Edward the Martyr ( – 18 March 978) was King of the English from 8 July 975 until he was killed in 978. He was the eldest son of King Edgar (). On Edgar's death, the succession to the throne was contested between Edward's supporters and those of his younger half-brother, the future King Æthelred the Unready. As they were both children, it is unlikely that they played an active role in the dispute, which was probably between rival family alliances. Edward's principal supporters were Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Æthelwine, Ealdorman of East Anglia, while Æthelred was backed by his mother Queen Ælfthryth and her friend Æthelwold, Bishop of Winchester. The dispute was quickly settled. Edward was chosen as king and Æthelred received the lands traditionally allocated to the king's eldest son in compensation.
Edgar had been a strong and overbearing king and a supporter of the monastic reform movement. He had forced the lay nobility and secular clergy to surrender land and sell it at low prices to the monasteries. Æthelwold had been the most active and ruthless in seizing land for his monasteries with Edgar's assistance. The nobles took advantage of Edgar's death to get their lands back, mainly by legal actions but sometimes by force. The leading magnates were split into two factions, the supporters of Ælfhere, Ealdorman of Mercia, and Æthelwine, who both seized some monastic lands which they believed belonged to them, but also estates claimed by their rivals. The disputes never led to warfare.
Edward's short reign was brought to an end by his murder in March 978 in unclear circumstances. He was killed on his step-mother Ælfthryth's estate at the Gap of Corfe in Dorset, and hurriedly buried at Wareham. A year later, his body was translated with great ceremony to Shaftesbury Abbey in Dorset. Contemporary writers do not name the murderer, but almost all narratives in the period after the Norman Conquest name Ælfthryth. Some modern historians agree, but others do not. Another theory is that the killers were thegns of Æthelred, probably acting without orders.
Medieval kings were believed to be sacrosanct, and Edward's murder deeply troubled contemporaries who regarded it as a mortal sin. He soon came to be revered as a saint, and his feast of 18 March is listed in the festal calendar of the Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England. Edward was known in his own time for physical and verbal abuse of his associates and companions, and historians consider his veneration thoroughly undeserved.
Sources The historian Levi Roach comments: "Little is known about Edward's reign save what can be gleaned from a few short notices in the Chronicle and the three authentic charters in his name." Other pre-Conquest sources include Charter S 937 of around 999, which gives details of his election as king, Byrhtferth of Ramsey's Life of St Oswald, written around 1000, and parts of some manuscripts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (ASC). The Passio et Miracula Sancti Eadwardi Regis et Martyris (Passion and Miracles of Saint Edward, King and Martyr), was written around 1100, perhaps by the hagiographer Goscelin. Post-Conquest chroniclers giving accounts of Edward's reign include William of Malmesbury and John of Worcester.
Background In the ninth century, Anglo-Saxon England came under increasing attack from Viking raids, culminating with an invasion by the Viking Great Heathen Army in 865. By 878, the Vikings had overrun the kingdoms of Northumbria, East Anglia, and Mercia, and nearly conquered Wessex, but in that year the West Saxons under King Alfred the Great (871–899) achieved a decisive victory at the Battle of Edington. Over the next fifty years, the West Saxons and Mercians gradually conquered the Viking-ruled areas, and in 927 Alfred's grandson Æthelstan (924–939) became the first king of all England when he conquered Northumbria. He was succeeded by his half-brother and Edward's grandfather, Edmund, who almost immediately lost control of the north to the Vikings, but recovered full control of England by 944. He was killed in a brawl with an outlaw in 946, and as his sons Eadwig and Edgar were infants, their uncle Eadred (946–955) became king. Like Edmund, Eadred inherited the kingship of the whole of England and soon lost it when York (southern Northumbria) accepted a Viking king, but he recovered it when the York magnates expelled King Erik Bloodaxe in 954.
Eadred's key advisers included Dunstan, Abbot of Glastonbury and future Archbishop of Canterbury. Eadred, who suffered from ill health, was in his early thirties when he died in 955, and Eadwig succeeded at the age of around fifteen. He was the first king since the early ninth century not to face the threat of imminent foreign invasion, and England remained free from Viking attacks until 980, after Edward's death. From the start, Eadwig demonstrated his determination to establish his independence from his uncle's advisers. He clashed with Dunstan and sent him into exile. In 957, the kingdom was divided between Eadwig, who kept Wessex, and Edward's father Edgar, who became king of Mercia and other lands north of the Thames. It is unclear whether this had been planned since the beginning of his reign or was the result of a successful revolt brought about by Eadwig's incompetence.
Eadwig died in 959, and Edgar succeeded to the rule of the whole kingdom. Eadwig had appointed Ælfhere to be ealdorman of Mercia, and he became the premier layman, a status he retained until his death in 983. His rise was at the expense of the family of Æthelstan Half-King, Ealdorman of East Anglia, leading to a rivalry between the families which disrupted the country in Edward's reign. The Benedictine reform movement reached its peak in Edgar's reign under the leadership of Dunstan, Oswald, Archbishop of York, and Æthelwold, Bishop of Winchester. It became dominant as a result of the strong support of Edgar, earning him high praise by contemporary and later monastic chroniclers. He was a strong, indeed overbearing ruler, and he enriched Benedictine monasteries by forcing the aristocracy and secular (non-monastic) religious institutions to surrender land to them. Æthelwold was the most active and ruthless of the Benedictine leaders in securing land to support his monasteries, in some cases driving secular clergy out of their establishments in favour of monks. Edgar died at the age of only thirty-one or thirty-two in 975.
