[5] The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (ASC) has only ten entries on his reign, and other sources dating to the late tenth and early eleventh centuries are mainly interested in the episcopal leaders of the English Benedictine Reform movement.

By 878, the Vikings had overrun the kingdoms of Northumbria, East Anglia, and Mercia, and nearly conquered Wessex, but in that year the West Saxons achieved a decisive victory at the Battle of Edington under King Alfred the Great.

[6] Alfred died in 899, and in the 910s his son King Edward the Elder and daughter Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians, who was Æthelred's widow, conquered Viking-ruled eastern Mercia and East Anglia.

These counsellors included their mother, Eadgifu; Oda, Archbishop of Canterbury; Ælfsige, Bishop of Winchester; and Æthelstan, ealdorman[a] of East Anglia, who was known as the Half-King because it was believed that kings depended on his advice.

[19] Christopher Lewis (historian) sees the division as the solution to "a dangerously unstable government and a court in deep crisis";[37] Sean Miller and Rory Naismith attribute it to an unsuccessful attempt by Eadwig to promote a powerful new faction at the expense of the old guard.

[43] The difference in dates may be because it was agreed in Eadred's reign that the kingdom would be divided between the brothers, but he died before Edgar was old enough to act in person and had to wait until he reached the age of majority of fourteen in 957.

Charter attestations show that the magnates did not decide which court to attend on the basis of personal loyalty: ealdormen and bishops with jurisdictions south of the Thames stayed with Eadwig, and those north of it served Edgar.

[46] The historian Frederick Biggs argues that the division was a revival of the earlier Anglo-Saxon practice of joint kingship, against the opposition of the Church,[47] and Bishop Æthelwold complained that Eadwig had "through the ignorance of childhood dispersed his kingdom and divided its unity".

According to Osbern of Canterbury, writing in the late eleventh century, she was a nun who was seduced by Edgar, but this is rejected by later chroniclers,[58] and historians generally accept the statements of the twelfth-century writers John of Worcester and William of Malmesbury that she was Æthelflæd Eneda, the daughter of Ordmær.

According to the late eleventh century Benedictine writer Goscelin, Edgar wished to marry her cousin Saint Wulfhild, the daughter of a nobleman called Wulfhelm who had sent her to Wilton Abbey to be educated.

Williams regards it as uncertain whether they married,[4] but Yorke argues that they did, pointing out that Goscelin stated that she and Edgar were "bound by indissoluble vows", and that Edith's personal seal, which still survives, describes her as the "royal sister" of Kings Edward and Æthelred, implying that they recognised her legitimacy.

[68] Yorke sees a provision in the Regularis Concordia[d] that monasteries were under the protection of the king and nunneries of the queen to avoid scandal as "a pointed reference to Edgar's priapic interest in nuns", which would have been seen as normal royal behaviour by most people.

[78] In the early 970s the leading secular magnates were Æthelwine, Ealdorman of East Anglia (Æthelwold's brother and successor), Ælfhere of Mercia, Oslac of York and Byrhtnoth of Essex.

[79] In 954, Eadred had appointed Osulf, the ruler of the north Northumbrian territory of Bamburgh, as the ealdorman of the whole of Northumbria following the expulsion of the Viking king of York, Erik Bloodaxe.

Wormald describes the punishments as "ghastly",[118] and Keynes observes that it is no wonder that Edgar was hailed as "the strongest of all kings", but that if we are disposed to admire the peace he brought then we should bear in mind the measures he took to enforce it.

He urged his bishops, abbots and abbesses, "to be of one mind regarding monastic usage ... lest differing ways of observing the customs of one Rule and one country should bring their holy conversation into disrepute".

Even the greatest magnates were not immune from the reformers' demands, and Æthelwine brought a successful action to recover an estate of forty hides in Hatfield, complaining that Edgar had forced him and his brothers to surrender it to Æthelwold.

[183] Æthelwold's translation of the Regula S. Benedicti is of the highest standard,[184] and his New Minster Charter was written in elaborate hermeneutic Latin to display the dazzling erudition of the Benedictine movement and glorify King Edgar and the reform.

In 966, Thored, son of Gunnar,[j] ravaged Westmorland, perhaps as part of English resistance to the southward expansion of Strathclyde, and King Kenneth of Scotland conducted raids on Northumbria in the early 970s.

[205] According to Nicholas, a twelfth-century prior of Worcester, Edgar postponed his consecration until he had outgrown the passions of his youth,[206] and Stenton thinks that he may have waited "until he felt that he had come to full maturity of mind and conduct".

[4] The German court was the leader in elaborate ritual and display, and the information learned by Edgar's embassy to Otto I may have played a major role in planning the coronation in Bath.

[208] A northern version of the Chronicle dating to the second half of the eleventh or early twelfth centuries, ASC D, says that Edgar then sailed with his navy to Chester, where six kings promised to be his allies on land and sea.

[216] Molyneaux agrees, arguing that the English king was able to intimidate other rulers because he possessed far greater military strength: "If Edgar's neighbours wished to avoid their lands being ravaged, the invitation to Chester was probably not one that they could decline.

[223] The historian David Rollason comments that his cult had surprisingly little success in view of his role in monastic reform, "although presumably weakened by stories of his sexual adventures, notably with nuns".

[229] The historian Judith Green describes Edgar's reign as "in many respects the apogee of Old English kingship",[230] and Eric John comments that it "marks the high point in the history of the Anglo-Saxon state.

[231] In the view of Martin Ryan: "By the end of the reign of King Edgar, Anglo-Saxon England possessed a sophisticated machinery of rule, capable of significant and, in medieval terms, precocious administrative feats.

However, it is uncertain how far Edgar was personally responsible: "This period, far more than the reigns of either Alfred or Æthelstan, was probably the most pivotal phase in the development of the institutional structures that were fundamental to royal rule in the eleventh century English kingdom".

In general terms, the disturbances of Edward's reign should be regarded as a manifestation of the kind of social and political disorder which might be expected to attend the unexpected removal of one who was seen as the personification of an overbearing regime.

[84] Williams takes a similar view,[4] and Snook argues that the infighting after his death and the disintegration of the state under his son Æthelred shows that the factionalism of the 950s had only been temporarily suppressed by Edgar.

[l] The historian Sean Miller argues that as Edgar was very ready to resort to violence, the term is better translated as "peacemaker", someone who preserved peace through "strict control backed up by military force rather than serenity of character".