King Edgar ENGLAND

   Other names for Edgar were MERCIA & NORTHUMBRIA King, ENGLAND King, "The Peaceful", Eadgar and "The Peaceable".

   Ancestral File Number: GS4H-P7. User ID: 2420447344.

   General Notes:

"The Peaceable", "The Peaceful", King of MERCIA & NORTHUMBRIA Reigned 957-959, King of ENGLAND Reigned 957/959-975.

Not Married Wulfryth.

BOOKS
Barber Grandparents: 125 Kings, 143 Generations, Ted Butler Bernard and Gertrude Barber Bernard, 1978, McKinney TX, p84: "352U Edgar `The Peaceful', King of England, (S of 338, F of 364); married Elfrida."

Kings and Queens of Great Britain, Genealogical Chart, Anne Taute and Romilly Squire, Taute, 1990: "Edgar The Peaceful King of England 959-975, Mar =1 Aethelflaed Daughter of Ealdorman Ordmaer =2 (2) Aelfthryth (Elfrida) Died Abt 1000 Daughter of Ardgar Ealdorman of Devon, Mistress Wulfryth.

The Oxford Illustrated History of Britain, Kenneth O Morgan, 1986, Oxford University Press
p65: "King Edgar portrayed on the foundation charter of New Minster, Winchester, dated 966. This picture, one of the finest examples of the Winchester School of manuscript illumination, illustrates the close connection between royal authority and the great monastic reform movement."

A History of the Plantagenets, Vol II, The Magnificent Century, Thomas B Cos- tain, 1964, Doubleday & Co, p152:
"On June 18 of that year [1239] a healthy male child was born at Westminster...As soon as a loud clangor of bells conveyed the intelligence that the child was a boy, the city was illuminated and the streets filled with excited people. Already the descent of the royal infant had been traced back from Matilda, the Saxon wife of Henry I; to Margaret, her mother, who had been Queen of Scotland; to Edward the Exile, Edmund Ironsides, Ethelred, Edgar, Edward, Alfred. There it was to con, to talkover, the proof of descent from Alfred the Great, Alfred of glorious memory! For the first time in many years Henry [III] had succeeded in making his people happy. For days later the child was baptized and given the name of Edward, which againdelighted the people because it was so completely English..."

A History of the English Speaking People Winston S Churchill Vol I The Birth of Britain Dodd Mead & Co p132: "In the brilliant and peaceful reign of Edgar all this long building hadreached its culmination. The reconquest of England was accompanied step by step by a conscious administrative reconstruction which has governed the development of English institutions from that day to this. The shires were reorganised, each with its sheriff or reeve, a royal officer directly responsible to the Crown. The hundreds, subdivisions of the shire, were created, and the towns prepared for defence. An elaborate system of shire, hundred, and burgh courts maintained law and order..."
p134: "...From whatever point of view we regard it, the tenth century is a decisive step forward in the destinies of England. Despite the catastrophic decline of the monarchy which followed the death of Edgar, this organisation andEnglish culture were so firmly rooted as to survive two foreign conquests in less than a century."

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1981, Micropaedia, Vol III, p788, Edgar: "also spelled Eadgar, Born 943/944, Died 8 Jul 975, King of the Mercians and Northumbrians from 957 who became King of the West Saxons in 959 and is reckoned as King of the English from that year. He was efficient and tolerant of local customs, and his reign was peaceful. He was most important as a patron of the English monastic revival.
"The younger son of Edmund I, King of the English, Edgar was made King of the Mercians and Northumbrians in place of Eadwig, his brother, who was deposed. On Eadwig's death (1 Oct 959), Edgar succeeded to the West Saxon throne. His ecclesiastical policy was also that of the Archbishop of Canterbury, St Dunstan, who insisted on strict observance of the Benedictine Rule. The King supported Archbishop Oswald of York and Bishop Aethelwold of Winchester in founding abbeys. Edgar's laws were the first in England to prescribe penalties for nonpayment of tithes and Peter's pence, the annual contribution made by Roman Catholics for support of the Holy See."

Macropaedia, Vol III, p203, Britain and Ireland History of: "...The kings did not try to eradicate these local peculiarities. King Edgar (reigned 959-975) expressly granted local autonomy to the Danes...and Edgar enjoined that the shire courts must meet twice a year, the borough courts threetimes. This pattern of local government survived the Norman Conquest..."

