November 23, 955. Eadred dies
Eadwig, Edmund's son, succeeds to England
c. January 26, 956. Eadwig consecrated king
Eadwig dispossesses Eadgifu, exiles Dunstan

Eadwig was the son of King Edmund and Ælfflæd (q.v.), and the nephew of King Eadred. His reign looks like an energetic attempt to distance himself from the advisors of the previous generation, and set up a new group of advisors who were loyal to him; the attempt failed, and history has judged him somewhat harshly as a result.

The tension in Eadwig's reign is apparent from the beginning. Eadred's will has survived (S 1515), and granted large sums of money as well as estates to several religious houses and to his mother Eadgifu. The money cannot be traced, but there is no evidence that any of the religious houses held the estates they were bequeathed, and more positive proof that the will was disregarded comes from a charter of Eadgifu's issued in 959 (S 1211), in which she notes that when Eadred died she was robbed of all her property, and it was only returned on King Edgar's accession in 959. It also seems from the wording of his will that Eadred intended his body to rest somewhere other than the Old Minster at Winchester, where he was buried. (The will mentions, but does not name, the place where he intended to be buried, and seems to distinguish it from Winchester which he mentions in another context.)

Within months of his accession Eadwig had also quarrelled with Dunstan, abbot of Glastonbury, who had been a favourite of Eadred's and may have taken on some of the production of charters in Eadred's illness in 953-5 (q.v.). Dunstan witnesses only a handful of Eadwig's charters, from early in 956 (see Keynes, pp.49 and 59). The earliest Life of St Dunstan explains the exile with a story that Eadwig left his coronation feast to pursue his own pleasures, and was dragged back by St Dunstan, as a result of which Dunstan won the enmity both of the young king and of the two noblewomen who were his companions, and had his possessions seized and was exiled shortly thereafter (chapters 21-3; extracts in EHD 234, p.901). While there is nothing inherently unlikely in this account, it must be remembered that since Eadwig exiled the protagonist of his story, the author of the Life of St Dunstan would be duty-bound to show him in the worst light possible. (For a different light on the coronation feast, see the account in J. K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat.) One wonders, for instance, if some of the treasures of Dunstan that were seized according to the Life were in fact treasures of King Eadred which Dunstan had failed to return to Eadred's successor Eadwig, or if Dunstan and Eadwig fought over the overturning of Eadred's will (especially if Eadred had originally intended to be buried at Dunstan's Glastonbury).

With the possessions of Dunstan and Eadgifu (and quite possibly other important courtiers of previous administrations) in hand, Eadwig was in a position to benefit new followers. There are an unprecedented sixty or so charters from 956 (for most years, five or fewer charters survive), and the most likely explanation is that Eadwig, having dispossessed the old guard, was trying to create a group of followers whose first loyalty was to him. A less flattering explanation would be that Eadwig was being manipulated by courtiers who had not advanced under Edmund and Eadred in a settling of old scores. The Life of St Dunstan (chapter 24; EHD 234, p.901) is predictably dismissive, saying that Eadwig acted foolishly, getting rid of wise and cunning counsellors and replacing them with the ignorant and those like himself. Æthelwold, in his account of King Edgar's establishment of monasteries (EHD 238), suggests that Eadwig had through the ignorance of childhood dispersed the kingdom and divided its unity, and distributed the lands of churches to rapacious strangers.

Barbara Yorke has demonstrated that some of the people favoured by Eadwig, his wife Ælfgifu among them, were a close-knit family descended from Alfred's older brother Æthelred, and suggested that the older established families, such as those of Æthelstan "Half King" (chief ealdorman in Eadwig's time and foster-father of Edgar) and Dunstan himself, were alarmed by these developments and moved to stop them (Yorke, pp.75-7). If Ælfgifu is correctly identified as a descendent of King Æthelred (q.v.), Edgar himself might have been still more alarmed, as a child born of two royal parents might have been seen as more throne-worthy than Edgar himself. This was probably part of the reason for Æthelbald's revolt when Æthelwulf came back with a Frankish princess as a bride in 856, and it is unlikely that Edgar was any happier with the situation a hundred years later.

However and by whomever they were put in motion, moves to stop Eadwig were forthcoming. In 957, Eadwig's brother Edgar was given enhanced power as the king of the Mercians, though the evidence of charters and coins suggest that Eadwig was still in overall charge of the kingdom. Also in that year or the next (q.v.), Eadwig was divorced from his wife Ælfgifu, ostensibly because they were too closely related. It is unlikely that the relationship was suddenly discovered in 957, so "consanguinity" was probably a cover for more pragmatic motives. Eadwig died without issue in 959, and his brother Edgar succeeded to the whole kingdom.

Æthelweard in his version of the Chronicle notes that Eadwig was called "All-Fair" by the common people on account of his great beauty, and that he ruled for four years and deserved to be loved. However, since Æthelweard may have been the brother of Eadwig's wife Ælfgifu (q.v.), his comments should probably command as much caution as those of the Life of St Dunstan.

A. Campbell (ed.), The Chronicle of Æthelweard (London: 1962)

S. Keynes, The Diplomas of King Æthelred "The Unready" 978-1016: A Study in their Use as Historical Evidence (Cambridge: 1980)

B. Yorke, "Æthelwold and the Politics of the Tenth Century", Bishop Æthelwold: His Career and Influence (Woodbridge: 1988), pp.65-88