Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 16.djvu/422

 Eadgifu, and his minister the abbot Dunstan [q. v.] At the same time, in spite of his ill-health, the king was not inactive. In 947 he went into Northumbria, and at Tadcaster received the submission of Wulfstan, archbishop of York, and the Northumbrian ‘witan.’ They did not long remain faithful to their oaths, for they revolted from him, and received Eric, a northman, as their king. Eadred attempted to force them to return to their allegiance, harried Northumbria, and burnt Ripon. As he returned the northmen of York cut off the rear of his army at Chesterford. In great wrath he declared that he would destroy the land, but the Northumbrians, who had grown dissatisfied with Eric, forsook him, and in 949 again submitted to the West-Saxon king (, Codex Dipl. 424). Eadred now appears to have made Oswulf high-reeve of Bamborough and earl (ib. 426, 427). Then we are told (A.-S. Chron.) that Anlaf came to Northumbria, and he probably ruled as Eadred's underking. The Northumbrians, however, again plotted a revolt in 952, and Wulfstan, who acted almost as a national leader, was caught by Eadred and imprisoned at Jedburgh. This year the king slew many of the inhabitants of Thetford because they had slain the abbot Ealdhelm. In spite of the imprisonment of the archbishop the Northumbrian plot was carried out, and Eric Bloodaxe, son of Harold Fairhair of Norway, landed, and was chosen king (Corpus Poeticum Boreale, i. 259, ii. 489; A.-S. Chron.; ,Conquest of England, 290, following, Essays, 197, who was misled by a confused passage in Adam of Bremen, ii. 22, makes this Norwegian king Eric Hiring, the son of Harold Blaatand. It would seem that the Eric elected in 947 was other than this Eric Bloodaxe). Eric Bloodaxe reigned in the north until 954. During this time there was probably war between him and Eadred. At last he was driven from the throne, and slain by Anlaf (, Sea Kings, i. 318). Then Eadric let Wulfstan out of prison, and gave him the see of Dorchester, for he would not trust him again at York. The people of the north now returned to their obedience to Eadred, and he committed Northumbria to Oswulf as an earldom. This step was the beginning of a new policy, which was afterwards pursued with signal success by Eadgar and Dunstan: the Danes were allowed to keep their own customs and live under their own earls, and being thus freed from interference they became peaceable, and finally good subjects of the West-Saxon king. The queen-mother and Dunstan, who held the office of treasurer, seem to have been upheld by Æthelstan, the powerful ealdorman of East Anglia, and the party that followed him [see under ]. Eadred was a religious man, and was deeply attached to Dunstan. He died at Frome, Somersetshire, on 23 Nov. 955, and was buried by Dunstan in the old minster at Winchester. There is no mention of any wife or child of his.

[Anglo-Saxon Chron. sub ann.; Florence of Worcester (Engl. Hist. Soc.), i. 134–6; Vita auctore B., Memorials of St. Dunstan (Rolls Ser.), 29, 31; William of Malmesbury's Gesta Regum (Engl. Hist. Soc.), i. 232; Symeon of Durham, Mon. Hist. Brit., p. 687; Kemble's Codex Dipl. ii. 311–35; Vigfusson and Powell's Corpus Poeticum Boreale, i. 259, ii. 489; Robertson's Historical Essays, 197; Green's Conquest of England, 286–93.]  EDRIC or EADRIC, STREONA (d. 1017), ealdorman of the Mercians, the son of a certain Æthelric, was a man of ignoble birth, and was perhaps the Eadric whom Archbishop Oswald describes as his thegn in a charter of 988, and to whom he grants land belonging to the church of Worcester, and may with more certainty be supposed to be the thegn Eadric who attests a charter of Æthelred in 1001 (, Codex Dipl. 666, 705). The name Streona ( 1006) is usually held to be a nickname derived from Eadric's greediness after wealth, and to signify the ‘Gainer’ or ‘Grasper.’ An attempt has been made to prove that this is not the case, that ‘Streona’ has nothing to do with acquisitiveness, and that it is not a nickname, but a second proper full name (Academy, 11 July 1886, p. 29). The English-born Orderic, however, no doubt knew what the name meant when he wrote ‘cognomento Streone, id est acquisitor’ (506). This, however, has been denied, and his explanation has been described as an ‘erroneous surmise’ (ib. 4 June 1887, p. 397). The history of Eadric's career is full of difficulties. Chroniclers and historians of the twelfth century describe him as guilty of an unequalled series of treacheries and other crimes. The ‘Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’ is silent as to some of these evil deeds, while it speaks plainly of others, and even in reading the chronicle some allowance should perhaps be made for the readiness with which men of a defeated and conquered people set down their disasters to the treachery of one or more of their leaders. In one case at least Eadric has been accused unjustly, in others his guilt may fairly be questioned, the evidence is insufficient or contradictory, or the crime attributed to him is in itself unlikely, but even so enough will remain to prove that he was false and unscru-