virtues ought to have shielded him from the insult of a compulsory abdication. Oswald and Ethelwold, two subservient friends of the new primate, shared his prosperity, the former being appointed bishop of Worcester, while the latter was promoted to the see of Winchester; and with their assistance the extension of the Benedictine system was vigorously prosecuted under the royal patronage. At a public synod the king himself made a speech in its favour; the married clergy were everywhere deprived of their preferments; not fewer than forty or fifty new monasteries were established, in all of which there was a rigid enforcement of celibacy, and the stern discipline of the monks of Monte Casino. An ecclesiastical reformation was certainly needed, and though the changes introduced by Edgar did not strike at the roots of the existing evils, it cannot be denied that they drew the church into more beneficial contact with the cause of literature, education, and industry. "Whoever will consult the Historia Rei Literariæ Ordinis S. Benedicti," says a recent essayist, "may rapidly accumulate conclusive proofs that by their order were either laid or preserved the foundations of all the eminent schools of learning in modern Europe." It is to be feared, however, that selfish ends had their influence on the primate, who bore the less vigorous character of the king into the religious movement; and in all likelihood the able administration of the state by the former, did more than the amiable dispositions of the latter to give his reign the reputation commemorated in his surname. At all events Edgar was guilty of actions which showed little of the peaceful and pious temper. The provocation received by him from Athelwold, one of his nobles, who had married the beautiful Elfrida, after his false report respecting her attractions, cannot excuse the monarch who caused him to be assassinated, and united himself to the widow during the lifetime of his first queen. Other profligacies, to which he had no provocation but the impulse of his own passions, are related of him in the Chronicle of Malmesbury; and the same record mentions that Kenneth of Scotland and seven other princes, who met him at Chester to honour him with their homage, were compelled to seat themselves at the oars of his barge and row him in state down the river Dee. Dunstan is said to have inflicted on the royal delinquent no severe penances; but meanwhile the affairs of the kingdom were vigorously administered, and many of the measures adopted were promotive of its prosperity. The improvement of the coinage, the exaction of three hundred wolves' heads as the tribute from Wales, the regular visitation of the provinces, the encouragement of the foreign trade, and the maintenance of a large fleet for the defence of the coasts, had the effect of producing a period of tranquillity, which one of the monastic historians lauds as a kind of golden age, in which the sky assumed a more serene aspect, the sea a calmer flow, and the earth a more abundant fruitfulness. Edgar died in 975, leaving the throne to Edward, his eldest son by his first wife Elfleda.—W. B.
EDGAR, King of Scotland, was one of the sons of Malcolm Canmore. When his father and his eldest brother fell at Alnwick, he was compelled to take refuge in England, till his uncle, Edgar Atheling, succeeded, with the help of an English army, in placing him upon the throne, by the overthrow of the usurper, Donald Bane, in 1097. He reigned twenty years, undisturbed by foreign invasion or intestine quarrel; but his life furnishes little material for history, and when he died he left the reputation of a good-hearted man and a benignant ruler.—W. B.
