Edward the Exile

Edward the Exile depicted on a medieval genealogical scroll.

Edward the Exile (1016 – 19 April 1057), also called Edward Ætheling, was the son of King Edmund Ironside and of Ealdgyth. He spent most of his life in exile in the Kingdom of Hungary following the defeat of his father by Canute the Great.

Edward the Exile
Born 1016
Died 19 April 1057
England
Spouse Agatha, wife of Edward the Exile
Issue

Edgar Ætheling

Saint Margaret of Scotland

Cristina, daughter of Edward the Exile
Father Edmund Ironside
Mother Ealdgyth (floruit 1015–1016)

Exile

After the Danish conquest of England in 1016, Canute had Edward, said to be only a few months old, and his brother, Edmund, sent to the Swedish court of Olof Skötkonung[1][2] (who was either Canute's half-brother or stepbrother), supposedly with instructions to have the children murdered. Instead, the two boys were secretly sent either to Kiev,[3] where Olof's daughter Ingigerd was the Queen, or to Poland, where Canute's uncle Bolesław I Chrobry was duke.[4] Later Edward made his way to Hungary, probably in the retinue of Ingigerd's son-in-law, András in 1046.

Return

On hearing the news of his being alive, Edward the Confessor recalled him to England in 1056 and made him his heir. Edward offered the last chance of an undisputed succession within the Saxon royal house. News of Edward's existence came at a time when the old Anglo-Saxon monarchy, restored after a long period of Danish domination, was heading for catastrophe. The Confessor, personally devout but politically weak and without children, was unable to make an effective stand against the steady advance of the powerful and ambitious sons of Godwin, Earl of Wessex. From across the Channel William, Duke of Normandy, also had an eye on the succession. Edward the Exile appeared at just the right time. Approved by both king and by the Witan, the Council of the Realm, he offered a way out of the impasse, a counter both to the Godwinsons and to William, and one with a legitimacy that could not be readily challenged.

In 1054 King Edward sent Ealdred, Bishop of Worcester, to the court of the German emperor to set in train negotiations with the king of Hungary for the return of Edward the Exile. Ealdred was not at first successful, and Earl Harold's journey to Flanders, and possibly on to Germany and Hungary, in 1056 was probably undertaken to further negotiations. The Exile finally arrived in England in 1057 with his wife and children, but died within a few days, on 19 April, without meeting the King. He was buried in Old St Paul's Cathedral.[5]

Family

Edward's wife was named Agatha, whose origins are disputed.[6] Their children were:

Edward's grandchild Edith of Scotland, also called Matilda, married King Henry I of England, continuing the Anglo-Saxon line into the post-Conquest English monarchy.

Ancestors

Edward the Exile was a direct descendant of a line of Wessex kings dating back, at least on the pages of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, to the arrival of Cerdic of Wessex in A.D. 495, nearly a century after the withdrawal of the Western Roman Empire army legions from Hadrian's Wall and from Alfred the Great in the English monarchs family tree.[7] Of his more immediate ancestors, all four of Edward's male-line ancestors shown in the diagram below were Kings of England before Cnut the Great (Canute) took the crown and sent Edward into exile.[8]

Ancestors of Edward the Exile
16. Edmund I
8. Edgar the Peaceful
17. Ælfgifu of Shaftesbury
4. Ethelred the Unready
18. Ordgar
9. Ælfthryth
2. Edmund Ironside
10. Thored
5. Ælfgifu of York
1. Edward the Exile
3. Ealdgyth

See also

References

  1. ↑ Onslow, the Rt.Hon.The Earl of, The Dukes of Normandy and Their Origin, London, 1945, p.161.
  2. ↑ Anderson, Alan O.,Scottish Annals from English Chroniclers, 500 to 1286, London, 1908. p.94n.
  3. ↑ Anderson and Onslow both say Hungary
  4. ↑ MichaelAnne Guido and John P. Ravilious, "From Theophanu to St. Margaret of Scotland: A study of Agatha's ancestry", Foundations, vol. 4(2012), pp. 81-121.
  5. ↑ Keynes, Simon (May 1985). "The Crowland Psalter and the Sons of King Edmund Ironside". Bodleian Library Record. 11 (6): 363–364, 369, n. 31.
  6. ↑ Lauder-Frost, Gregory M.S., FSA Scot.,"Agatha - The Ancestry Dispute" in The Scottish Genealogist, Edinburgh, Sept 2002, vol.xlix no.3, p.71-2.
  7. ↑ Starkey, David (2004). The Monarchy of England: The Beginnings. Chatto and Windus. p. 88.
  8. ↑ Ronay 1989, p. 10.
  • Ronay, Gabriel (1989). The lost King of England: the East European adventures of Edward the Exile. Woodbridge, Suffolk ; Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, U.S.A.: Boydell Press. ISBN 0-85115-541-3.
  • Edward 18 at Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England
  • Marek, Miroslav. "Genealogy for Edward the Exile". Genealogy.EU.
  • Edward Atheling of Wessex
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