EDGEWORTH, Roger, residentiary and chancellor of Wells, was born at Holtcastle towards the end of the fifteenth century. Educated at Oxford, he afterwards took orders, and was in considerable repute as a preacher, both in the university and elsewhere. After the accession of Queen Mary he threw off the mask of moderation which he had formerly worn, and appeared in his true colours as an intolerant Romanist. He published a volume of sermons, some curious extracts from which are to be found in Dibdin. His "Resolutions concerning the Sacrament," &c., are inserted amongst the records which Burnet has printed in his History of the Reformation.—R. M., A.
EDGEWORTH DE FIRMONT, Henry Essex, l'Abbé, was born at Edgeworthstown in 1745. His father became a convert to Romanism, and removed to Toulouse, where the son was placed under the care of the jesuits, and completed his education at the Sorbonne. In time he became the confessor of the Princess Elizabeth; and he must have given proofs of courage and ability, for, when the archbishop of Paris fled from the Reign of Terror, he intrusted the abbé with the charge of his diocese. This was a service of no common peril, and he had many narrow escapes; but the peril did not prevent him from obtaining access to Louis XVI. in his prison, and from attending him to the scaffold. In his manuscript account of this event (now in the British museum), he makes no mention of his celebrated exclamation. He became now doubly odious to the Terrorists, and was eagerly pursued, so that he was not able to escape from France till 1796. In London he was received with honour and offered a pension, but he preferred to join the exiled Bourbons at Blankenburg, and then at Mittau, where, in 1807, he died from fever caught in attending French prisoners. To him at least Louis XVIII. was not ungrateful, revering and cherishing him while living, and writing his epitaph when dead.—(Memoir of Abbé Edgeworth by C. S. Edgeworth.)—T. R. R.
EDGIVA, EDGIVE, or OGIVE, one of the numerous offspring left by Edward, son of Alfred the Great, was married in the year 920 to Charles the Simple, king of France. Three years after the marriage, Charles being worsted in a struggle with some of his vassals, was seized and imprisoned by Heribert, count of Vermandois; but Edgiva escaped, and with her infant son, Louis, sought refuge at the court of her father Edward. After an exile of thirteen years, the young prince and his mother were recalled to France. Athelstan had succeeded his father Edward, and through his influence with the great French vassals, an august embassy, headed by the archbishop of Sens, crossed the channel in 936, and demanded from the English king the rightful descendant of Charlemagne. Edgiva accompanied Louis, surnamed D'Outremer, from his long sojourn beyond sea, to France, and for some time bore a distinguished part in his councils. But in the maturity of her life she became enamoured of the count of Meaux, the son of the man who had imprisoned her husband, and suffered him to carry her off and marry her. Louis, indignant at her conduct, caused her to be arrested, and committed her to the custody of his queen Herberge. She died shortly after.—T. A.
EDITH, Saint, was the daughter of King Edgar, who died in 975. She passed nearly the whole of her life in the nunnery of Wilton. When reproved one day by Bishop Ethelwold for wearing more costly apparel than the other nuns, she replied with great quickness—"Pride may exist even under the garb of wretchedness; and I think that a mind may be as pure beneath these vestments as beneath your tattered furs." The bishop owned the force and aptness of the rejoinder. Her early death, at the age of twenty-three, is said to have been foretold by St. Dunstan. She was buried at Wilton.—T. A.
EDITH, Queen of England, daughter of the powerful Earl Godwin, was the wife of Edward the Confessor, to whom she was married in 1044. According to contemporary writers, Edith's person was beautiful, her manners graceful, and her disposition cheerful. She was modest, pious, prudent, and generous, without any taint of the pride and arrogance of her father and brother. Ingulphus, the monk of Croyland, says she sprung from Earl Godwin as the rose springs from the thorn. Her mental attainments were greatly in advance of her age, and she was possessed of every accomplishment fitted to render her esteemed and beloved. But Edward had strong antipathies to her family, and his monkish piety led him to treat his beautiful queen with neglect. When Earl Godwin quarrelled with the king, and was obliged to take refuge in Flanders, Edward wreaked his vengeance on his virgin wife, seized her dower, took from her the whole of her jewels and money, and confined her in the monastery of Wherwell, of which one of her sisters was lady abbess. A reconciliation afterwards took place between her husband and her father, on which Edith was released from her monastic prison, and restored to all her honours as queen. Her name disappears from history after the death of Edward.—J. T.
