King Edgar the Peaceful

     King Edgar the Peaceful was born circa 7 August 943; Edgar reigned as Saxon King of England from 959 to 975.¹ He was the son of King Edmund I and Ælfgifu of Shaftesbury.² King Edgar the Peaceful married Queen Ælfthryth, daughter of Ordgar Ealdorman of Devon, in 964 or 965; Ælfthryth was the first king's wife known to have been crowned and anointed as Queen of the Kingdom of England. Mother of King Æthelred the Unready, she was a powerful political figure. She was linked to the murder of her stepson King Edward the Martyr and appeared as a stereotypical bad queen and evil stepmother in many medieval histories.

She was the second or third wife of Edgar. Ælfthryth was first married to Æthelwald, son of Æthelstan Half-King as recorded by Byrhtferth of Ramsey in his Life of Saint Oswald of Worcester. Later accounts, such as that preserved by William of Malmesbury, add vivid detail of unknown reliability.

According to William, the beauty of Ordgar's daughter Ælfthryth was reported to King Edgar. Edgar, looking for a Queen, sent Æthewald to see Ælfthryth, ordering him "to offer her marriage [to Edgar] if her beauty were really equal to report." When she turned out to be just as beautiful as was said, Æthelwald married her himself and reported back to Edgar that she was quite unsuitable. Edgar was eventually told of this, and decided to repay Æthelwald's betrayal in like manner. He said that he would visit the poor woman, which alarmed Æthelwald. He asked Ælfthryth to make herself as unattractive as possible for the king's visit, but she did the opposite. Edgar, quite besotted with her, killed Æthelwald during a hunt.

The historical record does not record the year of Æthelwald's death, let alone its manner. No children of Æthelwald and Ælfthryth are known.³ King Edgar the Peaceful died on 8 July 975 at Winchester, Hampshire, England; He left two sons, the elder named Edward, who was probably his illegitimate son by Æthelflæd (not to be confused with the Lady of the Mercians), and Æthelred, the younger, the child of his wife Ælfthryth. He was succeeded by Edward. Edgar also had a daughter, porbably illegitimate, by Wulfryth, a novice nun at Wilton Abbey, who later became abbess of Wilton despite the birth of her daughter, Edith of Wilton. She was joined there by her daughter, who lived there as a nun until her death. Edith was only 23 when she died, but miracles at the site of her tomb ensured she became a cult figure. Both women were later regarded as saints.¹ He was buried at Glastonbury Abbey, Somerset, England.
     Though Edgar was not a particularly peaceable man, his reign was a peaceful one. The Kingdom of England was well established. Edgar consolidated the political unity achieved by his predecessors. By the end of Edgar's reign, England was sufficiently unified that it was unlikely to regress back to a state of division among rival kingships, as it had to an extent under Eadred's reign.

Edgar was crowned at Bath and anointed with his wife Ælfthryth, setting a precedent for a coronation of a queen in England itself. Edgar's coronation did not happen until 973, in an imperial ceremony planned not as the initiation, but as the culmination of his reign (a move that must have taken a great deal of preliminary diplomacy). This service, devised by Dunstan himself and celebrated with a poem in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, forms the basis of the present-day British coronation ceremony.
The symbolic coronation was an important step; other kings of Britain came and gave their allegiance to Edgar shortly afterwards at Chester. Six kings in Britain, including the King of Scots and the King of Strathclyde, pledged their faith that they would be the king's liege-men on sea and land. Later chroniclers made the kings into eight, all plying the oars of Edgar's state barge on the River Dee. Such embellishments may not be factual, but the main outlines of the "submission at Chester" appear true.¹