roc 



EDWARD I. 



EDWARD III. 



>06 



Edrisi, like all other Arabian geographers, distributes the portion of 

 the globe known at his time into seven climates, each of which he 

 subdivides into ten regions : in the account which he gives of them he 

 follows the uniform plan of proceeding from west to east ; but he does 

 not, like Abulfeda, determine the longitude and latitude of the places 

 which he mentions. The abridgment of the work contains little more 

 than an itinerary of these different regions; but the origiual perform- 

 ance now translated adds many remarks on their inhabitants, natural 

 productions, 4e. Edrisi frequently refers to writers that have pre- 

 ceded him : among others to an Arabic translation of Ptolemy of 

 Claudia?, to Abdallah ben Khordadbeh, and Masudi. 



The Arabic text of the abridgment of Edrisi's work, which is now 

 extremely scarce, appeared under the following Latin title : ' De 

 Geographia universal!, Hortulua cultissimus, mire orbis regiones, pro- 

 vincias, iusulas, urbes, earumque dimensiones et orizonta, describens,' 

 Roma;, in typographia Medicea, 1592, 4to. The Latin translation of 

 the same by Gabriel Sionita and Johannes Hesronita, bears the title : 

 ' Qeographia Nubiensis, id est, accuratissima totius orbis in septem 

 climata divisi descriptio,' Paris, 1619, 4to. Of other publications 

 relating to tha work of Edrisi we shall mention only two : 'Descripcion 

 de Espana de Serif Aledris conocido por el Nubieuse ; con traduccion 

 y notas de Don J. A. Conde-,' Madrid, 1799, 8vo ; and J. M. Hartmann's 

 ' t'ommentatio de Qeographia Africae Edrisiana,' Gbttingen, 1791, 4to. 

 M. Jaubert's French translation appeared under the auspices of the 

 French Geographical Society, and forms the fifth and sixth volumes of 

 the ' Kecueil de Voyages et de Mdmoires,' published by that society. 

 It has also the following separate title, ' Geographic d'Edrisi, traduite 

 de 1'Arabe en Francais, d'apres deux MSS. de la Bibliotheque du Roi, 

 et accompaguee de notes par M. Ame'de'e Jaubert,' Paris, 1836, 1840, 4to. 



EDWARD I., sur named the Elder, King of the West Saxons, and 

 with some pretensions to be regarded as king of all England, was the 

 eldest son of Alfred the Great, by his queen Alswitha, the daughter 

 of Earl -EtUelred. On the death of hia father, 26th of October 901, 

 Edward was recognised by the Witenagemote as his successor; but 

 the thone was contested by his cousiu Ethelwald, who was the son of 

 Ethelred, one of the three elder brothers and predecessors of Alfred. 

 The cause of Ethelwald received from the first the support of the 

 Danes of the north, and by their assistance in 904 he compelled the 

 submission of the people of Essex, and in the following year that of 

 the East Anglian*. The contest however was at length terminated in 

 906 or 907 by the death of Ethelwald, in a battle fought between his 

 forces and those of Edward. The people of East Anglia on this re- 

 turned under submission to the king of Wessex, and the Northumbrian 

 Danes concluded a peace with him ; but three or four years afterwards 

 we find the Danes breaking this pacification, nor do they appear to 

 have been quieted, or the people of Essex finally brought back to their 

 obedience, till the year 920 or 921. Mercia in the meantime had 

 continued to be governed as a separate state, though subject to the 

 supremacy of Wessex, first by the ealdormau Ethered, or Ethelred, to 

 whom it had been entrusted by Alfred, and after his death in 912 by 

 his widow Ethelfleda, the sister of Edward. The Lady Ethelfleda 

 survived till 920, conducting the affairs of her government with dis- 

 tinguished ability, and all along acting in concert with her brother iu 

 bis efforts against the Danes and bis other enemies. On her death, 

 Edward took the government of Mercia into his own hands. After 

 this, if we may believe the old historians, not only did all the Danes, 

 including even those of Northuiubria, make full submission to Edward, 

 but their example was followed by the Welsh and the people of 

 Strathclyde, and the king of the Scots and all his subjects also chose 

 the English monarch as their lord. The military successes however, 

 which must have been achieved to compel the submission of all these 

 neighbouring powers, if such submission actually took place, are not 

 recorded. 



Some of the laws of Edward the Elder are preserved, but they do 

 not demand any particular notice. He died iu 925, and was succeeded 

 by his eldest son Athelstane, born to him by a shepherd's daughter 

 named Egwina, who is stated by some of the old writers to have 

 been his wife, by others only his mistress. He had also another son 

 and a daughter by Egwiua. By another lady, to whom he is allowed 

 to have been married, but whose name is unknown, he had two sons 

 and six daughters ; and by another wife, Edgiva, he had two sons, 

 Edmund and Edred, both of whom were afterwards kings of England, 

 and two daughters. 



