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EDR Kent, was one of the weak-minded princes whom Edward I. left as a trouble to the realm of England. He was engaged by his sister-in-law, Isabella, the wife of Edward II., and by Charles le Bel, her brother, king of France, to assist in the invasion of England, believing that the sole object of the expedition was the overthrow of the Despensers, the friends and advisers of Edward of Caernarvon. In company with John of Hainault and two thousand adventurers, who were led by the enterprising but unscrupulous Roger Mortimer, he landed on the Orwell in Suffolk, September 24th, 1326, and pursued Edward II., who fled to Bristol with a few retainers. After the horrible death of Edward in Berkeley castle, Mortimer, jealous of the earl of Kent, who detested his insolent ambition and his criminal intrigue with the queen, artfully persuaded that prince that Edward had not been murdered, but was alive in Corfe Castle. He fell into the snare; set up the standard of his brother; was convicted of a curious crime, that of plotting to place a dead man on the throne; was carried to a spot outside Winchester; and after waiting four hours at the block, because no one could be found to slay the son of the great Edward, was beheaded by a felon, March 11th, 1330.—T. J.  EDRED, one of the Anglo-Saxon kings, succeeded to the throne in 946, on the death of his brother, Edmund I., whose sons were still in their childhood. The new monarch was of a feeble and unhealthy constitution, but he displayed notwithstanding great energy against the turbulent Eric of Northumbria, whose frequent piracies called for a stern chastisement. Edred twice invaded his territory, and the struggle was brought to a close by a fiercely-contested battle, in which Eric fell. Northumbria was then incorporated with the Anglo-Saxon kingdom. Edred died in 955.—W. B.  EDRIC, Duke of Mercia, was of obscure birth, and won his way, by his crafty, insinuating address, to the wealth and influence which he enjoyed at the court of the Anglo-Saxon king, Ethelred II. Being employed as envoy to the Danish invader Sweyne, he incurred suspicions of treachery, and in the subsequent struggle with Canute deserted to the enemy. After the death of Ethelred in 1016, he fought under the Danish standard against his successor, Edmund Ironside, and has been charged with the assassination of this prince. Not long afterwards, Canute caused him to be put to death.—W. B.  EDRIS, or IDRIS I., an Arab sovereign of the district of Africa called the Maghreb (comprising Morocco, Algeria, Tunis, Tripoli, &c.), reigned from 789 to 792. Driven out of the territory of the Caliph El Hadi, by whom he was defeated in a battle fought near Mecca, he went into Egypt, and thence into Africa, where he rapidly acquired sovereign power among the Berbers, and, at the point of the sword, propagated the Islam faith among the surrounding peoples. He was assassinated by an agent of the caliph who succeeded El Hadi.—J. S., G.  EDRIS or IDRIS II., son of the preceding, was proclaimed sovereign of the Berbers in 804, and died in 828-29. His reign was disturbed by frequent conspiracies, arising out of the hatred of his subjects to foreign domination; but, through the loyal attachment of one of the tribes, he was enabled to maintain his authority, and even to extend his dominions.—J. S., G.  EDRISI or, an Arabian writer on geography who flourished about the middle of the twelfth century. The descendants of the Edrisides, who for upwards of a century ruled over Northern Africa, had been settled in Sicily for upwards of two centuries, and there Edrisi, who, as his name betokens, belonged to this regal family, was born about the commencement of the twelfth century. Edrisi's great work, the famous "Nuzhat al-mishtâk fi iktirâk al-âfâk," was completed, according to the preface, in the year 1153-54, and was designed to illustrate a large terrestrial globe which had been constructed for his sovereign, Roger II. of Sicily There are at least four MS. copies of this work extant, viz., two in the royal library at Paris, and two in the Bodleian at Oxford. A Latin translation of an abridgment of it, executed by G. Sionita and J. Hesronita, was published in 1619, and contained the curious intimation, that the author, whose name the translator did not know, was a native of Nubia. Geographus Nubiensis was the name, in consequence of this, by which for a long time Edrisi was universally known. Sionita and his fellow-translator had been misled, by the only MS. in their possession, into a false reading of a passage referring to the Nile. Besides this translation of an abridgment of Edrisi's great work, the student of ancient geography now possesses