Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Contributors
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- Part I Documentary Evidence
- Part II Edgar before 549
- Part III Edgar, 959–975
- 6 The Women in Edgar's Life
- 7 Edgar, Albion and Insular Dominion
- 8 King Edgar and the Men of the Danelaw
- 9 The Pre-Reform Coinage of Edgar
- Part IV Edgar and the Monastic Revival
- Index
8 - King Edgar and the Men of the Danelaw
from Part III - Edgar, 959–975
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Contributors
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- Part I Documentary Evidence
- Part II Edgar before 549
- Part III Edgar, 959–975
- 6 The Women in Edgar's Life
- 7 Edgar, Albion and Insular Dominion
- 8 King Edgar and the Men of the Danelaw
- 9 The Pre-Reform Coinage of Edgar
- Part IV Edgar and the Monastic Revival
- Index
Summary
IN 1976, in a provocative and influential article, Niels Lund asserted that in the competitive political environment of the late 950s Edgar was made king of the Mercians and Northumbrians by important northern laymen, who in 957 withdrew their allegiance from his brother, King Eadwig. These magnates, he argued, saw an opportunity to use Edgar's need for their support to further their own, separatist, purposes in those parts of England later called the Danelaw. In particular, Lund claimed that the magnates of these regions were motivated by the desire to resist the penetration of royal interference into their domain. In support of this argument he cited the surviving laws referred to as IV Edgar, dated by Dorothy Whitelock to 962–3, in which the king sanctioned the legal autonomy of the region:
Þonne wille ic þæt stande mid Denum swa gode laga swa hy betste geceosen; I ic heom à geþafode I geðafian wille, swa lange swa me lif gelæst, for eowrum hyldum þe ge me symble cyddon.
I will that such good laws be in force among the Danes as they best prefer, and I have always granted them (this), and will grant (it) as long as my life endures, for your obedience which you have ever manifested to me.
Lund concluded that Edgar's actions represented a setback to the unification of England: by holding back from imposing royal rights and encroaching on customary law, this concession to Scandinavian ways of doing things was virtually equivalent to granting domestic self-government to the Danelaw.
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- Information
- Edgar, King of the English 959–975New Interpretations, pp. 171 - 191Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2008