Edgar 14

Edgar Ætheling, d. c. 1125
Male
DWP
4 of 5

Name

Edgar
Edgar 30

Distribution map of property and lordships associated with this name in DB

List of property and lordships associated with this name in DB

Tenant-in-Chief 1086 subtenanted estates

Shire Phil. ref. Vill DB Spelling Holder 1066 Lord 1066 Tenant-in-Chief 1086 1086 Subtenant Fiscal Value 1066 Value 1086 Value Conf. Show on Map
Hertfordshire 38,1 Barkway Edgarus 2 sokemen Esgar the staller Edgar Ætheling Godwine 'of Hormead' 1.50 2.00 2.00 A Map
Hertfordshire 38,2 Hormead Edgarus Alnoth Grut Stigand, archbishop of Canterbury Edgar Ætheling Godwine 'of Hormead' 1.50 2.67 1.78 A Map
Hertfordshire 38,2 Hormead Edgarus Wulfwine 'of Hormead' Esgar the staller Edgar Ætheling Godwine 'of Hormead' 1.00 1.78 1.19 A Map
Hertfordshire 38,2 Hormead Edgarus Alweard 'of Hormead' Almær of Bennington Edgar Ætheling Godwine 'of Hormead' 1.00 1.78 1.19 A Map
Hertfordshire 38,2 Hormead Edgarus 7 sokemen Edward, king Edgar Ætheling Godwine 'of Hormead' 3.25 5.78 3.85 A Map
Totals

Profile

Edgar Ætheling’s career has been discussed fully by Hooper (1985; 2004) and so only a sketch and those parts of it pertinent to the Domesday record are necessary here. Edgar was a great-grandson of King Æthelred II and born probably c. 1052 during his parents’ exile in Hungary. The family returned to England in 1057 and, although his father died almost immediately, the young Edgar may have been considered as the heir of his great-uncle and now guardian, King Edward. Yet Edgar would have been only about fourteen during the events of 1066; after King Harold 3’s death he was recognized as king in London and perhaps elsewhere, but a lack of widespread support found him among the bishops and earls who submitted to Duke William 1 at Berkhamsted in early December (ASC D s.a. 1066; Cubbin 1996: 80-1).

After a year at William’s court in England or Normandy, initially if not always as a hostage, Edgar withdrew to Scotland with his mother and sisters. He was involved in some of the northern revolts against William but king and ætheling were reconciled in 1074 and Edgar, now in his early twenties, seems to have retired to estates that William provided. Little is known of him thereafter until 1086, when he left England and transferred his activities to the continent, becoming a close companion of William’s son, Robert Curthose (Robert 7). His subsequent career as a knight errant and putative ‘crusader’ is not relevant here, but according to William of Malmesbury (Mynors et al. 1998: 416-17, 466-7) he was still alive and living in indolent retirement on his English estates in c. 1125, by which time he would have been in his early seventies.

It is perhaps surprising that the only certain record of Edgar Ætheling in DB is as a minor tenant-in-chief in north-east Hertfordshire, where he held two estates at Barkway and Hormead totalling 8¼ hides with a value of £10 in 1086. At the time of the inquest Edgar held no demesne on either estate and both were in the hands of his subtenant, Godwine, who may be the ‘Godwine of Winchester’ recorded among Edgar’s companions in later Scottish tradition (Hooper 1985: 210; Barrow 2002: 41). In either case, the lack of demesne and the presence of a subtenant on Edgar’s only known estates suggest that he was not then resident on them, perhaps having already departed to the continent by the time that the Domesday returns were made.

There are, however, a couple of other Domesday references to someone called Edgar that could conceivably refer to Edgar Ætheling, although on present evidence (or the lack of it) the balance of probability requires that these be identified as separate people. Lewis has suggested that he may be identical with that Edgar 30, who held two estates in Huntingdonshire TRE, in part because the TRW successor Earl Hugh 8 acquired land from aristocratic antecessors, but primarily because these are the only references to an Edgar holding land TRE. Edgar 31 was the post-Conquest antecessor for at least part of Ralph 13 de Limèsy’s fief in Suffolk while Edgar 32 was the lord of men on a small estate in Norfolk in or before 1086 but was not recorded as holding land himself. There is nothing in the later descents of these holdings to suggest a connection with Edgar Ætheling or his former estates in Hertfordshire.

Bibliography


Cubbin 1996: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition. Volume 6: MS D, ed. G. P. Cubbin (Cambridge, 1996)

Barrow 2002: G. W. S. Barrow, ‘Companions of the Atheling’, Anglo-Norman Studies 25 (2002), 35-45

Hooper 1985: N. Hooper, ‘Edgar the Ætheling: Anglo-Saxon Prince, Rebel and Crusader’, Anglo-Saxon England 14 (1985), 197-214.

Hooper 2004: N. Hooper, ‘Edgar Ætheling (b. 1052?, d. in or after 1125)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004).

Lewis 1991: C. P. Lewis, ‘The Formation of the Honor of Chester, 1066-1100’, in The Earldom of Chester and its Charters: A Tribute to Geoffrey Barraclough, Journal of the Chester Archaeological Society 71 (Chester, 1991), pp. 37-68

Mynors et al. 1998: William of Malmesbury: Gesta Regum Anglorum, ed. and trans. R. A. B. Mynors, R. M. Thompson and M. Winterbottom, vol. I (Oxford, 1998)

Name