EDMER. See Eadmer.
EDMONDS, Sir Clement, was born in 1566, and died in 1622. He was educated at Oxford, and held some posts about court. He wrote several volumes of "Observations" on the Commentaries of Cæsar.—J. T.
EDMONDS, Sir Thomas, a distinguished English diplomatist, was born at Plymouth in 1563, and was the youngest son of Thomas Edmonds, customer of that port and of Fowey in Cornwall. He was a protegé of Sir Francis Walsingham, from whom he received the rudiments of his political education. In 1592 he was sent by Queen Elizabeth as ambassador to the court of Henry IV. In 1596 he was appointed by Elizabeth her secretary for the French tongue. In 1600 he was nominated English resident at Brussels, and a commissioner at the treaty of Boulogne. In 1601 he was appointed one of the clerks of the privy council, and was directed to arrange the terms of a treaty with the Archduke Albert, governor of the Low Countries. He was knighted by James I. in 1603, and in the following year was sent ambassador to the emperor, and assisted to bring about an accommodation between the king of Spain and the states general of Holland. In 1610, after the assassination of Henry IV., he was again sent ambassador to the French court, and took an active part in the negotiations respecting the marriage of Prince Charles to Henrietta, the sister of Louis XIII. In 1616 he was appointed comptroller, and two years later, treasurer of the royal household. He was for some time member for the borough of Wilton, and represented the university of Oxford in the first parliament of Charles I. In 1629 he was sent for the last time to Paris to exchange the ratifications of the treaty of peace between the two countries. On his return home he retired from public life, and died in 1639, having acquired great reputation as an able diplomatist. His letters and papers in twelve volumes folio were successively in the possession of Thurloe, Somers, and the duke of Buckingham.—J. T.
EDMONDSON, Joseph, a heraldic artist and writer on heraldry, died at London in 1786. He obtained the post of Mowbray herald-extraordinary in 1764. He was the author of several works, the most famous of which is his "Complete Body of Heraldry," London, 1780, 2 vols. fol.—R. M., A.
EDMUND, King of the East Angles, saint and martyr, was born in 840, of royal Saxon descent, and having approved himself in his boyhood extremely wise and pious, was chosen as his successor by Offa, king of the East Angles, when this monarch laid down his crown and retired to penitential privacy at Rome. The youth of fifteen proved an excellent king in all religious, and most secular respects; but his lot was cast in times too stormy for one more adapted to be a martyr than a warrior. There appears to be no truth in the striking historical novellette which Matthew of Westminster has inserted in his history, and which connects with King Edmund indirectly the death of the terrible viking Ragnar Lodbrog, of warlike and lyrical memory. But wherever and however Ragnar died, King Edmund was one of the victims sacrificed to the vengeance of the ruthless sea-king's ruthless sons. In their devastating march southwards they entered King Edmund's dominions, and proposed to him to divide with him his treasures, and to become a pagan. He refused; but partly from religious scruples, partly from the fear of bringing calamities on his subjects, he seems to have wavered in a course of active and martial resistance. He was taken prisoner near the present Hoxne on the Waveney, and subjected to horrible tortures; finally his head was cut off, and thrown into the wood where he had been discovered. The head was found, and over it was erected a rude church of logs and mud, which in the course of years grew to be one of the stateliest of English abbeys—the famous monastery of St Edmundsbury, or Bury St. Edmunds. King Edmund's life was written by Abbo of Fleury, and he relates that he had the details from St. Dunstan himself, who was wont to narrate them with tears; and had, moreover, heard the story of Edmund's tortures and death from the lips of an eye-witness a veteran soldier of the martyr's.—F. E.
