had a very disturbing effect on the local organisation of Worcestershire; for the new hundreds had little geographical coherence and were in every case merely artificial aggregates of land, pieces of them lying interspersed among estates belonging to other lords, and pieces of them being even quite outside the proper bounds of the county and forming detached islands in Gloucestershire. The net result, therefore, was that the hundreds of Worcestershire became a sort of patchwork, and the respective jurisdictions of the king and the bishop remained ever afterwards most awkwardly intermixed. These administrative and legal changes, as well as the general character of his dooms, plainly shew that Edgar was an active ruler, and there can be little doubt that he deserves to share with Dunstan the credit for the peacefulness and increase of civilisation, which marked his reign and made such an impression on his contemporaries. We cannot, however, altogether commend his policy in the matter of the sokes which he created in favour of Aethelwold and Oswald; for he thereby initiated a process which could not fail in the long run to diminish the effectiveness of the central government,
Edgar died in 975, prematurely like so many of his race, being not yet thirty-three, and was buried by Dunstan at Glastonbury, He was twice married and left two sons, Edward a boy of thirteen born of his first wife, and Aethelred aged seven, the child of his second wife Aelfthryth[1]. This Devonshire lady, the sister of the founder of Tavistock Abbey, was filled with ambition for her family, and would not acquiesce in the kingdom passing whole to her stepson, and helped by a party among the Mercian nobility who still cherished a resentment for the hard treatment that had been meted out to the clerks, attempted to obtain recognition for Aethelred. Dunstan, however, with the help of Oswald, who had become Archbishop of York in 971, though still retaining the see of Worcester, supported Edward and caused him to be elected by a witan and crowned at Kingston in Surrey. If the unity of England was to be maintained, this settlement was obviously a wise one, but it only drove the discontented party into more violent action, led by Aelfhere, the duke who had been placed in Edgar's day in control of the Severn valley. Aelfhere probably was opposed to Dunstan's continued control of the king, but his particular grievances seem to have been against Oswald, who had handed over Winchcombe Abbey to Germanus, a monk from Ramsey, and had also tried to displace the clerks from Pershore, a foundation connected with Aelfhere's house. High-born canons, friends and kinsmen of Aelfhere, had thereby lost their incomes and were clamouring for restitution. In judging this movement no reliance can be placed on the accounts of it which have survived, for they originate without exception from the side of the monks and depict all sympathisers with
- ↑ Aelfthryth had been previously married to the eldest son of Aethelstan Half-king. Edgar probably improved his territorial position in East Anglia by marrying her.
