Chadwick was well known for his encouragement of interdisciplinary research on Celts and Germanic peoples, and for his theories on the Heroic Age in the history of human societies.

Edward ended his career as Rural Dean of Dewsbury, and his two oldest sons also joined the priesthood of the Church of England.

[7] In 1894, his "The Origin of the Latin Perfect Formation in -ui" was published in Adalbert Bezzenberger's Beitrage zur Kunde der indo-germanischen Sprachen.

[6] Returning to Cambridge in 1895, Chadwick taught Old English for Section B of the Medieval and Modern Languages Tripos, while devoting himself to the study of the early North.

[13][7] In 1900, two important papers by Chadwick, "The Oak and the Thunder-God" and "The Ancient Teutonic Priesthood", appeared in the Journal of the Anthropological Institute and in Folk-Lore.

Investigating the origins of the Anglo-Saxons and the English people, this work has been highly praised for its interdisciplinary combination of archaeological, historical and philological evidence from both England and Northern Europe.

[14] In 1907, the scope of Section B at the Medieval and Modern Languages Tripos was broadened to cover Anglo-Saxon, Germanic and Viking Age history, culture and religion.

Celtic, Roman and Slavic epic poetry was also considered, which testifies to the wide and diverse knowledge possessed by Chadwick at this time.

According to him, Heroic Ages typically emerged when tribal societies came into close contact with more advanced civilizations, such as when the Germanic peoples encountered ancient Rome.

[16][17] Upon the death of Skeat in 1912, Chadwick was recognized as the obvious successor, and was subsequently elected Elrington and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Cambridge.

With his friends Professor Arthur Quiller-Couch and Dr. Hugh Fraser Stewart, he remodelled Section A (English studies) and transformed the Medieval and Modern Language Tripos in the Modern and Medieval Languages Tripos, in which English became a more or less independent course covered in sections A and B.

He accepted the reduction in his literary output without regret, because he considered teaching and directing his students to be a task of even greater importance than his written work.

[19][21] In the years of World War I, there was general understanding that British scholarship had devoted too much effort on the study of languages as compared to the people who spoke them.

With Nora as the driver, the Chadwicks took students by car to see archaeological sites near Cambridge, and made long trips together to Wales, Scotland and Ireland.

[26] In 1920, Chadwick and his Section B had lost its eminent Celticist Edmund Crosby Quiggin, and Nora stepped in for the deceased as a teacher of Irish, while Hector taught Welsh.

[1] Following the Royal Commission on the Universities and the introduction of the Faculty system, Chadwick and his Section B acquired a permanent staff.

Two lecturers were appointed in 1926, including his friend and former student Bertha Phillpotts, widely recognized as one of England's foremost authorities in Old Norse studies.

Their original intention was to conduct a comparative study of the literature, archaeology and general civilization of the Viking Age and Ancient Greece, to which they began collecting material in 1919.

About this time however, Chadwick came upon Early Adventures in Persia, Susiana and Babylonia by Austen Henry Layard, in which the effect of the recital of the Shahnameh on the followers of Mehemet Taki Khan is described.

[28] Impressed by the parallels of the Shahnameh with Greek epic poetry, the Chadwicks decided to broaden the scope of their project, which eventually came to encompass the oral literature of a large number of peoples.

The Chadwicks were proficient in nearly all of the languages of the literature covered in the book, and it took literary, historical, philological, anthropological and archaeological evidence into account.

[29] During the war, many younger members of the staff left University, and Chadwick once more conducted most of the teaching at his Department for Anglo-Saxon and Kindred Studies.

", published in Antiquity in 1940, he examined the site of Sutton Hoo, and suggested that its magnificent burial was of Rædwald of East Anglia.

[30] Upon attaining the age limit in 1941, Chadwick retired as Elrington and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon and became an Honorary Fellow at Clare College, but at the request of the university, he continued teaching as head of his department.

[7] Upon the election of his friend and former pupil Bruce Dickins as Elrington and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon, he retired from teaching, satisfied that his department was now safely in good hands.

Chadwick suggested the establishment of a government-sponsored Institute of Imperial and Foreign Studies to provide courses on the history, languages and literature of various countries.

[33] Through the immense range of his scholarly publications, and through the vigorous enthusiasm which he brought to all aspects of Anglo-Saxon studies – philological and literary, historical and archaeological – he helped to define the field and give it the interdisciplinary orientation which characterizes it still.

In his final literary project, Chadwick sought through a combination of archaeological, historical and philological evidence to examine the early history of Scotland.

[34] In 1950, The Early Cultures of North-West Europe, a festschrift in Chadwick's honour edited by Cyril Fox and Bruce Dickins, his former students, was published.

[27] At Cambridge, Chadwick is notable for having developed the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic, and supervised the education of generations of scholars, a large number of whom made major contributions to scholarship.