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 demnation. On 19 March he was led forth to execution to a spot outside the walls of Winchester. But no one could be found bold enough to behead so great a noble, so doubtfully tried and sentenced. From morning to evening Kent remained awaiting his fate. At last a condemned criminal from the Marshalsea was found willing to win his life by cutting off the earl's head.

The profound impression created by Edmund's fate was only modified by his exceeding unpopularity. The members of his riotous and ill-regulated household had plundered the people wherever they went, seizing their goods at their own pleasure, and paying little or nothing for them, and involving their master in the odium they themselves had excited. The vague praise which the courtly Froissart bestows on Edmund is justified neither by contemporary testimony nor by the acts of his life. He is described as magnificent and as possessing great physical strength. He may have had some of the virtues of chivalry and have been a fair soldier, but he was weak, credulous, and impulsive, selfish, fickle, and foolish. He was always a tool in some stronger hands than his own. His tragic fate precipitated the fall of the wicked government that had lured him to his ruin. In vain did the queen and Mortimer endeavour to set themselves right by explanations and justifications of their conduct, addressed to the pope and to the English people. Before the year was out Henry of Lancaster was urged, by the fall of his fickle ally, to drive Mortimer from power. Before his own execution Mortimer acknowledged that Kent's sentence was unjust.

Edmund married about Christmas 1325 (Ann. Paul. i. 310) Margaret (1309–1349), sister and heiress of Thomas, lord Wake of Liddell, and widow of John Comyn of Badenoch. He had by her four children, two sons and two daughters (but cf. Chron. de Melsa, i. 100, which, however, must be wrong). The eldest, Edmund, was born about 1327, and in 1330 was, on the petition of his mother and the reversal of his father's condemnation, recognised as Earl of Kent. On his death in 1333 his brother John (born 7 April 1330) succeeded to the title, but on his death on 27 Dec. 1352 without issue, the estates fell to Joanna, his sister, who brought them first to Thomas, lord Holland, and, after his death, to her more famous husband, Edward the Black Prince [q. v.] The other and elder sister, Margaret, married the eldest son of the Lord D'Albret in Gascony, but died without issue.



EDMUND, surnamed DE LANGLEY, (d. 1402). [See .]

EDMUNDS, JOHN, D.D. (d. 1544), master of Peterhouse, proceeded B.A. 1503–4, M.A. 1507, was admitted fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, 1517, and afterwards fellow of St. John's 1519. He was prebendary of St. Paul's 1510–17, and chancellor 1517–29. He commenced D.D. 1520, being then a member of Peterhouse; was Lady Margaret preacher 1521, was elected master of Peterhouse 1522, vice-chancellor 1523–8–9, 1541–3, and became chancellor of Salisbury Cathedral. He also held a prebend in the same church (, Fasti, i. 124n). He died November 1544, and was buried in the church of St. Mary, outside Trumpington gates. He married a sister of the wife of John Mere. He was one of the compilers of ‘The Institution of a Christian Man.’



EDMUNDSON, WILLIAM (1627–1712), quaker, whose father was a wealthy yeoman, was born at Little Musgrove, Westmoreland, in 1627. He lost both parents when very young, and was brought up by a cruel uncle. About 1640 he was apprenticed to a carpenter in York, and suffered from religious melancholy. As soon as his apprentice-