EDMUND

born 841/842 died Nov. 20, 870, ; feast day November 20 byname Saint Edmund The Martyr king of East Anglia (from 855). Of his life little is known. In the year 870 the Danes, who had been wintering at York, marched through Mercia into East Anglia and took up their quarters at Thetford. Edmund engaged them fiercely in battle, but the Danes under their leaders Ubba and Inguar were victorious and remained in possession of the field of battle. The king himself was slain, whether on the actual field of battle or in later martyrdom is not certain, but the widely current version of the story which makes him fall a martyr to the Danish arrows when he had refused to renounce his faith or hold his kingdom as a vassal from the heathen overlords must have arisen early, for the St. Edmund pennies afford evidence of his cult before the end of the 9th century. He was ultimately buried at Beadoricesworth (now Bury St. Edmund's, West Suffolk), where his shrine became famous. Later, fictitious versions make him a Continental Saxon, born at Nrnberg and adopted by Offa, king of East Anglia, when on his way to Rome. They also invent names for his parents, Alkmund and Scivare. illegitimate son of the earl of Gloucester in Shakespeare's tragedy King Lear. Edmund's bitter and vengeful nature and his machinations to obtain the earldom of Gloucester drive the subplot of the play. Additional reading Thomas Arnold (ed.), Memorials of St. Edmund's Abbey, vol. 1 (1890, reprinted 1965), contains Abbon of Fleury's Passio Sancti Eadmundi; Lord Francis Hervey (ed.), The History of King Eadmund the Martyr and of the Early Years of His Abbey (1929), contains both text and translation.