II. The Anti-Monastic Reaction in the Reign of Edward the Martyr

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Abstract
It is unfortunate for our understanding of the history of the tenth century that, for several critical periods for which the historian would most appreciate a full and reliable account of events, contemporary sources of information fail him at vital points. Until quite recently it was difficult to feel certain about the date of King Edward the Elder's death and the circumstances in which Aethelstan ascended the throne of England. The years between the death of King Eadred in 955 and the succession of Edgar to the reunited kingdoms of Mercia and Wessex in 959 are still obscure. Of the character of the reign of Edward the Martyr, ‘Little can be gathered…beyond a vague impression of disorder, and the knowledge that a period was abruptly set to the endowment of monasteries which Edgar had encouraged’. For this reign the historian's complaint is less of the dearth of evidence than that it is nearly all of the same kind.

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