a French version of it by M. Amedee Jaubert, which appeared under the auspices of the French Geographical Society, forming the fifth and sixth volumes of the Recueil de Voyages et de Memoires. M. Jaubert's work has also been issued separately in 4to, Paris, 1836, 1840. Edrisi, it would appear from his work, had travelled both in Spain and Italy. His description of the former of these countries was translated into Spanish, and annotated by Don J. A. Conde, Madrid, 1799. The globe which the Arabian geographer illustrated in his treatise has been lost, a subject of deep regret, when it is considered that for three centuries it was the original of all the representations of the earth's surface constructed by geographers. Edrisi, like all the other Arabian geographers, distributed the known world into seven climates, and seventy regions. Hence the translation of Sionita and Hesronita bears the title "Geographia Nubiensis, id est, accuratissima totius orbis in septem climata divisi descriptio." Edrisi is said to have studied at Cordova, and to have been well versed in cosmography, philosophy, medicine, and astrology.—J. S., G.  EDRYCUS,. See.  EDWARD (I.), the son of Alfred, succeeded to the throne in 901, and proved himself not unworthy to inherit the name and power of the greatest of the Anglo-Saxons. The early part of his reign was disturbed by his cousin Ethelwold, who belonged to an elder branch of the royal family. With the assistance of the Danes, the latter prolonged the contest, till his death in battle, in 906, confirmed the sceptre in the hand of Edward. No better fortune attended a subsequent attempt of the Danish Northumbrians on Mercia, which was then under the government of Ethelfleda, widow of Earl Ethelred, and sister to the king. The invaders were defeated at Wodensfield with great loss; two of their princes, sons of Ragnar Lodbrog, being slain in the battle. As the disaffected and turbulent spirit of the northern provinces was checked rather than quelled by these victories, Edward proceeded to secure the frontiers with a chain of strong fortresses, among which Bridgenorth, Stafford, Manchester, Warwick, Tamworth, and others, have been enumerated by the chroniclers to the number of twenty-one. His sister zealously seconded his efforts; and, at her death in 920, Mercia was incorporated with his other dominions. Latterly he pushed his arms so vigorously among the remaining tribes who still maintained their independence, that not only the East-Anglians and Northumbrians, but the Britons of Wales and Strathclwyd acknowledged his supremacy; and he was the first to assume the title of King of England. Another trait of his father's spirit appears in the careful education which he gave not only to his sons but to his daughters; three of the former occupied the throne in succession, and several of the latter were married to continental princes. His death occurred in 924.—W. B. <section end="227H" /> <section begin="227I" />EDWARD (II.), surnamed, great-grandson of the preceding, inherited the Anglo-Saxon throne at the death of his father Edgar in 975. His stepmother Elfrida, Edgar's second wife, attempted to place her son Ethelred in the sovereignty; but the influence of Dunstan, added to Edward's superior claim, triumphed. The disappointed dowager retired to Corfe Castle, to take her revenge in thwarting the schemes of the prelate; and she ultimately accomplished the destruction of the king, causing him to be assassinated in 978 at the gate of her residence, where he had stopped to ask refreshment during the chace.—W. B. <section end="227I" /> <section begin="227Zcontin" />EDWARD (III.), surnamed, ascended the Anglo-Saxon throne at the death of Hardicanute in 1042. He was the only surviving son of King Ethelred, by Emma, daughter of Richard, duke of Normandy. She took refuge there at the death of her husband, and there Edward continued to reside after her marriage with the usurper Canute. He was invited to return to his native country by Hardicanute; and on the death of the latter the affection of the people for the line of their former sovereigns secured the crown to him. The powerful Earl Godwin, though stained with the blood of his younger brother Alfred, promoted his accession, and the king was married to the earl's daughter Edith. A rival claimant of the throne appeared in Magnus, king of Norway; but, in the course of the same year, his pretensions were extinguished by his death, and by the friendly disposition of his successor, Harold Hardrada, against whom Godwin in vain counselled an armed intervention in favour of the Danish monarch, Sweyne, a competitor for the Norwegian sovereignty. The kindliness of Edward's disposition, his <section end="227Zcontin" />