Edwy
Edwy
(Or Eadwig.)
King of the English, eldest son of Edmund and St. Aelfgifu, born about 940; died 959. Though but fifteen years old at the death of his uncle Edred, he was unanimously chosen king, and was crowned at Kingston in January, 956. Too young, almost, to know his own mind, and surrounded by counsellors who pandered to all that was worst in him, his reign was of short duration. Despite the exhortations of St. Dunstan and Archbishop Odo, both of whom fell under his displeasure, he put imposition after imposition upon his subjects. His relatives were removed from court, honest thanes were despoiled of their lands and inheritances, and his grandmother Eadgive, who, by her piety and dignity, had endeared herself to the entire nation, was deprived of all her possessions.
At length, in 957, the Mercians and Northumbrians, who felt his course most keenly, rose against him. Edgar, Edwy’s younger brother, withdrew from the court with Archbishop Odo and put himself at the head of the insurgents. Edwy advanced to meet him but was defeated at Gloucester and obliged to flee for his life. Unwilling to prolong a civil war, the men of Kent and Wessex assented to a general meeting of the thanes from North and South to arrange for peace. It was decided that the country should be divided in half at the Thames, and that each brother should rule over a part. To Edwy was allotted the southern portion, and to Edgar the northern. Taught prudence by his reverses, Edwy governed his portion from that time forward with commendable justice and moderation, but died, prematurely, in 959.
His relations with St. Dunstan were not the happiest, and constitute the chief interest of Edwy’s career. His opposition to the saint dated from the refusal of the latter to countenance his relations with Ethelgive, by some presumed to be his foster mother, and her daughter. Seeing that he was in disfavour, Dunstan withdrew for a time to his cloister, but the anger of the king, kept alive by Ethelgive, followed him into that sanctuary. The monks were incited to revolt, the abbey was plundered. Dunstan fled and, though hotly pursued, managed to escape to the Continent, where he remained until after Edwy’s death. Osbern’s story to the effect that Edwy engaged in a general persecution of the monks may, however, be safely rejected, as the revolt against him was not concerned with the dispute between the regulars and seculars which began only after Edwy’s death. On the other hand, Edwy’s dislike for Dunstan may have helped to impede the saint’s monastic reforms.
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Anglo-Saxon Chron.; Aethelweard, Mon. Hist. Brit.; Lingard, Hist. Of Eng. (Dublin, 1878); Memorials of Dunstan (Rolls Ser.); Hallam, Middle Ages (London, 1818), II, 264.
STANLEY J. QUINN Transcribed by J. Christopher McConnell
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume VCopyright © 1909 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, May 1, 1909. Remy Lafort, CensorImprimatur. +John M. Farley, Archbishop of New York
Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia
Edwy
surnamed the Fair, eldest son of king Edmund, succeeded his uncle Eldred as king of England in 955, while his brother Edgar became viceroy of Mercia. Edwy had married Alfriga, the daughter of a noble matron, and was affectionately attached to his young wife. The monks, at the head of whom were Dunstan and archbishop Odo, had, during the reign of Eldred, exerted a great influence at the court; but the young king rejected their councils, and this appears to have made them jealous of Alfriga, believing her to be the cause of this change; and when, on the occasion of his coronation, the king left his court for a time, Dunstan, who had watched for an opportunity to revenge himself on the queen, rushed to her chamber, tore the king from her arms, and brought him back to his courtiers. In revenge for this indignity, Edwy not only banished Dunstan (956), but extended his hatred to the monks generally. Odo declared the marriage unlawful, carried the queen a prisoner to Ireland, and ordered her face to be branded with a red-hot iron. Her wounds soon healing, she recovered her former beauty, and returned to Gloucester. Here she was discovered by Odo’s emissaries, and was treated with such cruelty as to cause her death. When Edwy attempted to resist this violence of the monks, Odo formed a conspiracy against him with Edgar, supported by the Mercians and Northumbrians, and he was deprived of the larger part of his kingdom all England north of the Thames. He survived the partition of his kingdom only a few months, and died before the end of the year 959. While the monks represent king Edwy as licentious and a maladministrator, Huntingdon, who was no party in the quarrel, gives him a handsome character, reports that the country flourished under his administration, and that Odo and Dunstan became his enemies because he was unwilling to submit to the severity of monastic rulers. Hoefer, Nouv. Biog. Gener. 15:692; Mackintosh, History of England, 1:55 sq.; Wright, Biographia Brit. Lit. (A.S.P.) 430 sq.; Collier, Ecclesiastes History, 1:430 sq.; Edinb. Rev. 25 and 42.