EDOAR ATIIELING, that is, Edgar of the blood royal, or Prince Edgar, is we should now via.. Tho personage commonly understood in English history by this title is Edgar, the grandson of King Edmund lroneide through Ilia eon Edward, surnamed the Outlaw. Edward and his brother had been sent from England by Canute in 1017, the year after his accession, to his half-brother Cleve, king of Swodeu, by whom it was probably intended that they should be tnado away with; but Olave spared the lives of the children, and had them removed to tho court of the king of linngary. All the English historians make the Ilungarien king by whom they were received to be Solomon; but this roust be a mistake, for that king did not ascend the throne till 1002, and war only born In 1051. The king of Hungary at the time when the children of Edmund Ironside 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, Pelinund (or, as some call him, Edwin), married a daughter of the Hungarian king, but died without Issue; and that the other, Edward, married Agatha, the daughter of the Emperor Henry II. and the sister 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 was, therefore, it is impossible to say. Sho bore to her husband, besides Edgar, two daughters, Margaret and Christina.
Edgar, as well as his sisters, must have been born in Hangery ; but the year of Ida birth has not, we believe, been recorded. His father, after an exile of forty years, was sent for to England, in 1057, by his uncle King Edward the Confessor, who professed an intention of acknowledging him as next heir to tho crown : the Outlaw accordingly came to this oountry with hie wife and children, but ho was never admitted to his uncle's presence, and be died shortly after, not without the suspicion of foul play, which one hypothesis attributed to Earl Harold, another to the Duke of Normandy. There is nothing like proof, howaror, of the guilt of either. The event in the mean time was generally considered as placing young Edgar in the position of his father as heir to the crown; and it seems to have been now that the title of Atheling (which had been borne by his father) was assumed by or conferred upon him. He was at any rate the Con fessor's nearest relation ; and if Edmund Iranside, from whom ho sprung, was illegitimate, as awns have supposed, the circumstance of Ills having worn the crown seems to have been regarded as sufficient to wipe away the stain, and to hriug his descendants into the regular line of the suocessioo. All Edmund's brothers and half-brothers, with
the exception of the reigning king, had perished, most of them having been cut off by Canute and the other kings of the Danish stock ; and the Confessor himself and his grandnephew, young Edgar, were now the only remaining male descendant. of Ethelred II.
Edgar was still in England when the Coufessor died in January 1066; but he was yet very young, and appeared to be feeble In mind as well as in body, and therefore was in nowise fitted either to take a part, or to be used as an ivatrument by others, in tho 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 Atheling derived an importance from his descent and his position which after wards occasioned him to be conspicuously brought forward on various occasions, and has made him an historic character. On the destruc tion of the power of Harold at the battle of Hastings, he was actually proclaimed as king by the citizens of London ; but on the approach of the Conqueror, ho was one of the first to go to him at Berkhamstead and to offer full submission. He theu took up his 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 dominious, we Hod 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 tho Norman conqueror, carried the heir of the Saxon lino and his mother and sisters with them to the court of the Scottish king Malcolm Canmore. This movement was attended with important consequences. Malcolm soon after married Edgar's eldest sister Margaret, and of this marriage came Matilda, whose union in 1100 with Henry I. of England was the first step towards the reconcilement of the Saxon and Norman races. Meanwhile Edgar and his friends were followed to Scotland by many other Saxon fugitives, who were the means of introducing into that country much of the snperior civilieatiou of the southern part of tho island. A connection between Scotland and Hinigary appears also to have arisen out of this flight of Edgar, and the subsequent marriage of his sister with the Scottish king.