Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 16.djvu/373

 attended his witenagemots. Eadgar's relations with the Danish parts of the kingdom are of more importance. From the time of the death of Eric Haroldsson and the skilful measures taken by Eadred and Dunstan to secure the pacification of Northumbria, the northern people had remained quiet until they had joined in the revolt against Eadwig. By the election of Eadgar and the division of the kingdom they broke off their nominal dependence on the West-Saxon throne. Now, however, Eadgar himself had become king of the whole land, and Wessex was again the seat of empire. It was probably this change that in 966 led to an outbreak in Northumbria. The disturbance was quelled by Thored, the son of Gunner, steward of the king's household, who harried Westmoreland, and Eadgar sought to secure peace by giving the government of the land to Earl Oslac. It is said, though not on any good authority, that as Kenneth of Scotland had taken advantage of this fresh trouble in the north to make a raid upon the country, Eadgar purchased his goodwill, at least so it is said, by granting him Lothian, or northern Bernicia, an English district to the south of the Forth, to be held in vassalage of the English crown. (This grant, which has been made the subject of much dispute, has been fully discussed by, Norman Conquest, i. 610–20; and , Scotland under her Early Kings, ii. 386 sq.).

While Eadgar thus provided for the peace of the north, he seems to have carefully forborne from interfering with the customs and internal affairs of the Danish district. He declared in his laws: ‘I will that secular rights stand among the Danes with as good laws as best they may choose. But with the English let that stand which I and my witan have added to the dooms of my forefathers.’ Only the police arrangement of the hundred was to be common to all his peoples, ‘English, Danes, and Britons.’ But in the case of powerful offenders, while in the English districts their punishment was decided by the king and the witan, the Danes were to choose according to their laws the punishment that was to be awarded. This self-government was granted, Eadgar tells the Danes, as a reward ‘for the fidelity which ye have ever shown me’ (, Ancient Laws, 116, 117). The two peoples, then, lived on terms of equality each under its own law, though, indeed, the differences between the systems were trifling, and this arrangement, as well as the good peace Eadgar established in the kingdom, was no doubt the cause that led the ‘witan’ in the reign of Cnut to declare the renewal of ‘Eadgar's law’ [see under ]. Besides this policy of non-interference he favoured men of Danish race, and seems to have adopted some of their customs. The steward of his household was a Dane, and a curious notice in the ‘Chronicle’ concerning a certain king, Sigferth, who died by his own hand and was buried at Wimborne, seems to point to some prince of Danish blood who was held in honour at the English court. Offices in church and state alike were now open to the northern settlers. While, however, Eadgar was thus training the Danes as good and peaceful subjects, his policy was looked on with dislike by Englishmen of old-fashioned notions, and the Peterborough version of the ‘Chronicle’ preserves a song in which this feeling is strongly expressed. The king is there said to have ‘loved foreign vices’ and ‘heathen manners,’ and to have brought ‘outlandish’ men into the land. The same principle of non-interference was carried out in church matters, for on the death of Oskytel in 972 the king, by the advice of Dunstan, conferred the archbishopric of York on Oswald, who was by birth a Northumbrian Dane, and possibly set aside the election of the English Æthelwald in his favour (, col. 79;, col. 1699; , Essays, 214). Oswald, though, in his diocese of Worcester and elsewhere, he continued to carry on his efforts to promote the Benedictine reform that was strongly favoured by the king, did not attempt to introduce it into Northumbria, where it would certainly have met with considerable resistance, and in this matter he must have acted with the approval of Eadgar, who had a strong affection for him (Vita S. Oswaldi, 435).

The king's conciliatory policy met with signal success, and the Danish population lived peacefully under his supremacy. Nor did this success lack definite acknowledgment. On the return of Oswald from Rome, whither he had gone not merely to fetch his pall, but to transact several matters of state, probably to obtain the pope's assent to the step the king was about to take, Eadgar was ‘at length’ solemnly crowned (, 520). The ceremony took place at Bath on Whitsunday, 11 May 973, in the presence of a vast assembly of the ‘witan,’ and was performed by both the archbishops; it is the first recorded instance of a coronation of an English king in which the archbishop of the ‘Northumbrians’ (Vita S. Oswaldi) took part, and this is certainly not without significance. It is also the first coronation of which we have a minute description (ib. 436–8). It will be sufficient to note here that the king entered the church wearing his