EDGAR, surnamed the Peaceable, was the second and youngest son of King Edmund I. by his wife Elgin, or Algiva. He appears to have been born in 943, and consequently was only about three years old at his father's death, in 946. His brother Edwy, or Eadwy, may have been a year or perhaps two years older. In these circumstances, Edmund's brother Edred was unanimously chosen to succeed him by the Witenagemote. On the death of Edred however in 956, Edwy was placed on the throne ; and at the same time his brother Edgar was appointed governor or sub-regulus of Mercia, which was still con• sidered as a distinct though subject kingdom. When, about two years after his accession, the enmity between Edwy and the church interest broke out into an open quarrel, the people of Mercia and Northumbria, instigated to revolt by Archbishop Odo, or at least timing their movement very opportunely for the purposes of the clerical party, placed Edgar at their head and proclaimed him king. It was finally arranged that Edwy should retain the sovereignty a' the territory to the south of the Thames, and that all the rest of the kingdom should be made over to Edgar. The death of Edwy, however, about a year after, made Edgar king of all England in 959.
Dunstan, who had been banished by Edwy, had been recalled by Edgar, and made his chief counsellor, as soon as he found himself established as king of the country to the north of the Thames. Being as yet only in his sixteenth year (or perhaps not quite so old) when he became full king, he was of course entirely in tho bands of the monks and clergy, whose instrument he had hitherto been. Dunstan, already Bishop both of Worcester and London, was now promoted to the primacy, as well as restored to his abbey of Glastonbury, and became the chief director of affairs both in church and state. The government of the kingdom by Edgar, under the guidance of this ecclesiastic (or rather under the direction of this ecclesiastic, for Edgar was evidently a mere instrument in the hands of Dunstan) was unquestionably conducted with a certain amount of ability and success. Throughout the whole reign England remained undisturbed by war ; the northern pirates, who had harassed the country so incessantly for 150 years before, and who, twenty years after the death of Edgar, renewed their attacks, and did not desist until they had effected its conquest, during his life did not once attack the English coasts. According to the monkish writers, they were deterred from doing so by the powerful naval force that was kept up by the king. These writers make the fleet of Edgar to have consisted of 3600 ships. "The
number," says a modern historian, in a somewhat decisive style of narration, "appears to me enormous ; I have therefore retrenched a cipher." (Lingard, Hist. Engl.') In this fleet, which was divided into three squadrous, Edgar is said by Malmsbury to have every Easter circumnavigated the island in person ; but this looks very like merely one of the improbable inventions by which Edgar's monkish admirers have laboured to magnify his name, and, in fact, the eutiro story wears a somewhat apocryphal aspect. It may be doubted whether we ought not to regard in the same light what some of the chroniclers tell us about his making annually a progress through the different provinces of his kingdom for the administration of justice. Another work of great publie benefit which is attributed to him is the reformation of the coinage. He is also said to have freed Wales from wolves by commuting the money tribute imposed upon the Welsh by his predecessors for a tribute of 300 heads of these auimals annually; by which means the wolves were extirpated in four years. But there were wolves in England long after this. Edgar has been chiefly lauded by the monkish annalists for his restoration of the church both to its ancient possessions and to a more perfect state of discipline than it had probably ever before known. And this is no doubt the true explanation of the extravagant eulogies which the monkish writers lavish upon Edgar, who was plainly a weak, selfish, and luxurious prince—that ho raised, or permitted to be raised, the ecclesiastical power to a higher point than it had yet attained in England, and placed the supreme secular authority in the bands of a priest who ruled the country with a despotie sway, to which the people were compelled to yield a sullen obedience. The reign of Edgar was a peaceful and apparently a powerful one ; but under priestly domination and Danish favouritism, the Anglo-Saxon spirit was broken, and the country was left, when the strong hand of Dunstrn was removed, to fall a helpless prey to intestine turbulence and the assault of the foreigner. Under the vigorous administration of Dunstan and his subservient associates Ethelwold and Oswald, the bishops of Winchester.and Worcester, the married clergy were removed almost to a man from the cathedrals and abbeys ; and no fewer than fifty-four monasteries were founded or restored in different parts of the kingdom, and filled with monks as well as richly endowed. They were all subjected to the Benedictine rule.