EDWARD II., King of the Anglo-Saxons, surnamed the Martyr, was the eldest son of Edgar the Peaceable, by his first wife, Eltleda. On the death of Edgar in 975, the accession of Edward was opposed by a faction headed by his father's widow, Elfrida, who, on the pretence that the elder brother was excluded by the circumstance of having been born before his father had been crowned, maintaieed 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 latter prevailed in the Witenagemote, and Edward was 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 namo with infamy. This was the murder of her step-son by a hired
assassin, as he stopped one day while hunting at her residence, 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 18th 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 of 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 Caine, 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. (Duxsrear.)