Donald Scragg 
Edgar, King of the English, 959-975 [PDF ebook] 
New Interpretations

Fresh assessments of Edgar’s reign, reappraising key elements using documentary, coin, and pictorial evidence.


King Edgar ruled England for a short but significant period in the middle of the tenth century. Two of his four children succeeded him as king and two were to become canonized. He was known to later generations as ‘the Pacific’ or’the Peaceable’ because his reign was free from external attack and without internal dissention, and he presided over a period of major social and economic change: early in his rule the growth of monastic power and wealth involved redistribution of much of the country’s assets, while the end of his reign saw the creation of England’s first national coinage, with firm fiscal control from the centre. He fulfilled King Alfred’s dream of the West Saxon royalhouse ruling the whole of England, and, like his uncle King Æthelstan, he maintained overlordship of the whole of Britain.


Despite his considerable achievements, however, Edgar has been neglected by scholars, partly because his reign has been thought to have passed with little incident. A time for a full reassessment of his achievement is therefore long overdue, which the essays in this volume provide.


CONTRIBUTORS: SIMON KEYNES, SHASHIJAYAKUMAR, C.P, LEWIS, FREDERICK M. BIGGS, BARBARA YORKE, JULIA CRICK, LESLEY ABRAMS, HUGH PAGAN, JULIA BARROW, CATHERINE KARKOV, ALEXANDER R. RUMBLE, MERCEDES SALVADOR-BELLO.

Содержание

Edgar:
Rex admirabilis — Simon D Keynes

A Conspectus of the Characters of King Edgar, 957-975 — Simon D Keynes

Eadwig and Edgar: Politics, Propaganda, Faction — Shashi Jayakumar

Edgar, Chester, and the Kingdom of the Mercians, 957-9 — C P Lewis

Edgar’s Path to the Throne —

The Women in Edgar’s Life — Barbara Yorke

Edgar, Albion and Insular Dominion — Julia C Crick

King Edgar and the Men of the Danelaw — Lesley Abrams

The Pre-Reform Coinage of Edgar — Hugh Pagan

The Chronology of the Benedictine `Reform’ — Julia Barrow

The Frontispiece to the New Minster Charter and the King’s Two Bodies — Catherine E. Karkov

The Laity and the Monastic Reform in the Reign of Edgar — Alexander R. Rumble

The Edgar Panegyrics in the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle — Mercedes Salvador-Bello

Об авторе

CATHERINE E. KARKOV is Professor Emeritus of Art History, University of Leeds.