EDWAUU II., King of the Anglo-Saxons, eurnamed the Martyr, was 

 the eldest son of Edgar the Peaceable, by Ma first wife, Elaeda. On 

 the death of Eilgar in 975, the accession of Edward was opposed by a 

 faction headed by his father's widow, Elt'rida, who, on the pretence 

 that the elder brother was excluded by the circumstance of having 

 been born before his father had been crowned, maintained that the 

 right to the vacant throne lay with her own son Ethelred. To create 

 for herself the appearance of a national party, she and her associates 

 proclaimed themselves the patrons of the cause of the married clergy 

 in opposition to Dunstan and the monks ; but after a short period of 

 confusion the Utter prevailed in the Witenagemote, and Edward wtis 

 formally accepted as king by that assembly. Elfrida however seems 

 still to have continued her intrigues, and her unscrupulous ambition 

 at last lead her to the perpetration of a deed which has covered her 

 name with infamy. This wag the murder of her 6tp-sou by a hired 



assassin, as he stopped one day while hunting at her resideuce, Corfe 

 Castle, in Dorsetshire : he was stabbed in the back as he sat on his 

 horse at the gate of the castle drinking a cup of mead. The 1 Sth of 

 March 978 is the date assigned to the murder of King Edward, who 

 was only in his seventeenth year when he was thus cut off. He was 

 never married, and leaving no children, was succeeded by his half- 

 brother, Ethelred, the only individual then remaining whose birth 

 gave him any pretensions to the throne. 



It was in the reign of Edward that the national council for deter- 

 mining the question at issue between the secular and monastic clergy 

 was held at Calne, which is so famous for the catastrophe of the floor 

 giving way, with the exception of the part on which Dunstan and his 

 friends stood. [DUNSTAN.] 



EDWARD III., King of the Anglo-Saxon?, suruamed the Confessor, 

 was the eldest of the two sons of Ethelred II. by his second wife 

 Emma, the daughter of Richard I., duke of Normaudy. He was born 

 at Islip, in Oxfordshire, probably in the year 1004. In the close of 

 1013, when the successes of Sweyn, the Dane, drove Ethelred from 

 his throne, and compelled him to retire to the Isle of Wight, he sent 

 over his wife, with Edward and his younger brother Alfred, to 

 Normandy, to the care of their uncle Duke Richard II. Hither 

 Ethelred himself, being assured of a favourable reception, followed his 

 family, about the middle of January 1014. When, on the death of 

 Sweyn, within three weeks after, Ethelred was recalled by the Witeu- 

 agemote.he sent back his son Edward along with the plenipotentiaries, 

 whom he despatched previously to setting out himself to complete the 

 arrangements for his restoration. Oil the death of Ethelred in lOlb', 

 Emma and her two sons returned to Normandy. When Canute the 

 Dane obtained the throne in the latter part of tho same year by the 

 death of Edmund Ironside, it is affirmed that Duke Richard either 

 fitted out a naval foroo or threatened to do so, with a view of support- 

 ing the claims of his nephew Edward ; but this intention, if it ever 

 was entertained, was effectually diverted before it led to anything by 

 the proposals which now proceeded from Canute for the hand of the 

 widowed Emma. Canute and Emma were married in July 1017. 

 From this time till the death of Canute in 1035, Edward appears to 

 have remained quiet in Normandy. He is said to have spent his 

 time chiefly in the performance of the offices of religion and in 

 hunting, which continued to be his favourite occupations to the end 

 of his days. On Canute's death, and the disputes for the succession 

 between his sous Harold and Hardicanute, Edward was induced to 

 make a momentary demonstration in assertion of his pretensions : he 

 crossed the channel with a fleet of forty ships, and landed at South- 

 ampton ; but finding that instead of being supported, he would be 

 vigorously opposed by his mother, who was exerting all her efforts for 

 her son Hardicanute, he gave up the attempt, and returned to 

 Normandy after merely plundering a few villages. In 1037 his 

 younger brother Alfred was tempted by an invitation purporting to 

 come from Emma to proceed to England at the head of another 

 expedition, which terminated in his destruction, brought about appa- 

 rently by treachery, though there does not scein to be any sufficient 

 ground for the horrid suspicion, which some writers have been 

 disposed to entertain, that tlie contriver of the plot was his own mother. 

 When Hardicanute became undisputed king of all England by the 

 death of Harold in 1040, he sent for his half-brother Edward, who 

 immediately came to England, where he was allowed a handsome 

 establishment, and appears to have been considered as the heir to 

 the crown in default of issue of the reigning kiug. Hardicauute died 

 on the 4th of June 1042, and Edward was immediately recognised as 

 king by the assembled body of the clerical and lay nobility ; tho 

 former, it is said, having been chiefly swayed by Livingus, bishop of 

 Worcester, the latter by the powerful Earl Godwin. 



A menace of opposition to this settlement of the English crown by 

 Magnas, king of Norway, was defeated, after it had put EdwarJ to 

 the expense of fitting out a fleet to maintain his rights, first by the 

 occupation which Magnus found at home in defending himself against 

 another claimant to the Danish throne, Sweyn, the nephew of Canute, 

 and soon after, more effectually, by the death of Magnus. In 1044, 

 Edward, probably in compliance with a promise which he had made 

 to Godwin, married Editha, the only daughter of that earl, having 

 previously informed her however that although he would make her 

 his queen, she should not share his bed. This unnatural proceeding, 

 by which Edward gained from his church the honour of canonisation 

 and the title of Confessor, and by which, to pass over his treatment 

 of his wife and his violation of his marriage vows, he involved his 

 country in the calamities of a disputed succession, and eventually of 

 a foreign conquest, has been usually attributed to religious motives. 

 The Confessor seems to havo been without human affections of any 

 kind. His urst.act after coming to the throne was to proceed to tho 

 residence of his mother at Winchester, and to seize by force not only 

 all her treasures, but even the cattle and corn upon her lauds. One 

 account further states that he endeavoured to destroy her by an 

 accusation from which she freed herself by the ordeal though this 

 part of the story has been generally rejected by modern writers. 



The public events that form the history of the reign of the Confessor 

 resolve themselves for the most part into a contest between two great 

 parties or interests which divided the court and tho country. The 

 connection between England and Normandy had commenced forty 



