberland and Westmoreland), 

 which, after cruelly putting out the eyes of the two sons of the king, 

 Dunmail, he made over to Malcolm I. of Scotland, to be held by him 

 u the vassal of the English crown. The reign of Edmund, who was 

 distinguished not only for his personal courage, but by his taste for 

 elegance and splendour, on which account he received the surname of 

 the Magnificent, was terminated on the 26th of May 946, by a blow 

 which he received from an outlaw named Liof, who had the audacity 

 to present himself at the royal table as the king was celebrating the 

 feast of St. Augustine at Pucklekirk, in Gloucestershire. Edmund, 

 on his refusal to leave the room, rose himself to assist in expelling 

 him, when the intruder, with a dagger which he had concealed under 

 his clothes, stabbed him to the heart. King Edmund L left by his 

 wife Elgiva two eons, Edwy and Edgar, who eventually both sat on 

 the tli rone; but as they were mere children at the time of their 

 father's decease, they were set aside for the present, and his imme- 

 diate successor wu his brother Edred. 



EDMUND II., King of the Anglo-Saxons, surnauicd Ironside, 

 either from* his great strength, or the armour which he wore, was the 

 son of King Ethclrcd II., and was boru in 939. According to the 

 account that has commonly been received, his mother was Elgiva, or 

 Etht Igiva, the daughter of Earl Thored, or Toreth, who wu Ethelred's 

 first wife. Other authorities however assert that the mother of 

 Edmund, and also of several of his brothers, wu a foreign lady, who 

 wu only Ethelred's concubine. On the whole, the point of his 

 legitimacy must be considered doubtful. 



Edmund appears, in the history of the latter years of his father's 

 calamitous reign, as tho chief champiou of the English cause against 

 Canute and his Danes, who had by this time nearly overrun the king- 

 dom. On tho death of Ethelred in 1016, Edmund was proclaimed 

 king by the burgesses of London, and soon after, at least all the 

 kingdom of \Vessex, the hereditary dominion of his family, and which 

 wu now considered u comprehending the whole territory to the south 

 of the Thames, appears to have submitted to bis authority. Ho had 

 the year before, by a marriage with Elgiva, the widow of Sigeferth, a 

 thane of Danish descent, who had been put to death by Ethelred, 

 made himself master, in defiance of the despised and dying king, of 

 estates of great extent ; and the power he thus acquired is supposed 

 to have materially assisted him in securing the throne. 



The short reign of Edmund was nearly all spent in a continuation 

 of the sanguinary struggle in which he had already so greatly distin- 

 guished himself. HU exploit* are dwelt upou by the old national 

 chroniclers with fond amplification, but it is not very easy to separate 

 what is of historical value in their narratives from the romantic deco- 

 ration*. Immediately on Edmund's accession the Danish force* appear 

 to have besieged London. The Englixh king remained iu the capital 

 till it wu considered secure; after wbicli we find him engaging Canute, 

 first at Pen, in Dorsetshire (or, according to another account, near 

 Oillingham, in Somersetshire); and then at a place called Sceontau, 

 which U supposed to be the spot (till marked by a stone at the meeting 

 of the four counties of Oxford, Gloucester, Worcester, and Warwick. 

 In both the*e fight* Edmund appean to have been victorious ; that of 

 Bceontan lasted two days. A third engagement took place at Brent- 

 ford, tho iiwue of which is disputed. Soon after, the two armies met 

 again at OtUnford, or Otford, in Kent, when the Danes were defeated 

 with great slaughter. Finally however Edmund sustained a decisive 

 discomfiture at the great battle of Atsandun, supposed to be A using- 

 ton, in Essex. After thin, according to one account, which however 

 bu been generally discredited by modern historians, Canute and 

 Edmund agreed to decide their quarrel by single combat, and the 

 encounter accordingly took place on an islet called Alney, or Olney, 

 in the Severn, which tome place near Deerhurst, others near Glouces- 

 ter, between Overbridge and Maysemore. The result was, that Canute 

 WM obliged to yield and sue for his life. Whether the single combat 

 look place or not, it i* certain that an arrangement between the 



parties wu now made, by which Meroia and Northumbria were made 

 over to Canute, while Edmund wu allowed to retain poueuion of the 

 rest of the kingdom, with tho nominal sovereignty of the whole. It 

 is also said to have been stipulated that when either (should die the 

 other should be his successor. Edmund died a few weeks after this 

 pacification, having worn the crown only about seven months ; and 

 although there is considerable variation and obscurity in the aooount* 

 of his death, there are strong reasons for believing that he was made 

 away with by the contrivance of Canute. The northern historian* 

 state this in distinct terms. Canute immediately mounted the vacant 

 throne, 1016. Edmund Ironside left by his wife Algitha two sous, 

 Edward, called the Outlaw, and another, whom some call Edmund, 

 others Edwin, and of whom it is not known whether he wu older or 

 younger than Edward. [EDGAR ATHKLINO.] Edwy, the brother of 

 Edmund, wu put to death by command of Canute. 



