Editing Eadwig (section)

== Reputation ==
"B"'s condemnation of Eadwig has influenced later opinion.{{sfn|Stafford|1989|p=47}} From soon after his death, most judgments of him were harsh, amounting in the view of the historian Shashi Jayakumar to "a type of {{lang|la|[[damnatio memoriae]]}}".{{sfn|Jayakumar|2008|p=83}} The hostile views of Eadwig in the lives of Saints Dunstan and [[Oswald of Worcester|Oswald]] were adopted by post-Conquest hagiographers and monastic chroniclers.{{sfn|Keynes|2004}} According to [[John of Worcester]], "Eadwig, king of the English, since he behaved foolishly in the government entrusted to him, was abandoned by the Mercians and the Northumbrians with contempt".{{sfn|Darlington|McGurk|1995|p=407}} To William of Malmesbury he "was a wanton youth, and one who misused his personal beauty in lascivious behaviour".{{sfn|Mynors|Thomson|Winterbottom|1998|p=237}}

Some contemporaries were more sympathetic. Æthelweard, who may have been Eadwig's brother-in-law, wrote that "he for his great beauty got the nickname "All-fair" from the common people. He held the kingdom continuously for four years, and deserved to be loved."{{sfnm|1a1=Campbell|1y=1962|1p=55|2a1=Keynes|2y=2004}} The New Minster, where he was buried, also remembered him favourably, saying in its tenth century history that he was "mourned by many tears of his people".{{sfn|Miller|2001|p=xxxi}} The Minster was a beneficiary of Ælfgifu's will, and its {{lang|la|[[Liber Vitæ]]}} is one of the few sources to describe her as Eadwig's wife. In the late tenth or early eleventh century, a slave was freed in his memory at [[St Petroc's Church, Bodmin|St Petroc's Church]] in Cornwall.{{sfnm|1a1=Williams|1y=2003|1pp=172–174|2a1=Haddan|2a2=Stubbs|2y=1869|2p=679 (XXVII)}} Æthelred the Unready named his sons after his predecessors, and his fifth son was named [[Eadwig Ætheling|Eadwig]].{{sfn|Keynes|2009|pp=43–44}}

Modern historians generally reject "B"'s verdict. Williams sees his comments as "mere spite" from a partisan of Dunstan.{{sfn|Williams|1982|p=157}} Snook says that "B" "conducted a comprehensive hatchet-job on Eadwig's reputation, portraying him as an incompetent, lecherous, vengeful, impious tyrant". "B" and his successors wrote "all manner of puerile prattle about his impiety and his unsuitability for high office".{{sfn|Snook|2015|pp=126, 157}} In Keynes's view:

{{quote|Eadwig has acquired a reputation as a debaucher, an opponent of monasticism, a despoiler of the church, and an incompetent ruler, which derives from the account of him in the earliest life of St Dunstan [by B], written {{c.|1000}}, and from later sources which elaborate the same themes. It is the case, however, that Eadwig quarrelled with Dunstan, and sent him into exile; and it may be doubted whether a life of the saint would provide impartial evidence for the life of the king.{{sfn|Keynes|2004}}}}

Stafford comments:

{{quote|Eadwig left no family to cultivate his memory, was too easy a target for the moralists-in-politics of the late tenth century. The circumstances of his brief reign were complex and some arguments against him must have been strictly contemporary, part of the debate about succession which took place between 955 and 957. At best we have received only half of those arguments, those used to bury Eadwig not to praise him.{{sfn|Stafford|1989|p=47}}}}

Snook gives the most favourable modern verdict:

{{quote|Eadwig was an unusually generous king who appears to have managed the emerging factional rivalries amongst the English nobility with remarkable dexterity and political acumen, arguably preserving peace, if not unity, in the kingdom and avoiding the devastating infighting that would tear England apart during the reign of Æthelred the Unready{{nbs}}[...] What seems clear is that, at this time, the kingdom's leading ecclesiastics, emboldened by the ideology of the monastic reform movement, were keen to enhance their personal and political influence at the expense of the king's authority.{{sfn|Snook|2015|pp=126–127}}}}

Other historians are more cautious. Williams comments that "much is still obscure about the politics of Eadwig's reign",{{sfn|Williams|1999|p=87}} and Richard Huscroft agrees, saying that "the evidence about Eadwig's reign remains obscure and ambiguous".{{sfn|Huscroft|2019|p=124}}

[[File:William Hamilton - Edwy and Elgiva, A Scene from Saxon History - BF.1986.13 - Museum of Fine Arts.jpg|thumb|upright=1.3|''Edwy and Elgiva, A Scene from Saxon History''; [[William Hamilton (painter)|William Hamilton]], 1793]]