Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 16.djvu/378

 and brothers, was a friend of the church. Charters in the Saxon form came into use in his reign. Four genuine as well as one probably spurious are preserved among the records of Durham. His gift of a camel to the Irish king Murcertach indicates a liberal disposition as well as his good relations with neighbouring kings. He is described by a contemporary, Ailred of Rievaux, as ‘a sweet-tempered and amiable man, like his kinsman Edward the Confessor in all respects, who exercised no tyranny or avarice towards his people, but ruling them with the greatest charity and benevolence.’ His reign is generally described as eventless from its pacific character. His chief residences were Dunfermline, where he was buried, and the castle of Edinburgh, where he, or one of his brothers perhaps, erected the small chapel still extant in memory of his mother. He died on 8 Jan. 1107 at Dundee unmarried, and by his will left Cumbria, which he held by some anomalous tenure under the king of England, to his younger brother David. Alexander I succeeded to the crown of Scotland and also held Lothian. His only remaining brother, Ethelred, was abbot of Dunkeld and Earl of Fife.

[The Scottish chroniclers Fordun and Wyntoun, and the English Anglo-Saxon chroniclers, Symeon of Durham, Florence of Worcester, and William of Malmesbury, Magnus Barefoot's Saga, and the Chronicle of Man are the old authorities; see also Lappenberg's History of the Anglo-Saxons; Pearson's History of England; Freeman's Norman Conquest; Skene's Celtic Scotland, i.; Robertson's Scotland under her Early Kings.] 

EDGAR, or EADGAR (fl. 1066), king-elect, son of Eadward the Exile and Agatha, a kinswoman of Gisla, queen of Hungary and of the Emperor Henry II, was probably born in Hungary before 1057. In that year his father, the surviving son of Edmund Ironside [q. v.], came over to England in accordance with an invitation sent by Edward or Eadward the Confessor, who designed to make him his heir, but he died shortly after his arrival without having seen the king. The story that the Confessor recommended the ætheling to the nobles as his successor, and that there was a party who upheld his right at the Confessor's death, is plainly erroneous (Gesta Regum, iii. 238). It has been asserted that on this occasion Eadgar had ‘no constitutional claim upon the votes of the witan beyond any other male person in the realm’ (Norman Conquest, iii. 7), though the assertion appears open to question, for constitutional usage certainly restricted the choice of the witan to the members of the kingly house. When the news of the defeat and death of Harold reached London in October 1066, the two archbishops, the northern earls, Eadwine and Morkere, and other great men, together with the citizens and seamen of the city, chose Eadgar, who was then a youth, as king, and pledged themselves to go out to battle with him ( i. 228; p. 141). Some opposition to his election is said to have been offered by the bishops (Gesta Regum, iii. 247), among whom must no doubt be reckoned William, the Norman bishop of London. His election was a disappointment to the brothers Eadwine and Morkere, who had tried to persuade the Londoners to choose one or other of themselves, though when they found that this was hopeless they agreed in the general choice. Nevertheless they withdrew their forces from the city and marched back to Northumberland. Their desertion left Eadgar helpless. The Conqueror reduced and wasted the country to the south and west of the city, and in December Eadgar, who does not appear to have been crowned, with Ealdred [q. v.], archbishop of York, and other bishops and all the chief men of London, met him at Berkhampstead and made submission to him (A.-S. Chron. Worcester., p. 141, places this scene ‘ad oppidum Warengefort,’ and Mr. , in the Early History of Oxford, p. 191, endeavours to explain the discrepancy). William received the ætheling graciously, gave him the kiss of peace, and it is said gave him a large grant of land, and treated him as an intimate friend, both on account of his relationship to the Confessor and to make some amends to him for the dignity he had lost (, p. 503;, p. 148). The next year he took him with him to Normandy along with other noble Englishmen, whom he thought it was scarcely safe to leave behind him in England (ib. p. 150), and Eadgar must have returned with him in December.

In the summer of 1068 Eadgar left the court and went northwards, apparently intending to take part in the rising of Eadwine and Morkere. (The chronological order of the events of this year is confused; it is fully discussed in Norman Conquest, iv. 768 sqq.) The earls submitted to the king at Warwick, and William marched on towards York. Then the ætheling, his mother, and his two sisters, Christina and Margaret, with Earl Gospatric, Mærleswegen, and the most noble men of Northumberland, not daring to meet his wrath, and fearing lest they should be imprisoned as others were, took ship and escaped to Scotland, where they were hospitably received by Malcolm Can-