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Edgar (c. 943 – July 8, 975), known as the Peaceful or the Peaceable, was King of the English (England) from October 1, 959 until his death. He was the younger son of Edmund I King of the English and Ælfgifu of Shaftesbury, and came to the throne as a teenager, following the death of his older brother Eadwig. While Edgar may not have been a particularly peaceable man his reign was peaceful. The Kingdom of England was well established, and Edgar consolidated the political unity achieved by his predecessors. By the end of his reign, England was sufficiently unified in that it was unlikely to regress back to a state of division among rival kingships, as it had to an extent under the reign of Eadred.

His most trusted advisor was Dunstan, whom he recalled from exile and made Archbishop of Canterbury. Edgar was crowned at Bath and along with his wife Ælfthryth was anointed, setting a precedent for a coronation of a queen in England itself. Edgar’s coronation did not happen until 973, in an imperial ceremony planned not as the initiation, but as the culmination of his reign (a move that must have taken a great deal of preliminary diplomacy). This service, devised by Dunstan himself and celebrated with a poem in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, forms the basis of the present-day British coronation ceremony.

The symbolic coronation was an important step; other kings of Britain came and gave their allegiance to Edgar shortly afterwards at Chester. Six kings in Britain, including King Kenneth II of Scotland and Máel Coluim, King of Strathclyde, pledged their faith that they would be the king’s liege-men on sea and land. Later chroniclers made the kings into eight, all plying the oars of Edgar’s state barge on the River Dee Such embellishments may not be factual, and what actually happened is unclear.

Edgar died on July 8, 975 at Winchester, Hampshire. (aged 31/32) He was buried at Glastonbury Abbey. He left behind Edward, who was probably his illegitimate son by Æthelflæd (not to be confused with the Lady of the Mercians), and Æthelred, the younger, the child of his wife Ælfthryth. He was succeeded by Edward, although the succession was disputed, with the legitimacy of Edward the main issue. Edgar also had a possibly illegitimate daughter by Wulfthryth, who later became abbess of Wilton. She was joined there by her daughter, Edith of Wilton, who lived there as a nun until her death. Both women were later regarded as saints