Family Edward, who was born in around 962, was the eldest of the four known children of King Edgar. No contemporary source gives the name of Edward's mother, and post-Conquest sources give varying accounts. The earliest is a life of Dunstan by Osbern of Canterbury, written around 1090. He wrote that Edward's mother was a nun at Wilton Abbey whom the King seduced, and Dunstan punished Edgar by imposing a seven-year penance which delayed his coronation. Osbern's account is rejected by later chroniclers and modern historians. When Eadmer wrote a life of Dunstan in the early twelfth century, he included an account of Edward's parentage which he obtained from his friend Nicholas of Worcester, who consulted ancient chronicles. Nicholas said that Edward was the son of Edgar's lawful wife Æthelflæd candida (the white), daughter of Ealdorman Ordmær. No ealdorman with that name is known, but some historians identify Æthelflæd's parents as a vir potens (powerful man) called Ordmær and his wife Ealde, who gave Hatfield in Hertfordshire to Æthelstan Half-King in exchange for land in Devon. John of Worcester, writing in the early twelfth century, also said that Edward was the son of Æthelflæd, adding that she had the byname eneda (duck). Edgar, who was brought up by Æthelstan Half-King's wife Ælfwynn, probably met Æthelflæd as a result of the connection between her father and his foster-father. Almost all modern historians who have discussed Edward's parentage say that his mother was Æthelflæd, and most think that she was Edgar's first wife. The historian Nicholas Brooks argues that Edgar must have married Æthelflæd because Dunstan backed Edward's succession to the throne, and he was a strong opponent of irregular unions who would not have supported the claim of an illegitimate son. However, the historian Cyril Hart describes Edward as "of doubtful legitimacy". Æthelflæd probably died shortly after his birth. Edward's tutor in religion was Sideman, Bishop of Crediton.
Edgar had his only known daughter, Edith, by his second known consort, Wulfthryth, who retired shortly afterwards to Wilton Abbey with her child. In 964, Edgar married Ælfthryth, the widow of Æthelstan Half-King's eldest son, Æthelwold. Her father was Ordgar, a leading Devonshire thegn who was appointed an ealdorman in the same year. She had two sons, Edmund, who died in 971, and the future King Æthelred the Unready, who was born around 968. She was the only wife of Edgar to be crowned, and she became a powerful political figure, especially in her son's reign.
Disputed succession Edward is first recorded as a witness to the Winchester New Minster Charter in 966. Ælfthryth attested as the "legitimate wife" of the King and Edmund as his "legitimate son", whereas Edward was described as "begotten by the same king". It is uncertain whether this was on the King's instruction, which would indicate that he wished to cut Edward out of the succession, or was ordered by Bishop Æthelwold, who was a friend and ally of Ælfthryth. The historian Barbara Yorke sees the denial of Edward's legitimacy as "opportunist special pleading" by Æthelwold. A genealogy created at Dunstan's Glastonbury Abbey around 969 gives Edward precedence over Edmund and Æthelred. When Edgar died on 8 July 975 there was a dispute over the succession, but as Edward was around thirteen and Æthelred six to nine, the historian Sean Miller observes that "they were surely figureheads rather than active participants".
Some historians have seen Edward's supporters as defenders of monastic reform and Æthelred's as its opponents, but there were supporters on both sides, and this view is now generally rejected. The real reasons for choosing between them probably lay in family alliances. Bishop Æthelwold backed his friend Ælfthryth, who naturally put forward the claim of her son Æthelred, while Archbishop Dunstan was Edward's chief supporter. According to John of Worcester, Archbishop Oswald also supported Edward. Oswald was at odds with Ealdorman Ælfhere, who probably supported Æthelred, together with his brother-in-law Ælfric Cild, while Ælfhere's enemy Æthelwine (son of Æthelstan Half-King) probably backed Edward.
Byrhtferth's life of Oswald portrays Edward as an unstable and violent young man:
The historian Frank Stenton comments in his "magisterial and massively authoritative" Anglo-Saxon England: "Long after [Edward] had passed into veneration as a saint it was remembered that his outbursts of rage had alarmed all who knew him ... It may have been partly for this reason that a large number of nobles resolved to promote the election of Æthelred, the younger brother."
The Benedictine monk Eadmer of Canterbury wrote in his hagiographical life of Dunstan:
The historian Ann Williams is sceptical of the last point, commenting that while it is possible that consecration of the king's wife before she gave birth may have been an issue in the tenth century, Eadmer was writing in the early twelfth century when it was an argument raised in favour of King Henry I against his elder brother, and this may have influenced his interpretation. In addition, as Eadmer says that Edgar was not crowned until two years before his death, the same argument applied to Æthelred.