The New Columbia Encyclopedia, 1975, p832, Edgar or Eadgar: "Born Abt 943, Died Abt 975, King of the English (959-975), son of Edmund, King of Wessex. In 957 the Merciansand Northumbrians rebelled against Edgar's brother Edwy and chose Edgar as their king. In 959 he succeeded his brother as King of Wessex. His reign was one of orderly prosperity. He recalled (958) St Dunstan and with him initiated widespread monastic reforms. In 973 the king was crowned at Bath in an elaborate ceremony, the first of its kind in England, that stressed the analogy between kingship and priesthood. Shortly afterward he received homage from the other kings in Britain atChester. He gave Lothian to the King of Scotland in return for his homage, and granted practical autonomy to the Danes in England (Danelaw) in return for their loyalty. Edgar was succeeded by his son by his first wife, Edward the Martyr. His son by his second wife was Aethelred the Unready, who succeeded Edward."

The Story of Civilization, Will Durant, Vol III, The Age of Faith, Bk IV, The Dark Ages, Chap XX, The Rise of the North, Sec 2, Anglo-Saxon Civilization, p486: "...St Dunstan, Abbot of Glastonbury, became chief counselor under kings Edmund (940-946), and Edred (946-955). He defended the middle and lower classes against the nobles, boldly criticized monarchs and princes, was exiled by King Edwig (955-959), was recalled by Edgar (959-975), and secured the crown for Edward the Martyr (975-978)..."

From Alfred to Henry III 871-1272, Christopher Brooke, 1961, Norton Library History of England, p49: "...Alfred's positive achievements, however sensation- al,did not give Wessex stability or permanent security. His work would have foundered if he had not been succeeded by a line of able kings. It was carried on, and in certain respects completed, by his remarkably able descendents, notably by his son Edward, his grandson Athelstan (King 924-939) and his great- grandson, Athelstan's nephew, Edgar (959-975). After Edgar's death the thone passes to lesser men, and the long rule of Ethelred II (978-1016) coincided with the renewal of Danishattacks. With Ethelred the dynasty collapsed, though not, as we shall see, the kingdom."
p54: "Thus, after some vicissitudes, the inheritance of Edward the Elder and Athelstan passed into the next generation intact and well established. It was well that it did so, because the next generation was represented by Edmund's sons, of whom the elder, Eadwig, cannot have been more than fifteen and the younger, Edgar, was twelve. Eadwig lived only four years after his accession..." "...Edgar began his reign while still a boy and died in his early thirties; the prestige he acquired is all the more remarkable. As a soldier, Edgar acquired little glory, because, as one version of the Chronicle has it, `God granted him to live his days in peace'. But his reign was not weak, and his prestige stood very high. In 973, at the age of thirty...Edgar was solemnly anointed and crowned king by Archbishop Donstan, in a ceremony which laid special emphasis on the analogies ofkingship and priesthood, and provided for the first time in England a fully elaborated coronation service on the Frankish model...Later in the same year, in an equally famous scene at Chester, Edgar received the submission of seven Welsh and Scottish kings- who rowed him. as legend has it, on the Dee, between his palace and the church of St John. This show of power was accompanied by an act of policy which was probably characteristic of Adgar. The King of Scots became Edgar's man; in return Edgar granted him Lothian, the land between the Tweed and the Forth, a country always remote from English authority and difficult to control...Within England itself, Edgar recognised that English and Danes lived by different customs; thus recognising the existence and native rights of a vital minority in his kingdom.
"...The coronation ceremony in 973 was the climax of the collaboration between the King and his chief councillor Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury... p58: "...Edgar died suddenly, while still a young man, in 975, and was succeeded in turn by his two sons, Edward (975-978) and Ethelred (978-1016)..."

The Wall Chart of World History, Edward Hull, 1988, Studio Editions, England 959: "Edgar thePeaceable, brother of Edwy, wife was Elfrida, King of England 959-975..."

ANCESTRAL FILE
Ancestral File Ver 4.11 GS4H-P7 Born Abt 943 Wessex England Mar 964 Wessex England Died 8 Jul 975 Wessex England.

   Marriage Information:

Edgar married Aethelflaed, daughter of Ealdorman Ordmaer. (Aethelflaed died in 962.)

   Marriage Information:

Edgar also married Queen Elfthryth ENGLAND, daughter of Ealdorman Ordgar DEVON and Wulfrith, in 964-965 in , Wessex, England. (Queen Elfthryth ENGLAND was born about 945-947 in , Devonshire, England and died in 1000.)

   Marriage Information:

Edgar also married Wulfryth.