HE was monarch of all England, and succeeded his father, the glorious
king Edgar, in 975, being thirteen years old. He followed in all things
the counsels of St. Dunstan; and his ardor in the pursuit of all virtues
is not to be expressed. His great love of purity of mind and body, and
his fervent devotion, rendered him the miracle of princes, while by his
modesty, clemency, prudence, charity, and compassion to the poor, he was
the blessing and the delight of his subjects.' His stepmother, Elfrida,
had attempted {618} to set him aside, that the crown might fall on her
own son, Ethelred, then seven years old. Notwithstanding her treasonable
practices, and the frequent proofs of her envy and jealousy, Edward
always paid her the most dutiful respect and deference, and treated his
brother with the most tender affection. But the fury of her ambition
made her insensible to all motives of religion, nature, and gratitude.
The young king had reigned three years and a half, when, being one day
weary with hunting in a forest near Wareham, in Dorsetshire, he paid a
visit to his stepmother at Corfesgeate, now Corfe-castle, in the isle of
Purbeck, and desired to see his young brother at the door. The
treacherous queen caused a servant to stab him in the belly while he was
stooping, out of courtesy, after drinking. The king set spurs to his
horse, but fell off dead, on the 18th of March, 979, his bowels being
ripped open so as to fall out. His body was plunged deep into a marsh,
but discovered by a pillar of light, and honored by many miraculous
cures of sick persons. It was taken up and buried in the church of our
Lady at Wareham; but found entire in three years after, and translated
to the monastery at Shaftesbury. His lungs were kept at the village
called Edwardstow, in 1001; but the chiefest part of his remains were
deposited at Wareham, as the Saxon Chronicle and Florence of Worcester
say: but part was afterwards removed to Shaftesbury, not Glastenbury, as
Caxton mistakes. The long thin knife with which he was stabbed, was kept
in the church at Faversham, before the suppression of the monasteries,
as Hearne mentions. His name is placed in the Roman Martyrology. The
impious Elfrida, being awaked by the stings of conscience, and by the
voice of miracles, retired from the world, and built the monasteries of
Wherwell and Ambresbury, in the first of which she lived and died in the
practice of penance. The reign of her son Ethelred was weak and
unfortunate, and the source of the greatest miseries to the kingdom,
especially from the Danes. See Malmesbury, Brompton, abbot of Jorval, in
Yorkshire, and Ranulf Higden, in his Polychronicon, published by Gale.
Also an old MS. life of the saint, quoted by Hearne, on Langtoft's
Chronicle, t. 2, p. 628, and from the MS. lives of saints, in the hands
of Mr. Sheldon, of Weston.