Eadric the Wild
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Eadric the Wild was a leader of English Saxon resistance to the Norman Conquest, active in western Mercia.
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[edit] Lineage
Eadric was apparently the nephew or grandson of Eadric Streona, ealdorman of Mercia under Ethelred the Unready. He held extensive lands in Shropshire, and other estates in Herefordshire.
[edit] Resistance to Norman Rule
After the conquest of England by William of Normandy, Eadric refused to submit and therefore came under attack from Norman forces based at Hereford Castle. He raised a rebellion and with the help of the Welsh rulers of Gwynedd and Powys, the princes Bleddyn and Riwallon, he unsuccessfully attacked the Norman castle at Hereford in 1067. They did not take the county, and retreated to Wales to plan further raiding.[1]
During the widespread wave of English rebellions in 1069-70, he burned the town of Shrewsbury and unsuccessfully besieged the Shrewsbury Castle, again helped by his Welsh allies from Gwynedd, as well as other English rebels from Cheshire.
It was probably this combination of forces which was decisively defeated by William in a battle at Stafford in late 1069. Eadric apparently submitted to King William in 1070 and later participated in William's invasion of Scotland in 1072.[2]
[edit] Traditions
Eadric is mentioned in connection with the Wild Hunt, and in the tale of Wild Eadric.[3]
[edit] Notes
- ^ Douglas, D. C., William the Conqueror, 1964: Eyre Methuen, London
- ^ [1], (date accessed: 15 December 2006).
- ^ See [2]. Katherine Briggs, The Fairies in Tradition and Literature (p. 6 and 60 in 2002 edition) gives Walter Map as originator of the tale of Edric and his fairy wife, surviving as a tradition in the nineteenth century in Shropshire and the Welsh borders.
