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Birth:          ABT  943 Wessex
Death:          8 Jul  975 Wessex

Notes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_the_Peaceful
Edgar I (Old English: Eadgar; c.?943—8 July 975), known as Edgar the Peaceful or the 
Peaceable, was King of England from 959 to 975. He was the younger son of King 
Edmund I and his Queen, Ælfgifu of Shaftesbury.


Accession[edit]

Edgar was the son of Edmund I and Ælfgifu of Shaftesbury. Upon the death of King 
Edmund in 946, Edgar's uncle, Eadred, ruled until 955. Eadred was succeeded by his 
nephew, Eadwig, the son of Edmund and Edgar's older brother.

Eadwig was not a popular king, and his reign was marked by conflict with nobles and 
the Church, primarily St Dunstan and Archbishop Oda. In 957, the thanes of Mercia 
and Northumbria changed their allegiance to Edgar.[3] A conclave of nobles declared 
Edgar as king of the territory north of the Thames.[4] Edgar became King of England 
upon Eadwig's death in October 959, aged just 16

Government[edit]
One of Edgar's first actions was to recall Dunstan from exile and have him made 
Bishop of Worcester (and subsequently Bishop of London and later, Archbishop of 
Canterbury). Dunstan remained Edgar's advisor throughout his reign. While Edgar may 
not have been a particularly peaceable man, his reign was peaceful. The Kingdom of 
England was well established, and Edgar consolidated the political unity achieved by 
his predecessors. By the end of his reign, England was sufficiently unified in that it 
was unlikely to regress back to a state of division among rival kingships, as it had to 
an extent under the reign of Eadred. Blackstone mentions that King Edgar 
standardised measure throughout the realm.[5] According to George Molyneaux, 
Edgar's reign, "far more than the reigns of either Alfred or Æthelstan, was probably the 
most pivotal phase in the development of the institutional structures that were 
fundamental to royal rule in the eleventh-century kingdom".[6]

Benedictine reform[edit]

The Monastic Reform Movement that introduced the Benedictine Rule to England's 
monastic communities peaked during the era of Dunstan, Æthelwold, and Oswald 
(historians continue to debate the extent and significance of this movement).[7]

Dead Man's Plack[edit]

In 963, Edgar allegedly killed Earl Æthelwald, his rival in love, near present-day 
Longparish, Hampshire.[8] The event was commemorated by the Dead Man's Plack, 
erected in 1825.[8] In 1875, Edward Augustus Freeman debunked the story as a 
"tissue of romance" in his book, Historic Essays;[9] however, his arguments were 
rebutted by naturalist William Henry Hudson in his 1920 book Dead Man's Plack and 
an Old Thorn.[4]

Coronation at Bath[edit]
Edgar was crowned at Bath and anointed with his wife Ælfthryth, setting a precedent 
for a coronation of a queen in England itself.[10] 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.[11] Such embellishments may 
not be factual, and what actually happened is unclear.[12]

Death[edit]

Edgar died on 8 July 975 at Winchester, Hampshire. He left behind 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 possibly illegitimate daughter by Wulfthryth, 
who later became abbess of Wilton. She was joined there by her daughter, Edith of 
Wilton, who lived there as a nun until her death. Both women were later regarded as 
saints.[13][14]

Some[who?] see Edgar's death as the beginning of the end of Anglo-Saxon England, 
followed as it was by three successful 11th century conquests — two Danish and one 
Norman.

Appearance[edit]

"[H]e was extremely small both in stature and bulk..."[15]

Parents
____ Edmund I "the Magnificent" "the Deed Doer" (ABT  922 - 26 May  946)
____ Elgiva "Saint" (ABT  922 -  944)

Siblings
____ Edgar "the Peaceable" (ABT  943 - 8 Jul  975)

Marriage To ____ Elfrida (Elfthryth) (ABT  947 - 1000)
    m.  965 

Notes

Parents
____ Ordgar (ABT  922 - )
____ Wulfrith (ABT  920 - )

Children by ____ Elfrida (Elfthryth) ABT  947 - 1000
____ Aethelred (Ethelred) II "The Unready" (ABT  966 - 23 Apr 1016)

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