EDGAR ATHELING received his surname, which signifies prince royal, from the circumstance that he was heir to the Anglo-Saxon throne at the death of Edward the Confessor. Edmund Ironside, the elder brother of the Confessor, had a son named Edward, who was sent by the usurper, Canute, into Sweden to be put to death; but the Swedish monarch spared his life and sent him to the Hungarian court, where he was educated. He subsequently married Agatha, a, relative of the Emperor Henry, and from that union sprang Edgar Atheling and two daughters, with whom the Outlaw returned to England at the invitation of Edward the Confessor. This monarch died in 1066; and Edgar, whose father had died some years earlier, stood next in descent and in the rights of inheritance. His youth, however, and the delicacy of his constitution, combined with a weakness of character which frequently results from the want of physical energy, induced two rival claimants to come forward, Harold, the son of Earl Godwin, and William, duke of Normandy, both of whom were distantly related to the deceased monarch. Harold, being in England at the time, immediately possessed himself of the crown; but in the course of the same year lost it and his life at the battle of Hastings. Edgar, to whom he had given the earldom of Oxford, was then proclaimed king by the city of London, and some of the barons made preparations to support him. But the influence of Rome, and the success of the Norman anus, bore down all opposition, and before the year closed William was crowned in Westminster abbey. The Saxon prince tendered his submission; and the conqueror, with a policy which was as generous as wise, not only spared his life but confirmed him in his earldom, kept him near his own person, and included him in the train of nobles with which he proceeded to visit his dominions in Normandy. In 1068 some of the discontented northern barons accompanied or canned off Edgar to Scotland, along with his mother and his sister Margaret. The latter became the wife of Malcolm Canmore; and in the course of the following year the refugees invaded England, stormed the castle of York, and again proclaimed Edgar; but he was speedily compelled to retreat beyond the border. Another attempt in 1073, undertaken at the suggestion of the French king, had no better issue; the small fleet with which Edgar set sail was overtaken by a storm, and he was shipwrecked on the Northumbrian coast, whence he effected his escape into Scotland, though not without difficulty. His schemes being thus a second time baffled, hope deserted the unfortunate prince, and by the advice of Malcolm he again tendered his submission to William, who frankly accepted it, assigning him a residence and a pension at the English court. When William Rufus succeeded the Conqueror Edgar was in Normandy, whence he once more passed into Scotland; and in 1091, when the English and Scottish armies had met for battle, an amicable adjustment of the quarrel was effected, and the descendant of the Saxon kings, having cordially promoted the pacification, became again a resident and a pensioner in the palace of the Norman. At a later period he crossed to the continent with the disappointed and discontented Duke Robert; but after the death of Malcolm Canmore, and his eldest son Edward at the siege of Alnwick, he was permitted to raise a body of troops in England, with which he established his nephew and namesake Edgar on the Scottish throne. Afterwards he accompanied Robert of Normandy to the Holy Land, took part with him in his invasion of England, against Henry I., and was taken prisoner at the battle of Tinchebrai. Little is known of his subsequent life, but he seems to have been kindly treated by Henry, who married his niece Matilda of Scotland; and as Edgar died without issue, she carried into England an important element of union between the Saxon and Norman races.—W. B.
EDGEWORTH, Maria, a celebrated writer, was the eldest child of Richard Lovell Edgeworth, and Anna Maria Elers, born January 1, 1767, at Black Bourton in Oxfordshire. Her father's family, which was established in the county of Longford, Ireland, during the reign of Elizabeth, was one of the most powerful in the district, and had its full share in the perils and vicissitudes of that stormy period which ended with the victories of William III. Mr. Edgeworth's love of practical science induced him to undertake the direction of some hydraulic works at Lyons, which detained him in France for several years; during which Maria was left in the charge of her maternal relations, who, however, seem to have done little to cultivate her mind, or form her character. After her father's return, when at nine years of age she was sent to a school at Derby, she had to learn the common rudiments of education; and neither there, nor when after three years she was removed to a London establishment of higher pretensions, did she attract the special notice of her teachers, or give any sign of superior abilities. She duly learned her appointed tasks, but had no taste for the showy accomplishments which then, even more than now, were the chief part of female education; yet she excelled in needle work. Her appearance too was not striking, and for a time it was feared she would lose her sight. She was of course of small account; yet it may be believed that this retarded development of her mind, and her self-training, were far better than the system of premature, but superficial instruction, which crowds the memory of the child with knowledge that belongs, rather to the understanding of the man. Even then she felt conscious of her powers, for several of her schoolfellows long afterwards remembered the stories with which she charmed them; and she told in after life how her mind was wakened and excited when her holidays were spent in the house of Mr Day, the author of Sandford and Merton; eccentric, but a scholar, and of rare eloquence and genius. At last her failing