KIWKD, King of the Anglo-Saxons, was the youngest of the sons of 

 Edward the Elder, by his wife Edgiva. [EDWARD THE EI.UKH.] 

 When the throne became vacant, in 946, by the death of hi* elder 

 brother, Edmund I., Edred wu recognised as his successor, Edwy 

 and Edgar, the two sous of Edmund, being considered to be excluded 

 for the present by their extreme youth. Edred was iu a bad st 

 health when he came to the throne, and he does not seem ever to have 

 recovered. Yet he is recorded to have, soon after his accession, 

 repressed in person an insurrection of the turbulent Danish popula- 

 tion of Northumberland ; and he appears to liave reduced that 

 Province to greater quiet and subjection than any of his predecessors, 

 n these military operations, u well as in tho management of civil 

 affairs, ho was mainly directed by the counsels of his chancellor 

 Turketul, who had served iu the same capacity under the two 

 preceding kings, Athelstane and Edmund. Another distinguished 

 character of this reign was the celebrated Dunstan, who owed his first 

 rise at court to the patronage of Turketul, and acquired under Edred 

 that extraordinary power iu the state which he preserved during 

 several succeeding reigns. [DUNSTAN.] Edred died, after a reign of 

 between nine and ten years, on the 23rd of November (St. Clei. 

 Day), 955, and was succeeded by his nephew Edwy, the eldest of the 

 two sons of his predecessor, king Edmund. 



EDUISI, with his complete name Abu-Abdullah Mohammed lieu 

 Mohammed ben Abdallah ben Edris, a well known Arabian writer on 

 Geography, who nourished about the middle of the sixth century uf 

 the Mohammedan era. Of the circumstances of his life little is 

 known. He wu a descendant of the family of the Edrisides, who for 

 upwards of a century possessed the sovereignty over the Moham- 

 medan provinces of Northern Africa. When, in A.D. 919, the Edrisidu 

 dynasty iu Africa was overthrown by Mahedi Abdullah, the survivors 

 of the family went to Sicily ; ami there our Edrisi seems to have been 

 born. The geographical treatise, which has made his name cele- 

 brated, was written at the commaud of Roger II. kiug of Sicily, whom 

 he frequently mentions in the body of the work ; he informs us iu the 

 preface that he completed it in the year 54S of the Hegira, A.r>. 1 1 .53-1 ; 

 and that it was intended to illustrate a silver terrestrial globe, 450 

 Greek pounds iu weight, which Kiug Roger had caused to be mail-. 

 The time at which he wrote it is further ascertained from an inci- 

 dental allusion to the fact of the town of Jerusalem being then in the 

 possession of the Christians, which occurs in the work, and to tho 

 capture of Tripolis and Bona by Roger, which events happened in the 

 years 540 and 548 of the Hegira (1145-6 and 1153-4 of our era). The 

 work itself also affords internal evidence of its having been written by 

 a person who bad visited Spain and Italy. Gabriel Sionita and 

 Johannes Hesronita, who, iu 1019, published a Latin translation of an 

 abridgment of Edrisi's work, were induced by an erroneous reading of 

 the only manuscript which they had, in a passage where Edrisi 

 speaks of the Nile dividing the country adjoining it into two halve n 

 (anthiii ' our country,' iubtead of anlihd ' its country,' the true 

 reading), to suppose him a native of Nubia; and this mistake gave 

 occasion to the designation of Geographus Nubiensis, under which 

 Edrisi, of whose real name the translators were ignorant, soon becamn 

 universally known. His work bears the title ' Nuzhat al-mushtAk fi 

 ikhtirak iil-ufuk,' Le. ' Amusement of the curious iu tho exploring of 

 countries.' Besides the abridged translation above mentioned, we now 

 possess a French version of what seems to bo the complete original 

 work, by M. Amddce Jaubert, made from two Arabic manuscripts, the 

 one found in the royal library at Paris, the other (which is accom- 

 panied with maps) recently procured in Egypt by M. Asselin, and now 

 likewise belonging to tho Bibliothcquo du Koi. Two other main 

 script* of the original work of Edrisi are preserved iu tho B.> 

 library at Oxford (Cod. Graves, No, 3837, and Cod. Pocock, 375). The 

 globe which this treatise wu intended to illustrate is entirely lost ; 

 but a planisphere, which is inserted in one of the Bodleian manus* 

 may be teen engraved iu Vincent's ' Poriplus of the Erythrean Sea,' 

 who observes (p. 508) that " it is evidently founded upon the error of 

 Ptolemy, which carries tho coast of Africa round to the east, and forms 

 a southern continent totally excluding the circumnavigation into the 

 Atlantic Ocean." U appears, from a comparison of this planitpbero 

 with the maps of Fra Mauro and the globe of Martin Behem at 

 Nuremberg, that for upwards of three centuries the globe of Edrisi 

 remained the foundation upon which all subsequent representations 

 of the earth's surface wi re constructed. In his descriptive treatise, 



