Deadman’s Plaque – Edgar, the Peaceable King of England
A complete Tragedy from Beginning to End
(From pages 52 – 54 of The A303 by Tom Fort)

In about 963, Edgar, the King of Wessex, as well as of Mercia and Northumberland , in his ardour of youth, love and indignation, slew with his own hand his treacherous and ungrateful favourite, Earl Aethelwold, owner of the forest of Harewood, in the resentment of the Earl’s having basely betrayed and perfidiously married his intended bride, beauteous Elfrida, daughter of Ordgar, Earl of Devonshire, afterwards wife of Edgar and by him mother of King Ethelred II. Queen Elfrida, after Edgar’s death, murdered his eldest son, King Edward the Martyr and founded the nunnery of Wherwell and of Amesbury.
The chronicler of the fullest version of this tragedy, William of Malmesbury, ignored rumours that Edgar was strong, handsome and wise, sound in his judgement, and his piety in respect of the monastic orders. However, history does not care for substance and achievements, preferring the less savoury aspects of character, in particular, inordinate lustfulness thus filled with the following detail:
Edgar asked Aethelwold to travel to the house of Ordgar to inspect the earls’s daughter, Elfrida, with a view to offering marriage, if the reports of her beauty were justified, which they were. Unfortunately for Aethelwold’s long-term prospect he fell for her himself and married her without informing her of Edgar’s interest. To the king he reported that she was really nothing special, not worthy of his attention. Eventually, Edgar became suspicious. He proposed a visit to his friend and his new bride. Aethelwold knew trouble when it was coming. He begged Elfrida to conceal her charms beneath her drabbest clothes. Accordingly, she adorned herself at the mirror and omitted nothing that could stimulate the desire of a young and powerful man. Considerably stimulated and considerably angered, Edgar invited his friend for a day’s hunting in Harewood Forest., ran him through with a javelin and so married his ungrieving widow himself. Elfrida had a son by Edgar named Ethelred. After Edgar’s sudden but early death in 975, he was succeeded by his son from his previous marriage, Edward; but not for long. The lad paid his stepmother a visit at Corfe Castle and was pulled from his horse and stabbed to death by her thegns [hereditary aristocrats]. Ethelred was then installed on the throne. He was blameless for the series of events, but, nonetheless, wept so violently at the news of Edward’s murder that Elfrida was provoked to beat him with candles, traumatising the seven-year-old boy so severely that he could never bear to have candles near him again.
In the end, Elfrida repented her crimes and endeavoured to expiate them. She founded one abbey at Amesbury and another at Wherwell, a couple of miles from where Aethelwold met his end. There she spent some years as abbess, beseeching Christ to grant her pardon; one day she fell into the River Test and drowned